View full issue in PDF - The Mindfulness Bell

fr uits of the WINTER RETREAT
Deer Park Walking Meditation
Hundreds of feet softly kissing the earth.
Mindful full moon dance
by children of celestial light
whose source crests from behind
peaceful Deer Park’s hidden mountain saddle.
Dark night’s cotton-cloud haze
illuminated by one, then two lunar rings.
Most suddenly, poof
–focused concentration exits.
Enter, monkey mind’s desire,
trying to force the sky, moon and rings
to be as one.
Breathing calm, relaxed,
community proceeds up dark, rocky path
–noble teacher and sangha
answering the silent moon’s calling;
listening,
letting go,
liberating separation,
stopping.
Hundreds of eyes gaze
towards moon’s glow
that gently reflects with their forms.
Moon, sangha and my perception,
chilly shadows among valley and sky,
dance joyously in love,
harmoniously inter-being.
David Nelson, Compassionate Guidance of the
Heart, lives and practices in Flagstaff, Arizona.
photo by Tamara Buchanan
photo by Emily Whittle
Confessions of
a Shoe Thief
by Lucy Kingsley
Well, so much for mindfulness. I go to the small meditation hall
to return a cushion. I leave my shoes outside. I go in and leave the
cushion. I come out of the hall and put shoes back on to go down to
dinner.
During dinner I sit in the back of the hall with friends. A woman
makes an announcement that someone took her shoes from outside
the small meditation hall, a pair of size six black clogs. Now she has
a pair of white size seven and a half Nikes. She would like her own
shoes back.
Realizing I went to the hall in my Nikes and not in my black
clogs, I now understand that I am wearing her shoes. I start to blush.
I bow to the people at my table, get up and start a very long, mindful
walk past the entire international Sangha to the front of the hall where
she is standing.
I bow to her and slip off her shoes. She returns the bow and
then embraces me. We both start to laugh. I take several long
breaths and begin to walk the long way back to my table. I have a
blister on my foot from walking in someone else’s shoes.
Lucy Kingsley, Loving Balance of the Heart,
lives and practices in Eugene, Oregon.
12 Summer 2004