Posts Tagged ‘cooking’

Reason #5

February 23rd, 2009

Meditation.

 

It’s true, I’ve been slacking on my meditations, since the summer really.  I went to a wonderful place in Portland a few times called Maitripa, where you can actually get a Degree in Meditation.  But barely every other week.  I’ve been wanting to do a longer meditation for some time now, and was looking at the Green Gulch Zen Center out in California about a year ago.  they do great three month farming / meditation retreats.  I did a shorter Zen retreat in Cambridge, and man, Zen is tough.  So maybe it’s good I never did the program at Green Gulch.  (As an aside, Tassajara, a sister center to Green Gulch, has has one of the best cookcooks I’ve ever used, Tassajara Cooking.  If you live on the West Coast, it’s usually pretty easy to find in used bookstores.)  I really wanted to do the November Course at Kopan Monastery in Nepal, which would be a perfect continuation of my experience at Tushita.  Unfortunately, getting to Nepal can be tricky, and very very costly.

 

So then I was thinking maybe I can turn hiking the Appalachian Trail into an extended meditation retreat.  Walking is often performed as a type of meditation in both the Tibetan and Zen traditions, and I will be hiking mostly in isolation.  The purpose of any meditation is to simply be aware of what you are doing and your surroundings.  I think it would be amazing to be aware of every step along that trail.

 

I realize there is a certain inherent conflict between wanting to finish the hike and meditating; meditation is not about accomplishing anything, while hiking is.  Well kind of, hiking is also about hiking, so maybe it will work out.