The freedom of birds
When I bought a house, there was a separate garage built at the start of the garden. Initially I used the garage to store several bikes and innumerable random bits of bike components, (things which tended to lie around unused for year after year – but without ever able to really throw them away, because in principle they are quite valuable.) Anyway, after much soul-searching, I decided to convert the garage into a meditation room – out went all the oily bikes and in came a new blue carpet and insulated walls.
It is a great boon to have a room just for meditation. An additional bonus is that it makes me go outside, even in coldest winter. Often I go out to meditate at night and see a beautiful moon, it is like on the way to your meditation, you gain a brief glimpse of the Higher worlds – something untainted by the problems of this world.
Staying indoors in the comfort of a centrally heated house, you miss nature’s free show. In the morning meditation, it is a cold journey to walk into the below freezing garden and only slightly warmer meditation room but, as ample compensation, I often eye out of the corner of my eye birds flying through the garden or least chirping noisily in the background. Ideally, I would be fully concentrated on the meditation to not notice the birds, but the feeling of meditating with nature all around is a good experience. I have put up a seed feeder near the meditation window so that I can attract more birds into the garden. When I have finished a meditation, I look quietly to see if the birds are coming for the seeds – this informal bird-watching is a form of meditation in its own right.
