by Richard
Our Zen practice includes kinhin, a slow walking meditation followed by fast walking. Not all groups include the fast walking, but I think there’s a practical reason for it, as it helps in loosening joints and legs after long periods of sitting.
Lately, I’ve come to appreciate fast walking as a meditation. Walking in circles seems to mirror the day-to-day hurriedness of life between work and home, and from task to task.
Each day brings many complications: meetings one after the other, emails, opinions flying about, problems to solve. On the way home are announcements of cancelled trains, and crowds all over the platform. After arriving home, there are children to help, dinners to cook and dishes to wash.
Next morning the clock radio wakes to a classical music station, and although it promises a “slow start to the day”, the 6am news bulletin arrives with a change in tone and slight urgency in the announcer’s voice. Even the peacefulness in sitting can be disturbed- sometimes all the birds across the district decide to congregate for a chatter in their “Annual General Meeting” in the tree by the window.
In our practice we take time to stop, step away from endless distractions, and observe. In slow walking, we are attentive to breath, steps, and sound. But life is rarely quiet, and an important emphasis in our Ordinary Mind Zen school is bringing the practice into daily life. In fast walking, we also have the same watchfulness on breath, steps, and sound.
At our recent group discussion, we noted that the mind is accustomed to a natural walking pace. In being slow our minds might be more settled, and in being fast our minds might be more active, but practice is about steadying our awareness in both. In particular, during fast walking I have found that slow breathing makes it possible to focus on one thing at a time.
On Thursday evenings after work, while walking through the maze of narrow laneways heading towards Flinders Street Station, I can return to the breath, steps and sounds. Crowds of office workers are streaming out onto footpaths, trams are clanging, music and laughter are floating out of bars and restaurants, and I can catch fragments of conversations on the street. There is a peacefulness within the commotion: watching the breath, stepping forward one foot at a time, being immersed in the noise and chaos.
In his book Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down, the Korean monk Haenim Sunim captures some of these themes: “The world has never complained about how busy it is …When your mind rests, the world also rests”.
Life is busy, but we don’t have to be swept up in urgency: there’s a great difference between fast walking and rushing. It lies in how we approach each moment, and how we find presence in each step.