Mindfulness Meditation (For Everyday Life)

your body the sense of uplift, the axial, elevated
quality of the mountain deep in your own spine. Invite
yourself to become a breathing mountain, unwavering
in your stillness, completely what you are - beyond
words and thought, a centered, rooted, unmoving
presence.
Now, as well you know, throughout the day as the
sun travels the sky, the mountain just sits. Light and
shadow and colors are changing virtually moment to
moment in the mountain's adamantine stillness. Even
the untrained eye can see changes by the hour.
These evoke those masterpieces of Claude Monet,
who had the genius to set up many easels and paint
the life of his inanimate subjects hour by hour,
moving from canvas to canvas as the play of light,
shadow, and color transformed cathedral, river, or
mountain, and thereby wake up the viewer's eye. As
the light changes, as night follows day and day night,
the mountain just sits, simply being itself. It remains
still as the seasons flow into one another and as the
weather changes moment by moment and day by
day. Calmness abiding all change.
In summer, there is no snow on the mountain, except
perhaps for the very top or in crags shielded from
direct sunlight. In the fall, the mountain may display a
coat of brilliant fire colors; in winter, a blanket of snow