Over the summer I started giving "walking meditation" a go. I walk a couple of miles in the mornings and try to spend 20 minutes of it staying aware of my breathing and the sensation of walking. A lot of times I listen to something called "Daily Headspace" which is a guided meditation preceded by a short (maybe a minute) teaching. They exist for 24 hours and then the next day it's replaced by a new one. I usually fire it up a short way into the walk because there are two dogs that habitually jump the fence of their yard and accompany me on the walk and I don't want to get derailed by our inevitable meet and greet upon their arrival so once we've said hello and they take off running ahead, I start the meditation. This morning's teaching was entitled "Approaching Adversity"
Something difficult in life happens, and we feel annoyed. Although we may not always be able to change the situation, meditation shows that we can learn to let go of the annoyance.
The very essence of meditation is that we're not trying to change "the thing". We're trying to understand the way in which we relate to "the thing" and perhaps as a result change our approach to that.
The truth is, difficult things are always going to happen. We can't change that. But we do have the opportunity to change our approach. So when annoyance arises in the mind, we can either choose to engage with it and create a story from it, or instead through the practice of meditation we can learn how to see it clearly...acknowledging it and letting it go.
So while I was listening to this teaching, I notice that one of the dogs is limping. This is a young male dog (the other dog is his mom) and he's typically stinky. He likes dead things and poops in the road a lot and does not have a lot of control over his boy parts. He has terrible manners, always trying to horn in on pets, jumping up to bump my hand, etc. Mostly he runs along with his mom, though, so beyond the initial meeting he's not too much trouble to deal with. Today, though, he was carrying one of his rear legs and running on three and whimpering a little while doing it.
I thought the most likely reason was that he hung his leg up on the fence as he was going over but on the off chance that it was something in his paw when the teaching part came to an end I paused the meditation and called him over to me. Thrilled to have attention, he rolled onto his back and was wiggling and wriggling. I used one hand to hold him still and was inspecting his paw with the other and trying to avoid visual contact with the sight of his doggy erection and suddenly I realize that he's peeing everywhere, including on my hand. Paw inspection ceases immediately followed by "EW GROSS GET AWAY YOU STINKY GROSS BOY DOG!" Oh GOD I was SO ANNOYED.
He runs off, I wipe my hand on my pants, resigned to the fact that I'm going to have dog pee/stink on me for the rest of the walk and I restarted the meditation from the beginning of the teaching. I was so knocked off my center that I actually had forgotten the topic and then...I heard it for the second time and just burst out laughing.
Annoyance indeed!
Me: WS (63)Him: Shards (58)D-day: June 6, 2010Last voluntary AP contact: June 23, 2010NC Letter sent: 3/9/11
We’re going to make it.
