Waking Down

The Philosopher with an Open Book or, The Philosopher in Meditation

by

Salomon Koninck

Photo Credit:  Michael Kroth, The Louvre, Paris, France, September 8, 2022

Every book I have read by Gunilla Norris touches me. Her short essays within richly describe the meaning of what we would consider to be ordinary, daily events. Her observations of simple events, while elegantly and accessibly stated, capture the depth of our human experience. Her essay, Waking Up, is an example.

Waking up, she wrote, is to be present, aware, and in the here and now. “To be alive this very second in whatever capacity is a miracle we often ignore,” she said, and for those of us who are older, “It is urgent to awaken in every sense of the word”.  She referenced Rabbi Abraham Heschel’s, “Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy”.

She reinforces this idea by saying, “I believe that when we awaken this way, we awaken into reverence and the recognition that everything around us is holy in some way. With awakened eyes, even an ordinary day can be entered with renewed presence.”

It is tempting, when writing about her essays, to use quotations from every paragraph. They are all gems. To make this point, I have only to share the last two sentences in Waking Up. “A day can be tasked, touched and felt, heard, seen, and smelled. To awaken this way is to sense and reverence with all our faculties the wonder of simply being.”

Speaking of slender while at the same time deeply meaningful writing, once I tried to memorize all 49 of the Gathas in Thich Nhat Hanh’s (Thầy, to his followers) book, Present Moment, Wonderful Moment: Mindfulness Verses for Daily Living. “Gathas,” he said, “are short verses which we can recite during our daily activities to help us dwell in mindfulness.” In his book, he shares Verses for Starting the day, such as Taking the First Step of the Day and Brushing Your Teeth; Verses for Meditation, such as Lighting a Candle and Following Your Breath; Verses for Eating Mindfully, such as Serving Food and Washing the Dishes; and Verses for Other Daily Activities, such as Walking Meditation and Watering the Garden. Each is worth memorizing, marbling it over time into who we are, and practicing its guidance through the day.

I didn’t get that far.

I wrote all 49 of these in my journal, and each week I would try to memorize one of them. These are very short, usually just three or four sentences. I learned several Gathas before something pulled my peripatetic attention away.

Too bad, these are all worth practicing.

Thầy's first Gatha is titled Waking Up.

Waking up this morning, I smile.

Twenty-four brand new hours are before me.

I vow to live fully in each moment

And to look at all things with eyes of compassion.

Isn’t this a marvelous way to start each day? This Gatha, like Gunilla Norris’ discussion of waking up, points to presence, which is to fully experience this moment, this hour, this day. This moment. Abundantly. Whole-heartedly. Whole-body-edly. Whole-mindedly. Whole-soul-edly.  Attentively and Intentfully. Comprehensively. This moment.

Which is why I wonder if the idea of waking down describes, complementarily,  this desirable experience of presence. Waking is a natural part of our daily sleeping-waking cycle. Each morning it involves physically getting up, out of bed, and getting along with the day. Open to new adventures. Ready for planned and unplanned activities. Up, up, and away.

Waking down suggests deepening, becoming more awake to depth in understanding and aware of the great unknown. Waking down is ritual, tradition, wisdom, discipline – not set, as in cement, but as a living, thickening, saturating, immersing, resonating practice of vigilance. Our continuing vigil for depth.

Unlike the physical act of waking up, waking down is just a metaphor. It’s a way of considering becoming more aware of and comfortable with down. Down with depth.  To paraphrase Thầy:

Waking down this morning, I breathe deeply.

The fullness of time is within me and surrounds me

I vow to descend more utterly into the Great Mystery of this experience

And to look at everything I encounter as an invitation for deepening.

(Laughing) Something like that.

Robust simplicity. Waking up while waking down. 

It's just a bunch of words which really mean breathe in, breathe out. Experience presence, and deeply. Up, down, and vastly centered.

Sources/Resources

Nhất, H. n. (1990). Present moment, wonderful moment: mindfulness verses for daily living. Parallax Press.

Norris, G. (2022). The light of evening: meditations on growing in old age. Twenty-Third Publications. 

Check out books by Gunilla Norris here.