THIRTEEN WALKING

Introspect

Meditation. Perhaps something I will never know whether I have achieved in life. My mind is always busy, even in the most serene environment. I still have doubts whether I had meditated on my walk of meditation. 

Paris was very cooperative with setting the atmosphere for my walk. The combination of Sunday and rain produced a state even more somber than regular dimanche mornings. I decided on Palais Royal for my walk because it was enclosed and open and it had corridors for the prescribed linear path. 

At the back of my mind, I wondered if the amount of considerations put into this walk would defeat its tranquilizing purpose. I was a little nervous, having remembered that,

Insight walking requires reflexive placing of the mind, or attention, upon whatever is occupying the meditator’s awareness in each moment. The placing of the mind is immediately followed by a directed knowing, or marking, of exactly what it is that is currently occupying the meditator’s attention. 

 It seemed that there were to be a lot of things to take note. 

I kept to the instructed early hour, not entirely because the reading dictated so, but because I enjoyed the smell of morning air. There is a cooling, refreshing quality to it. Perhaps that is why the French call it “bonne heure”. 

When I commenced my walk, the first few steps in the corridor was taken with grave consideration. I clasped my hands in front of me, almost too much for comfort. I recalled from a body language class that hands clasped in front suggested close-mindedness while hands behind suggested open-mindedness in social occasions. But walking as meditation is not very social is it? 

Then, somehow, I took my mind off it, and simply walked. The rhythm picked up and I began to take notice of the motion of my feet. The left foot swung quite effortlessly past its right partner. The sole hit the ground for a moment I cannot quantify because it does not feel like it should be numerically deduced. My limbs simply moved naturally. 

This was temporary. My mind was soon intruded by thoughts. Random yet relevant thoughts. Thoughts not abut my physical activity. I started to notice the broken chapters of mosaic tiles on the floor. Some fractions of the corridor had colorful pattern tiles while others were replaced with flat, concrete grey, rectangular pieces of cement. I could tell that the tiles were survivors of history and old-fashioned wear and tear. Their surfaces were uneven, with raised bumps and concave dents like the moon. My attention was diverting from my body involuntarily. Was this right? Was I making an error in walk? 

Stop.

Stop overthinking. 

I paused at an opening of the fence and looked to the trees in the garden. They had turned green overnight some weeks ago. How and when exactly, remains a mystery to me. I stared at them for a while. My body needed the pause because I was dressed too little for the cold of the gloom weather. I simply waited there and stared. It was a temporary retirement from everything that I was doind and it proved quite effective to recollect my mind. I was decontaminating my mind from all that occupied it in order to have mental space for a mindful walk.

I didn’t know how long I took. It was a moment that felt unnatural to put numbers to as well. I resumed my pacing around the perimeters of the Palais Royal through its sheltered corridors. Taking each breath in sync with each step. 

The thought of having background music tempted my thoughts, but it soon disappeared as I steered my thoughts back into focus. 

f o c u s

The streamline of my thoughts was somehow sensual. I was more concentrated on myself than ever. And not in a narcissistic way. It was, for the lack of a better word, spiritual. I always avoided using such vague, abstract adjectives. 

The sense of time disintegrated. I didn’t have a watch on me. I used to have one that was never detached from my left wrist but at some point I stopped. It was after high school. I didn’t have the need to follow a rigid schedule anymore. My phone that was in my pocket felt too far away for me to reach out and check the clock. I was minutely paranoid about not knowing and simultaneously enjoying the lack of knowledge of the hour. The perception of time derived from intuition and physical rhythm is delightful in its own way. 

I could hear each breath and sense my heartbeat (when I focused enough). I enjoyed this elevated level of self-awareness. It gave me a sense of autonomy, of security. I loved how I understood why my facial skin felt soothed and relaxed — it was because of the cold air from the rain. And I learned this by observing my surroundings more. Rain usually struck me with sticky humid irritation on the skin but the aridness of Paris offered a much more pleasant experience. That comfort allowed me to “meditate” better, to be focused on my self without annoyance. 

The sense of gravity was internalized as I grew more conscious of how my center of gravity shifted with each movement. I believe this is the insightful nature of walking as meditation. Solipsistic, isolated, introspective. A pendulum formed within as I walked and in a strange way I no longer cared about time. My state of mind was paradoxically detached from the external world in touch with it at the same time. I deduced that I was highly conscious of the way I was experiencing the surroundings. The self-scrutiny was peacefully compulsive — which part of my foot, which side of the ball of my foot impacted the ground first differed marginally in every step.

The decision to conclude my walk was without reason. I was not particularly hungry or cold or had any appointment scheduled. I did have some work unfinished but I was not very excited about that either. The timing was right and I found a quiet space with the Palais Royal to conduct my “sitting”. I was shy to sit cross-legged in public but I did anyway. The stone bench was dry but still cold. My body was calming down from the activeness of walking. The stationary nature of sitting made the meditative walk feel like an action movie. My heartbeat became an audible clock and I was compelled to take deep breaths to relax and further relax any tensed, contracted muscles. A weight dropped from my chest to my abdomen with each exhalation. The muscles in my forehead loosened when my eyelids lowered. When I felt that I had sank deep enough, that I had been grounded enough, I felt ready to resume engagement with common world again.