As I steered toward being first in line at Macys one morning en route to the fire tower, I made a good stop at a Beaver Street yard sale: I scored three snap-button cowboy shirts, a serviceable fanny pack, and a $3 wooden chair from IKEA.
That chair has made me the monk of impulsive outdoor meditating.
Meditation practice courses through my life as sweetly as a rivulet snaking through granite boulders in a desert canyon. Without being formal, my sitting with the Quakers some Sunday mornings, my upright breathing with assorted knowledgeable friends and wise girlfriends, and the built-in reality of so much time alone as a fire lookout has created a weave of Buddhist wisdom, transcendentalist musings and practical guidance for inner sorting that makes my life a far more fruitful life than it might have been had I been left to dither in solo ignorance. I let Ram Dass convince me to be here now. I value listening to Pema Chodron describe how to meet things falling apart. And now I have this great chair, this spiritual teacher that whispers to me, “Sit.”
When I first put the chair in the back of my truck I was careful. It is a stylish pseudo ebony color and not chipped. But, hey, it only cost me $3 and I don’t need another chair in the house, so I decided to not be attached to its beauty. I threw a Mexican blanket over it to keep the dust off and began to imagine places where I might pull over to sit. A good chair might help me slow down. Instead of leaping from transportation to task, I might pause.
Pause I did. Setting the chair in the shade of a juniper, I sat at the trailhead at Strawberry Crater with my notebook before heading out to hike. This caused me to walk those red cinders without assorted invoices from attorneys still gnawing on my sense of humor. I sat by a friend’s house waiting to see if she might come home soon. Instead of leaving a note for her I left behind ten minutes of silent sitting. I wonder if she found unexpected peace on her doorstep.
I know, it might be easier to keep a camping chair in my truck, but my essential nature is closer to a wooden chair at a tea party than a collapsible nylon throne. I don’t aspire to sit on the roof of an RV at NASCAR races. Actually I have enjoyed a tailgate party or two. Once it was with wine and dinner with fellow massage school students in the parking lot of the Santa Fe opera. Once it was munching cheese and crackers while waiting for traffic to clear after the symphony at Tanglewood in the Berkshires. Then there was that time we laid down in the back of my truck to stargaze after the Indigo Girls concert: a lovely variation on tailgating. But there goes my mind swinging from tree to tree again.
Having that wooden chair in my truck caused me to finally stop at a grove of trees by that open sea of sunflowers on the way to Sunset Crater. I’ve commuted past Bonita Park all summer eyeing how trees trickle into the meadow. Finally I pulled over and took the balsa-wood weight chair stamped Made in the Republic of China and toted my new sitting practice past red flowers and purple bouquets to the tall grass waving. I didn’t even spill the coffee I’d snagged from the Circle K on my way out highway 89.
What I met that morning was bird sound: birds waking up in all directions, birds barking orders for breakfast, birds hooting boundary warnings, birds tooting messages to speed up procreation. What a fine bargain: my monkey mind traded for a feathered symphony. Such a deal! That $3 chair bought me a seat in The Bird Café. A mere half hour spent seated at a table of sun and shadow nudged me toward the kind of quiet where 20 conscious breaths was clearly the only thing to do. I let insights come and go effortlessly, eyes open and eyes closed, breath in, breath out, and with nary a precept in sight I found a gentle intention for one and all blossoming in my heart: may all beings bump into spirit-supporting bargains on Beaver Street. Make no mistake, and namaste, mystery happens when you pause to embrace it.
