Gentleness is Presence

Transcript

Let’s talk about how gentleness is presence.

Sometimes I’m out walking and I notice my steps aren’t even or the ball of my foot or my toes aren’t coming into contact with the earth before my heel.

These days because we wear shoes we often slam the entire foot against the ground at once.

Not the best for the knees.

You read that book called Born to Run where he talks about barefoot running. For more information about that its a very interesting book.\

But also its a question of I notice that in some form the foot isn’t landing with precision.

I remember when I was in Wat Tham Krabok my monk friend showed us a walking meditation where we would try to be present and mindful of every element and every step in the process of walking. `every part of the stride from lifting the heel to lifting the ball, lifting the calf and moving the leg forward and placing the leg down of course until when you can get it together, finally get it into one smooth motion.

Sometimes I would find myself walking around the temple and I would only be walking a short distance but Id slip into this thinking of Im not being present with my steps. I still notice that.

I notice this more when I am walking with headphones. You might notice that too like every step that I take is not precise, not conscious. It knocks the headphones a bit or does something with my ears. And so when I bring things into alignment and am mindful of how I am stepping, smooth and still. The more I practice the more deep the presence and the more gentleness I can bring into my strides.

So I remember once I was living in a shared house. There was something about the doors, if you closed them normally they would slam and I said to my housemate “why do you slam the door?”

Which is kind of true because these doors are very sensitive somehow, very able to be swung easily but of course it wasn’t the doors agency. Humans have this agency to be mindful and notice when things are different. Like oh this door doesn’t require much force that I close it softly, perhaps so softly no one in the house notices. Nobody be disturbed.

Gently we can move, gently bringing more presence into our actions, softer gentler way of doing things with less effort and disturbance to the surrounding environment. Smoothly, gently, mindfully with presence we can move through the world.

Thank you for listening, for introducing presence and gentleness into your life and interactions with your fellow humans.