Shadow Patch

At this very moment, doubtless there is a sudden local act of violence happening in a "trouble spot" somewhere on earth. But for every trouble spot, there are 10,000 spots where peace is breaking out, children are kicking soccer balls, mothers are brushing their daughters' hair, men are working in fields, families are gathering around fires, laughing and telling stories.

When we allow the media to define our world, the news is never good. Is the world more violent today than in the past? Or is there just more coverage of disaster, more news about unhappy places, more electronic hyper-vigilance? Reading every political site we can find on our computer when we get up in the morning doesn't enhance our consciousness at all: it merely causes collective secondary post-traumatic stress. When our minds feed on this virtual media world, we lose touch with the vibrant continuum of the organic Earth, humming through its fur into our senses.

This is why meditation masters throughout history have directed us to pay attention, not to our thoughts, but to this breath, this tiny blue flower, this delicious sting of dew on the soles of our bare feet. Zen founder Dogen said, "Those who gained enlightenment by seeing blossoms or hearing sounds, achieved it through the body." The Psalmist of the Bible wrote, "Taste and see the goodness of the Lord!"

Dogen's disciples, or the desert prophets of ancient Israel, would not be tempted to download the phantasm of electronic imagery fabricated by iPhone, Facebook, Twitter and cable TV into their brains. They knew that the mind is not the actual world, but a ghostly parallel cyber-world, floating alongside the real one. When we let the mind of artificial images get overfed by the corporate media, then to dwell in the suchness of the Earth is even harder than it was in Dogen's time.

We always have the choice to cease clinging to media-mind. Then we can savor the blessed sacrament of the Incarnation, the miraculous commonplace of a warm September afternoon: a fallen apple, its golden wound a chalice for the glutted bee.

I choose the Earth, just as it is, un-PhotoShopped. I choose to turn off the news. Then I can hear a whisper of cricket silence around the Autumn crocus, bursting from withered alfalfa. Such still small voices call me to cherish Earth's loveliness. From this cherishing must flow my deeds.

Spirit calls me not to save the ghost-world of media-mind, but to tend the sacred patch of ground covered by my own shadow, and welcome every wayfarer who passes through this place. If we all practiced a little hospitality as we wander through each others shadow-patch, that would be enough. That would bring peace on Earth.