Author: Cathy Huyghe
A few weeks ago, I participated in my first Taoist-style meditation. This meditation was led by my friend Grace. Grace was my mentee at one point, but he has now emerged as my teacher.
Grace speaks to me about abundance and about leaving the door open for abundance to flow in unhindered. She teaches about the Inner Smile (explained here), which served as the template for Taoist meditation in class a few weeks ago. For the first time in my 20-odd years of meditation practice, Grace encouraged her class (and me) to go beyond theory to feel the emotional impact that pleasure has on our internal organs. In fact, she asked, “What is it like to feel pleasure in your liver?” What about your spleen? What about the pancreas? your heart? It was a navigation within us, guided by joy.
To be honest, at that moment I had no idea how it felt. My first tentative guess felt anatomically incorrect at best. But I wanted to know, and I wanted to try again and learn by listening carefully once again to the prompts provided by someone with a much deeper understanding than me. It was an impactful kind of meditation, and one I wished I had experienced more often in my life.
This brings me back to another of Grace’s favorite teachings, and another of my favorite studies: The Beginner’s Mind. (This is an explanation from the Zen Buddhist tradition.) This idea also appears in several other teachings, including the following quote by Marcel Proust: “The only true journey would be not to travel through a hundred different lands with the same eyes.” But to see the same land through a hundred different eyes. ”
See things you’ve seen before in new ways. Do something you’ve done before, but do it differently.
This is a fascinating idea and I definitely recommend it. I have been following this trend through my daily life for the past few weeks. At this point, our routines are incredibly established, so we can confidently say that seeing and doing something “new” requires effort. (I’m sure you’ve seen the statistics about how our daily habits, from brushing our teeth to commuting, are performed thousands or even hundreds of times.)
How can we apply this to wine? And what about our work with wine?
How can we “do” wine tasting? Let’s think about other wine work that we and our colleagues do and see. How can you see this work in Beginner’sMind? You’ve probably performed the task hundreds, if not thousands, of times by now. But what if you approached your next glass or your next task with a beginner’s mind? For example, what if you taught someone to taste wine the way you wish they had taught you when you started? What would happen if you controlled your internal organs according to your enjoyment of wine? What would you see differently?
I would love to know. What tasks can you perform differently with a beginner’s mind? What would happen if you did so?
i will try. Bonus points if you smile internally.
Namaste,
kathy
