Sonder
this past weekend at the jikoji temple, i was gifted a rare opportunity to sit among a group of artists and psychotherapists who have devoted their lives to ceremonial tea, garden caretaking, and the crafting of beautiful open spaces. such peacefulness and creativity seemed to have found their root in zazen—a seated ritual of setting free the wandering mind, and letting thoughts be. at the heart of zazen, though, appears to be a deep resonance with the jungian self, and with the collective unconscious.
i have never quite tapped into that elegant flowingness through zazen. i have, nevertheless, tasted grassroots versions of it on my bicycle. funny enough, playing around with the boundaries of my physical reality tends to nudge the guardian of my thoughts to loosen its grip, as i reorient my attention onto feeling and inhabiting my body. it’s wonderfully eccentric: even though i can almost feel my neurons firing on all pistons, it’s my sensitivity that heightens, not my perceptiveness—plus, i don’t recall exhaustion ever creeping in.
so what do i remember from that supposedly meditative state on the bike? what brings out that inexplicable mesh of ecstasy, wonder, and urge for sharing? my post-ride gut tells me it’s the nodding with cyclists passing by the other half of the road—or should i say, sharing the coarse and the fine of the road.
what makes the nodding deeply resonant is that it arrives with spontaneous moments of sonder. recognizing that the passer-by cyclists have already traversed the terrain i am about to venture into (and vice versa) nudges me into breaking free from the microcosm i live in. the universe can be as wide open as we wish. that nodding, perhaps, comes from a tacit understanding—honoring the counterparty’s split-second presence in our story, and our ever-so-tiny mark on their journey. a beautiful equilibrium of free-floating and connectedness.
returning to solo-pedaling, after that spike of encounter, arouses a replaying of how i got here. an intimate account of the tinkering, the gritting, the longing… all the way till the road-sharing. i can see that inner screenplay crafting something timeless, as it always does. toast to that threshold-being and craftsman, with an unwavering devotion to the poetry of life.
the door jikoji opened, though, is the practice of genuinely appreciating the apparently rudimentary and the seemingly trivial. it’s the consistent returning to the heart of the self. it’s navigating through life’s cycles with the same peace, empathy, and joy. it’s sonder.