So I took my mind outside today, as recommended by the masters I cited in the previous entry.  I sat in the cold sun in a small quiet square off avenue Bernard.  I was alone there; the Easter wind was stiff and sharp.  But I knew it would be foolish to meditate outside for the first time in a busy, noisy place full of traffic. 

The experience was different.  First of all, it was much shorter.  I could see this as a failure, in that I could not sustain my concentration or inner quiet as a small handful of people strolled past, many with dogs. But in seeking the non-discriminating mind we must distrust simplistic assumptions differentiating “longer” and “shorter” meditations.  What actually came about in my short meditation was curiously satisfying; indoors, I think I would have risen frustrated and even a little ashamed of stopping so soon.

Second, it was relatively easy to set aside the snarl of thoughts.  I am asked by masters in many recent readings (and have been asked many times over the years) what my mind is—even though many of those same masters emphasize that mind cannot see mind.  Today, my mind was very clear to me as a silent void or space in which thoughts and perceptions come and go.  I was able to be of that mind quickly and easily.  Seen as a space, it was of a faint blue tinge, for some reason, well-lit without brightness.

This much has happened before, more or less.  What was different today is that the empty resting mind had no strict boundary with body or, for that matter, with the surrounding world.  My body was not a problem for my mind to resolve or attend to.  And the mind outside—the one great mind that is the world outside, which is the Tao—was not separate from “my” mind.  The public space encouraged, perhaps, a permeability, an openness, in my empty mind, in such a way that I was hardly there at all.  Or rather, I and the world-mind were one, briefly.

These happy understandings had something to do with being outdoors, with the coming and going of others, with the sun and cold wind, with the bright bricks of the apartment building opposite and the shrubs along its foundation, and with the tails of happy dogs.  So my first experiment in seeking my own mind outside was fruitful, casting up new experiences and encouraging insights that have not challenged me in my darkened meditation rooms.  Therefore I will continue.

20 April, 2025.