An amusing and perhaps insightful incident….
My wife and I were hiking in Zion National Park this morning, the Emerald Pools trail. Judy had gone on ahead to see something I wasn’t that interested in, so I’m sitting on a big boulder beside the trail, waiting for her to come back. The surface of the boulder is tilted, so the only way to comfortably sit is cross-legged, “loose lotus,” with my hiking staff over my knees and my pack beside me. I wasn’t particularly “meditating,” but thought I looked like I was and was self-conscious, this was a public place with lots of parties of people coming up the path. So I looked around a lot to look more “normal,” like a guy sitting around waiting rather than a funny fellow “meditating.”
After a while I decided my self-consciousness was silly, let people think I was meditating if that was what they wanted to think, maybe it would, in some very small way, help introduce meditation into our culture. Hardly had I thought this when some cute little kids climb up on the rock below me and a passing man calls out, “Oh Great Guru, what advice do you have for us?”
“Take a breather once in a while,” I instantly reply, with a smile. He ponders this a moment and asks “Is this advice just for hiking or for all of life?” “All of life,” I reply…. And the cute little kids get their photos taken by their mom….
So, all those years of spiritual practice, and now this! 😉
And I didn’t even have a white robe on or a beard like all the great guru cartoons….and was wearing my cowboy hat…..