Uncategorized November 6, 2018 By Admin 0 Comments

some of these days: beach mindfulness, or I disappeared!

“I am in the music. Globes of fire revolve in the mirrors; rings of smoke encircle them and spin around, veiling and unveiling the hard smile of the light”-Jean-Paul Sarte Nausea

I’m lucky. I live about five minutes from the beach. The Northumbria coastline can be bleak and cutting at times, but this year its been a constant source of surprise and heat. Every day I’ve been to the beach there’s been a new beach there to greet me.

Today the sea was grey, the sky felt low and seemed draped with moisture as if preparing to rain. It’s November, and at this time the wind can be cold and strong, lifting the sand in its swirl. As I walk, I can feel the sand fall to either side of my feet, I can smell the salty air and I can hear the perpetual low roar of the waves in their watery crashing on the sand. Seagulls screech and take flight. I stand still, breathe.

Moments like this, when there is nothing to sell or buy, nothing to give or take, nothing to do but stand still and savour the experience, moments of letting thoughts fall away.

For one moment, perhaps one nanosecond, I disappeared. Thoughts fell away and there was no me, no person here at all, just this, an open empty beach and the dull roar of the waves, the sea extending out to the horizon, towards the grey curvature of the Earth. And then I’m back, so fast, as fast as the snapshut of a camera’s aperture; I’m back, this person is back, mediating the purity of the experience with concept, idea and thought.

This reminds me of the Buddhist Dzog Chen notion of “one ground, two paths[1]” where it is suggested there exists a foundation of grand potential within us known as the ground being. On one level, (one path) we are already awakened and already aware of our true nature. We glimpse Truth (and what might that be?) At the same time, however, (the other path) that true nature has been obscured or forgotten. We catch glimpses of it, but for the lay practitioner (such as I) the glimpse is very quick to end. Essentially our conceptual self -thinking, thinking, thinking-gets in the way.

This ground is completely Awake, replete with play and luminosity. We are separate from this until we-essentially-construct the idea that we are and attempt to control our experiencing and our world. We live reduced and veiled from what is.

Perhaps this is akin to finding what Eckhart Tolle calls presence[2], a grounding unmediated by thought or emotion, where thought and emotions are simply regarded as waves that fall back into the sea and we are a vast sky of awareness.

How many hundreds of years have I been doing this?

I walk on the path, I stray off the path. And so it goes on, a crooked beach path less travelled.

I’ll keep practising.