I felt surprised.
I had not consciously meditated since leaving Rama one year before.
Yet the state of mind felt oddly familiar, and I tried to
understand why.
I thought about the meaning of meditation. To meditate, I supposed,
was to concentrate and reflect on thoughts, images, or phenomena.
It was to work in a garden or stand in a subway and listen to
currents of the mind. It was to lose track of time completely,
absorbed in memories of a friend. It was to gaze down the highway
of light where the sun lit into the sea. There were as many ways
to meditate, it seemed, as there were facets on the jewel of the
human condition.
It occurred to me that I had meditated on the first day of
the bike trip at Walden Pond. I had become immersed in watching
waves rise and fall and in listening to them lap the shore.
Their pattern suggested a rhythm unlike any I had followed.
When a friend asked which route I would take, I smiled.
My plan was to follow the setting sun.
Now, stretched out on a sleeping bag in northern Colorado, I realized
that I had started and ended the bike trip in spontaneous meditation.
I recalled other times during the journey that I had meditated.
I gazed, for instance, at the bands of bright color which arched
from drenched cow fields to the luminous Wisconsin sky.
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