# 1 Rest in Openness, take two

Reading from Tuesday, April 9, 2013 yoga class

Some more thoughts on Zen Commandment #1 Resting in Openness

"We go through life pushing away what is undesirable and pulling the desirable towards us...  To be open is to be receptive to all 360 degrees of our experience, not stuck in the five or ten degrees where we're pushing or pulling.  Watch a child get a vaccination and see how he ignores the hundreds of square inches of skin surface that feel fine, perversely squeezing his whole attention into the hundredth of a square inch that's in pain.  Most of us are experts at this, fixating on our stresses and traumas, maintaining them as carefully as an album of family photos...  Being open to 360 degrees doesn't mean keeping track of everything, like some kind of fish-eye security camera.  Whenever we notice we're fixating we just let go, and then remain naturally receiptive to whatever appears.  For example, right now, take a few moments and notice all the layers of sound (the voices in the next room, the air conditioner or the radiator or the rain dripping off the leaves...).  Or notice the full range of your peripheral vision, which is surprisingly wide... or as you sit through a lecture or a business meeting, notice your tactile sense: the pressure of your butt against the chair and your feet against the floor, the varied textures of clothing against your skin, the temperature of the air on your face and hands.

As panoramic receptivity replaces limited fixation, every situation becomes limitless.  Let's say you're stuck at a red light and you find yourself gripping the wheel, straining subtly forward, fixated on trying to make the red light turn green.  Of course straining can't turn the light green a moment sooner, although it might turn your knuckles white.  So rest in openness instead.  Liberated from pushing and pulling, from trying to turn the situation into what it isn't, sit back and relax into the richness of what is--the weight of your body against the seat, the morning light glinting off glass and chrome, the chug of idling engines, and the multicolored river of car bodies, each unfolding the mysterious, shadowy figure of a driver."