This meditation is excerpted from Lion’s Roar’s audio collection “Meditations to Ground Yourself.”
Transcript
So I wanted to share with you one daily practice that I do, and offer it to you as a possible homework experiment. I live in Taos, New Mexico, even though I’m in Oaxaca, Mexico right now. My daily practice from Taos is to rise early in the morning after practicing the Five Remembrances and some noble silence, and to step outside in our little yard, wait, and be present for the sunrise.
While I am waiting for the sun, I practice listening to the sounds of the planet — the birds, the movement of prairie dogs, cars on the road, trucks and buses, the wind, the hawk talking, the magpies chattering — the silence in between and underneath all those things.
Every morning I just take 10 or 15 minutes to ground myself on the planet, with the planet.
Then I simply notice what I notice. I’m often delightfully surprised by the sounds of new birds with new songs, new beauty. My sensory experience of being an earthling is affirmed.
In the evening I do the same practice. I watch the stars. We’re at 7,500 feet up in Taos, New Mexico, and it seems like I can actually reach and touch the stars. They seem so close, and the moonlight is so bright and elegant. The shooting stars and the movement of the galaxy help me ground myself in wonder — that I am on a planet, the only planet like this that we know of in space and time. How precious it is to hear the silent sounds of the night, different than the morning meditation.
Things are quiet then — every now and then a siren, a car or truck on the road — but mostly just the silence of a starry night. Learning to take that starry night into myself, to see the stars and the vastness of space and the emptiness inside myself, I feel that presence in me. I notice where in my body consciousness awakens, and I recognize my profound opportunity to be a human being.
So I would invite you to experiment. Maybe you go outside, try it for three minutes or five minutes. You don’t have to do what I’m suggesting, but I encourage you to try something like this if you don’t already.
The key in this practice is how we direct our attention and where we direct it. Our attention either nourishes us or de-nourishes us. Learning how to direct my attention to be present for the sounds of the earth has been essential.
And of course, these sounds include human conversation, not just what we think of as the “natural world” — unless we understand that we are part of the natural world, which we are.
So try this out. Start with a morning and an evening, or with just one. You may already take hikes, walks in the woods, or work in your garden. Bring a contemplative sensibility to it.
Take time to look deeply into your hands digging into the earth and feel it—the planting of seeds, the picking of fruit and vegetables. Or in the kitchen, the sounds of chopping vegetables and making food. All sounds of the earth, including wonders of every kind.
