Mindfulness

I first heard about Mindfulness a few years ago. It’s a Buddhist technique of meditation that focuses on bringing awareness to being. G had attended some sessions in Mindfulness Meditation in London and gave me a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It helped me learn more about myself (or how little I know about myself) and I especially liked the techniques on using your breath to focus on present moment awareness. I’m no expert, and my mind is constantly flitting between past-present-future, mostly past-future. But M sent a link to an article in the New Internationalist talking about Mindfulness. So today I watched a session on mindfulness that Jon Kabat-Zinn gave at google, in 2007. It’s a long talk, but worth more than an hour of tv or shopping. He recites a poem which is what I actually wanted to share in today’s post. It’s by Derek Walcot, a nobel laureate from St Lucia. Leaving you with it – feast on your life!

Love after Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott