Things Are

It was a perfect day to snowshoe last Saturday. A friend of mine, Jen, and I just walked down the street and entered the green belt behind our houses on our snowshoes onto virgin snow. Nobody had been there yet except for an four-legged or two. It was breathtakingly quiet and still. All we could hear was the crunching of our steps on the still fresh snow and occasional howling winds.

After a week of rather intense snowstorms and while many people in the community were still trying to get themselves dug out, I felt a bit guilty for going for a purely pleasurable experience of being in the snow and moving my body. Yet, it was exactly what I needed to ground myself. I felt invigorated and more centered afterwards.

On Sunday I drove down to the city to meet my clients. Seeing the snowcapped mountains from Los Angeles was something I always cherished during the winter although such view were getting increasingly rare in the last several years. Knowing so many people were still stuck in the snow in San Gabriel Mountains where they had much more snow than in our area made it bitter sweet.

So much is happening in the world that I feel helpless about. The climate changing is just one of them. These extreme weather has been happening, but this one was close where I could feel viscerally it could have been much worse. How do we stay equanimous? I’m reminded of a quote I heard from one of the Dharma teachers, Meg Gawler:

Things are as they’ve come to be

May I have an open heart

May whatever clouds my heart be dissolved

May I see the world with quiet eyes