How to use the meditations
1. Find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed.
2. Read through the whole meditation a few times, then put it down.
3. Sit in a position both comfortable and alert.
4. Allow the meditation 10 minutes or so in your imagination. Do not give up before this time; stay with it.
5. Allow another 10 minutes for recording what happened. Allow events to develop as you record. |
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MEDITATION 18
CONSIDERING THE TABLE
Thich Nhat Hanh invites us to consider the table.
The table exists because of things which exist in what might be called "the non-table world". The forest where the wood grew and was cut; the sun and rain which made the wood possible; the carpenter and the carpenter's ancestors, parents; the iron ore which became the nails and the screws; those who worked in the factory where the nails were made; the families that benefited from the wages earned there.
These are things from the non-table world, yet crucial to the table's existence. If you took away any of those non-table elements and returned them to their source – the nails to iron ore, the wood to the forest, the carpenter to the womb – then the table would no longer exist.
A person who can look at the table and see the universe – is on the way.
MEDITATE
Consider an object.
Consider how it came to be; how it has been assembled.
What was necessary in its creation?
Consider the environmental requirements for such a thing, and the lives touched by the process.
Consider the dependence of the object for its existence on the rest of creation.
Do you sense the oneness of things?
More one-minute mysticism |
