Maria, my wife, and I took a ride to a forest service area near Sunset Crater and Wupatki National Monument, for a short hike and period of outdoor meditation. On the way there we passed a dog that was dead and on the side of the road, having been hit by a car. It was being eaten by another dog, a chilling scene. We drove past the lava fields to a place where the pine trees were bent and gnarled, in large part because of the frequent strong wind. The trees also showed evidence of lightning strikes and the resulting fires.
When I began meditating, I was communicating to the trees an acknowledgment of how hard their life was. What I got back, loud and clear, was that “it is what it is” and that “comparisons are useless”. As it says in the poem “Desiderata” by Max Ehermann, it is best not to use comparison and just peacefully accept what is.
