Mindfulness Meditation (For Everyday Life)

coming full circle, back to the ordinary and the
everyday, what they call "being free and easy in the
marketplace." This means being grounded anywhere,
in any circumstances, neither above nor below,
simply present, but fully present. And Zen
practitioners have the wholly irreverent and
wonderfully provocative saying, "If you meet the
Buddha, kill him," which means that any conceptual
attachments to Buddha or enlightenment are far from
the mark.
Notice that the mountain image as we use it in the
mountain meditation is not merely the loftiness of the
peak, high above all the "baseness" of quotidian
living. It is also the groundedness of the base, rooted
in rock, a willingness to sit and be with all conditions,
such as fog, rain, snow, and cold or, in terms of the
mind, depression, angst, confusion, pain, and
suffering.
Rock, the students of psyche remind us, is symbolical
of soul rather than spirit. Its direction is downward,
the soul journey a symbolic descent, a going
underground. Water, too, is symbolical of soul,
embodying the downward element, as in the lake
meditation, pooling in the low places, cradled in rock,
dark and mysterious, receptive, often cold and damp.