I have been trying to practice what Buddhist philosopher Stephen Batchelor calls The Art of Solitude–that is, the art of being with yourself, attentive to your inner life and faithful to your own heart, whether you are by yourself or with others. It is a challenging practice.
Last night, for example, I was taking a meditative walk around Windsor Terrace, my Brooklyn neighborhood, and I was struggling mightily. I wanted to be present to the moment, and in the place, that I was experiencing, but my mind-heart kept rushing to past situations that upset me. I kept trying to bring my body-mind back to the present, but my mind-heart kept fleeing towards turmoil.
It wasn’t my meditative practice, but the moon, that brought me out of the struggle. As I was walking southeast, having a full-blown quarrel with ghosts in my mind, the nearly full moon broke through the veil of clouds that had been shrouding it. It had a bluish halo around it. The sight was so sublime that I stopped walking, paused my thinking-feeling, and contemplated the beautiful gift of Natura Naturans. The turmoil ended. The grace of the present moment overtook me.
This evening I was much calmer, but I witnessed beauty just as sublime. I had swum a steady, strong two-thousand meters in the afternoon, while the sun illuminated the pool on campus. That had been wonderful, and my body-mind felt good; my heart-mind, collected and grateful. I had biked to and from campus, and the rides has been lovely in the late-summer weather.
So by the time I walked to the shore of Prospect Lake at sunset, my solitary peace, so shaken over the last few days, had been restored.
There I stood, with my senses attuned to the environment, while I waited for the moonrise. A flock of geese took off from the water, honking and forming a V to fly away. A single barn swallow danced in the air. Swans and mallards swam quietly. As darkness arrived, the swallow left and insect-hunting bats arrived, flying over my head.
The glow of the moon shone over the tree tops on the opposite shore. It grew ever more resplendent. And then the full moon rose, slowly, over the canopy, and crawled up the sky. A huge, round, shinning moon. Luna bella.
As the moon showed its full, lovely face, everything grew even quieter–the swans, the mallards, the people. Only the crickets and frogs kept singing, as if welcoming their nightly queen. I watched her, in solitary stillness, for well over an hour. I only left when a blue heron flew across the lake, strangely squawking, as if telling me to go home and be grateful.
As I write this, the tranquil joy of witnessing tonight’s blue moon rising is still pulsating through my body-mind-heart.
Daniel G. Campos 