- Insights Into Practices: Awe
- Zen Puzzler: Everyone Wants To Leave The Endless Changes
- A Poem, by Wendell Berry
“Awe is everywhere. It’s the world. It is about pausing and reflecting and looking at things anew.
The science tells us is it’s good for our minds and bodies. It reduces inflammation.
It’s good for your heart. Awe helps us handle conflicts.
It makes us feel less stressed, makes us feel like we have more time.
It makes you more aware of and friendly toward the natural world.”
These are a few statements from Dr. Dacher Keltner, faculty director of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center from my Zen Bones Podcast conversation with Dacher last summer, shortly after his book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your life was published.
What is awe? Awe is an overwhelming feeling of reverence or admiration, produced by something grand, sublime, or powerful. This emotion is typically triggered by experiences that go beyond normal human understanding, such as witnessing natural wonders, experiencing profound beauty, or encountering extraordinary talent or achievements.
The key takeaway from our conversation was that it’s possible and effective to practice awe by shifting our attention and approach.
One simple practice is to go on an Awe Walk. Walk anywhere and imagine you are seeing things for the first time – trees, cars, clouds, other people. Imagine that you are a child, and explore how you experience the world through seeing, hearing, and smelling? This is an easy way to experience awe, whether you are in a city or in a beautiful rural area or walking through a garden. This simple activity can be powerful, surprising, and heart opening.
Or wherever you are or whatever you are doing, try on seeing everything as fresh and new. This approach can be applied to music or nature or seeing a person near you.
In addition to the many benefits of awe named above, there is a study that finds that brief experiences of awe lead people toward less polarization of their political opponents and reduces conflicts over issues such as abortion or gun rights. Awe can act like antidote to polarizing conflict, which is one of our real social problems today.
Practices:
Awe Walk – Try it. Simply go for a walk and see everything as though you are seeing things for the first time.
Awe practice – Explore being child-like. See, hear, smell, touch as though you are discovering for the first time.
Journal writing – Write, beginning with these prompts: What surprises me about my life right now is…. I feel awe when…
Zen Puzzler: Everyone wants to leave the endless changes
Here is a short poem by Zen teacher Dongshan, from 9th century China:
“Without saying it is or it isn’t, do you have the courage to be at peace with this?
Everyone wants to leave the endless changes,
but when you stop bending and fitting your life,
you come and sit by the fire.”
Dongshan is introducing the perspective of non-duality, that is accessible and useful in everyday life. Usually we tend to make everything into categories such as this or that, right or wrong, my way or your way, alive or dead. Dongshan suggests letting go of the usual sense of knowing and not knowing; letting go of “it is or it isn’t.” It takes courage to be at peace with the inherent paradoxes and contradictions of our world, as well as the mystery of change and impermanence.
It takes courage to not be caught by calling ourselves or others successes or failures, or to get caught by any of the usual dualities of what we should be doing or shouldn’t be doing.
Then the next line says, “Everyone wants to leave the endless changes.” Here he is saying that it is okay to recognize our own resistance to change and uncertainty. Who wants to lose everything and face death?
Then he goes on to say, “When you stop bending and fitting your life, you come and sit by the fire.” When we recognize our resistance to change, and embrace change, we can relax. We can come and sit by the fire.
To practice with this koan, explore asking yourself: What are the ways that you are bending and fitting yourself, instead of living with a sense of joy, acceptance, and freedom?. Do you have the courage to be at peace with change?
A Poem, by Wendell Berry
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in meand I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come into the peace of wild thingswho do not tax their lives with forethoughtof grief. I come into the presence of still water.And I feel above me the day-blind starswaiting with their light. For a timeI rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Warmest wishes,
Marc