By Steven Smith
A Talk at a September 1998 Mindfulness Retreat, Fetzer Institute, Kalamazoo, Michigan

One of the very profound understandings that unfold in mindfulness practice, through direct connection with our experience, is the understanding of change; that all of life is nothing but change.

We may learn how to cope with changing experience, changing circumstances. But coping is often not as deep as the empowerment and liberation we truly seek. Coping is not the same as unqualified and unconditional peace, which is not dependent on external circumstance and which arises precisely because of our ability to see that there is only change. So we practice mindfulness to make our minds wide, like a valley.

Being born and raised in the Hawaiian Islands, I have been deeply inspired and spiritually shaped by the immense valleys flowing dramatically from the sea to mountain summit. Bioregional land divisions in ancient Hawai'i, known as ahupua'a, were often bordered by ocean, streams, gulches, valleys. They ran from shore to mountain ridge rich in life-sustaining biota. Ancient Hawaiians living within an ahupua'a were caretakers of the abundant ocean and freshwater stream resources, lowland crops such as sweet potatoes, coconut, banana and irrigated taro terraces. Hala trees provided kapa cloth and thatch, and from milo and kou trees were crafted calabashes, cups and platters. Up the valleys were lush upland gardens, and rising to cloud-line slopes were koa tree forests for canoes, mamane for tools and toys, ohi'a for house posts, spears and gunwales of canoes. Highland herbs and shrubs such as the ohelo berry, sacred to the goddess Pele topped off the cornucopia of hunting and gathering resources. Standing before the serene expanse of a valley ahupua'a, a profound sense of interconnectedness and oneness with the land arises. One stands before the whole world on this island universe.

In the seventies and eighties, between practicing meditation in Burma and teaching retreats, I spent time exploring the rural reaches of the Hawaiian Islands with an archaeologist friend. I came to deeply appreciate and respect the extraordinary knowledge of the land and sea of ancient Polynesians. Shaman-like navigators guided the first people here. Such skills of the sea were nearly lost, when in the late sixties a resurgence of interest was seeded in Micronesia. A man named Mau Piailug, who learned the ways of ancient navigation from his ancestors, appeared on the Polynesian renaissance horizon. He had the old knowledge of how to sail without instruments through the vast blue wilderness of the Pacific, the largest wilderness on the planet. He could access knowledge of how to be in the midst of all things with a balanced mind, using all the senses, including intuition. So through him, Hawaiians began to renew the great art of non-instrument navigation and provide a better mapping of the great Polynesian migrations. In 1976 Hawaiians sailed the first reconstructed traditional double-hulled sailing canoe in 600 years from Hawaii down to the Marquesas Islands and back. They have continued to sail this way on voyages of rediscovery, both on the great seas and further, an inner journey.

One of the great navigation students of our time is a Hawaiian man, Nainoa Thompson. Nainoa has made the study and understanding of the ancient navigators, the migration of Polynesians and environmental education a significant part of his life. He has studied extensively with the navigator Mau Piailug. It is hard to comprehend how they do this, but there are parallels with the modern concept of chaos theory, the understanding that behind turbulent systems there are patterns, natural rhythms to the universe. This is what these ancient shaman-navigators discerned, because they were in the midst of nothing but change, only change; massive, turbulent systems of cloud formations, storm systems, ocean swells, currents, and wind patterns. They learned the language of the elements, which provided them a map of where they were in the midst of change. Attuned to and one with the naked elements of nature, they sailed for centuries somewhere between their homelands and the extraordinary discoveries of new islands in the sea.

These ancient metaphors are not extinct by any means, literally or figuratively, but have powerful modern applications. They teach us how to navigate through the storms of life. These navigators saw the stars in a unique way, as cycles, points of light in migration across the cosmos from east to west, mirrored in the map of the mind. The starry sky is not experienced conceptually as "out there" or "up there;" the attuned navigator experiences his or her visual field as right here, as an extension of mind. The wayfarer of the sea is not separate from the universe, rather at one with it and in a seamless dynamic interconnectedness with it.

When the old navigators couldn't see the current of stars for the storms, they would rely on their perception of other currents; cloud currents, wind currents, sea currents. The whole world is a flow of currents. The great Pacific Ocean is nothing but changing currents, prevailing and contra-currents. Masking the currents is a seeming chaos of waves. A dominant ocean swell generated from storms and trade winds thousands of miles distant can be masked by surface waves created by local variable wind conditions. The skilled navigator can read by the shape of the swell the nature, direction and strength of the current beneath it. There can be a half dozen simultaneous, multidirectional waves and swells creating a chaotic system which these navigators read as a language of symmetry and balance, as the pattern or the story of that seascape. Seaweed flowing down current, floating driftwood carried along by a wind current, were clear direction finders for land.

A "shadow" pattern left by an ocean swell wrapping aroud an island is imprinted with a map of the island's location. Thermal air currents rising above an island creates a particular kind of cloud pack. Sun and moon light bouncing off island lagoons and green forests reflecting on the belly of clouds are a compass to a distant island. It is said that some wizard navigators could tell by the taste and scent of the sea and the feel of the current what island group they were near. Think of the possibility of navigating through life by attuning to our own senses, the currents of our life.

Nainoa once shared with me his experience of the first time he was doing a solo navigation. He and his crew were caught in a severe storm. The navigator is the guiding light of the sailing canoe. His presence, his strength, and his knowledge are the source of inspiration, energy, and dedication for the crew. Nainoa said that, lost in this storm, in the darkness of night, he was unable to see the moon, the cycles of stars, of clouds, or sense the currents. It was all wildness and chaos. He could not discern the language of these mixed, wild currents. He could only turn within. All he had now was his intuition. He tried hard to feel where he was, where the moon was.

What Hawaiians call piko or center of being is located at the navel. It is here one finds focus, finds his or her sense of place. The navigator can locate the canoe at the piko and find strength and direction. One who attunes mindfully to the silence within can "see" and understand where they are and which direction they need to go.

Nainoa on his first solo was trying, struggling, but he was unable to connect with his intuitive knowledge, his center of being. He felt frustrated and entrapped, that he was letting his crew down. They were wearing wet weather gear that kept them dry but not warm. He said that as he kept trying to figure out where he was, he just came to the end of his strength, and, finally exhausted, he went back to the stern of the canoe. He propped his elbows up on the gunnel and put up the hood of his wet weather gear, so that his crew couldn't see him. He held himself up to sustain the presence and inspiration, but inside he collapsed. His eyes closed. He said he completely let go of trying to know anything. "And then," he said, "I don't know how this happened, all of a sudden, I just knew." The young navigator felt right in the center of things, right in the center of this storm. And he knew where the moon was. Sure, sudden and clear this knowledge arose from his depths. From his intuitive knowledge of the canoe's celestial-oceanic position, he guided their course in the correct direction.

Just completely letting go and trusting--this is a great, generous part of our practice. It comes out of mindfulness, being able to be in the midst of what is happening. This is a way to be with change, not to avoid it. The opposite is the reactive mind, grasping to "get it," grasping to know, grasping to have. Or, the opposite, pushing away, avoiding, rejecting, denying. We practice to learn this ability to be right in the center of things, in a place of calm, a place of strength like these ancient navigators. We all have the capacity to access timeless wisdom, the indigenous mind that resides within us. We discover a powerful sense of place, the center of our being. It is just long forgotten, unpracticed, unexercised. This is the place we long to live from, not from the brain or intellect.

When we start to develop mindfulness, we are able to extend the sense of our domain beyond the seeming limitations of our body, of our immediate space. Try to understand that for most of human history, we have lived in larger spaces, like the ahupua’a, wide valleys that occupy great physical space. We have the capacity to hear, see, smell, and taste and to know intuitively. We lived as communities. And it has been only a very short time that we have cut ourselves off from that, that we have lived in little separate boxes and have a very narrow sense of our mission and ourselves. We all still long for that connection. We all still yearn to have that more expansive sense of belonging and anchoring, spaciousness and connectedness.

It is not that difficult to create. In the meditation retreats, we create a sacred space, and the longer we abide in it, the more those old powerful urges and natural states of being emerge in us. And we begin to understand the nature of things and of change on a refined and profound level.

Everything is in continuous change. Not for a moment does the body or mind stay the same. The velocity with which things appear and disappear gives the illusion of permanence and continuity, but really it is all breaking up moment to moment. When we are quiet enough to see, feel, and hear the real universe, we experience this change. The direct, intuitive understanding of this ever-changing, process nature of life gradually loosens our grasping to life and circumstance; one feels a profound sense of release and deep interconnectedness with the universe. Such understanding reveals the truth of things and with it comes clarity of mind, and compassion of heart. There is nothing to do. This is what happens in moments where we see things as they are. When we connect deeply with the momentary nature of all things, we expand our capacity to deal with changing circumstances in our lives.

Intellectually, we know the conditions of change--the earth moving around the sun, the seasons, day and night. But when we look closely and glimpse the ephemeral nature of momentary change, then we expand our capacity for receiving sudden, unexpected change in our lives and our ability to be in the midst of that, not be swept away by it, not reactive, not be caught by it. In fact, we learn to use the force of change as a launching force--a trajectory toward a new, unknown direction or being right where we are, but in a new marvelously mysterious way. We cultivate a readiness for the unknown.