Last weekend, I read that a great teacher of mindfulness had died – Thich Nhat Hanh. He has influenced so many during his long life . This evening , when I picked up his book The Miracle of Mindfulness, it opened at chapter 2 entitled The Miracle is to Walk on Earth. In this chapter, he writes how most people consider walking on water to be a miracle, but he thinks that the real miracle is when we walk along a country path, putting each foot down on the earth in mindfulness, then ‘in such moments, existence is a miraculous and mysterious reality.’
Just a few days ago, I was walking through the woodland pictured above and experienced that feeling of interconnectedness – that feeling of being a part of the natural world when we are not just observing it, but ‘of it’.
We are fortunate to live in a sparsely populated area and it’s easy to walk for miles through ancient woodland or moorland without seeing another human being. There are beautiful deserted beaches where we can meditate while walking either barefoot or in wellies! For some this solitude would be unnerving but I would feel uncomfortable in a crowd.
Life's a Beach 