Meditation: Listen for how far the noise travels

 

When the bell rings, we often don't realize it but the noise resonates out from the bell and travels to your ear.  We cannot tell how far that noise travels - out the window? into the hall? to the rooms next door or above and below us?  This is like the noise we create.  What we do in the world matters.  We are all participants in society.  But often we don't realize or don't see how far our influence goes.  

From Rumi,

Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.

Can you hear the bell ringing even after it stops making noise? How far and how long does it travel?

Traveling Noise, Gratitude and Sociological Mindfulness

Another way to meditate on how far noise travels is through what the NYT's Melissa Kirsch calls a chain of gratitude,

Consider the gratitude journal, in which you write three things each day that you’re grateful for. It’s similar to the gratitude jar: Each time you think of something worth appreciating, you write it on a slip of paper and drop it in, to be read at the end of the year.

I will think of something small — say, this weird little deck of “wisdom cards” that I draw from each morning as a sort of daily fortune cookie. Then I think about how my friend Melanie gave me the deck and how generous and playful she is, and how lucky I am to know her. But I wouldn’t know her if I hadn’t taught creative writing with her in a summer program in the 1990s. I wouldn’t have had that job if my friend Alden hadn’t recommended me for it, and I wouldn’t know Alden if I hadn’t gone to graduate school with her, and I wouldn’t have gone to graduate school without the encouragement of my undergraduate writing professor, and I wouldn’t have taken her class if not for … you get the picture.

It’s almost a game, tracing the present-day gratitude back through all the causes and conditions that gave rise to it. It’s also immensely satisfying, and mystifying — look how many things had to transpire in order to bring this deck of cards into my life. Simple gratitude is focused on a one-to-one relationship: These cards make me happy. Thinking through this circuit of prerequisites amplifies the gratitude, scales it, brings me into contact with the multiple interdependent factors necessary to bring these cards into my life.