Walking on Middle Way

by Nancy Barnes

Voices from the Space2Meditate Community

Slow down. Look around. One step at a time. Maybe that’s the heart of what happened to me on Middle Way. That’s the name of the wooden path across the vast grassy meadow at the Won Dharma Center. I crossed that expanse many times each day on the retreat. It takes perhaps four minutes of brisk walking -- but wait, slow down, one step at a time. Why was I rushing?

The lovely curving path, the boards perfectly cut to hold the curves, is bordered with small clumps of sunshine yellow blossoms. The hundreds of yellow clusters along Middle Way nestled into lush green, blades of the greenest grass. Bending down, my face close to the earth, I could see that each tiny blossom, smaller than my fingernail, had a bulb-like pouch under the petals. Orchid-like. What were they? Wildflowers, the splashes of color in the woods and fields of my childhood, are familiar to me. These, I did not know.

Were they related to lady’s slippers? Every Spring, when I was small, we would be about to get in the car, heading back to our lives in the city, when my mother would insist that we had to wait, walk across the hay field above the old house and into the woods. No path, no markers, huge oaks arching overhead, brambles reaching for our legs. Did she even know where she was going? After some minutes she would stop abruptly, be still, then walk up to a stand of ferns. She would pull them gently aside and reveal a patch of lady’s slippers, glowing yellow, with delicate dark markings inside each plump yellow pouch. The size of my thumb. How did she know?

The details of practice were often dominant on the retreat: trying to get the cushions adjusted just so, or constantly putting on and taking off my sneakers. Sandals were easier, quicker, there are no laces to tie. But then they felt slippery crossing Middle Way -- and what does it matter, that tying the laces takes a couple of minutes each time? The details of practice have had direct transmutations: my daily life feels different now.

Walking meditation often meant looking down, or at least it did for me. One day I was alone, my feet thumping quietly on the wood of Middle Way, passing the yellow flowers. The air was thick with water that morning, not rain but a gentle thin mist, the way I imagine it would be to walk into a cloud. I felt myself inside the elements. Lifting my head, my eyes shifted to the distance: a low line of mountains, a grayish-purple presence.

Without a thought, without any conscious shift in my mind, my feet striding along, I was in San Cristobal, a sparkling little city in the mountains in the south of Mexico where I lived for a time, long ago. Mists rise from the deep valleys there, settling around the blue-green hills; indigenous communities believe that those mists cloak and hold their souls, keeping them safe. That too was a time of transition and deep changes for me. I may never travel there again, yet the mists in the Highlands were alive in my mind – as I walked to breakfast, greeting the yellow flowers in Claverack, New York.

I walked Middle Way many times, going to the Meditation Hall, returning to where I slept. On one of the walks my eyes were running along the edges of the boardwalk, soaking up the patches of sunshine in the thick green. Suddenly I stopped. I leaned over, ever so slowly, and stretched out one hand. There it was -- I hadn’t imagined it. There, nestled among spongey little hillocks of brilliant yellow, was a single different-looking plant. Its blossoms were red, perhaps dark pink, and star shaped with five petal-points. A single, reddish-pink flower.

How did it come to be there? What was it doing there?

Later, traveling on Middle Way, I caught myself grinning, anticipating how it would be to see the red flower again. One by one, I paused at the clusters of yellow, searching. No luck. I couldn’t find it. Oh well, I told myself, another time. The next day I was determined to see it again. I counted off the solar lamps that flanked the path, sure that it was somewhere in the stretch of three lamps leading to the meditation hall. Counting my steps, pausing, advancing then backtracking, I realized I must have missed it again. No luck. I considered the six elements that composed this remarkable experience, especially Space – where was the red flower? Lost to me. Aware of my sadness, I told myself it didn’t matter. Why did it matter to me, whether I found it again or not?

On the fifth day, as we were deep in noble silence, I found myself walking behind someone else on Middle Way. I slowed down, not wanting to crowd the person, but he had stopped. He peered down, then looked up at me. He pointed down at the thick green grass, the mounds of yellow blossoms, shaking his head and smiling.

There it was: the red flower. We stood together for a moment, delighted.