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Sitting and watching, sitting and watching. The similarities between birding and Buddhist meditation are startling. In meditation, we watch our thoughts arise then let them settle. We meditate in stillness because movement stirs up thoughts like warm air adds energy to kettling birds. More thoughts inevitably arise, because thinking is what brains do, and we let those streaming thoughts settle, too. We do this over and over, year after year.
To see birds, we also sit quietly and watch. Too much movement and the birds scatter. We focus on little movements in the sky, trees, or bushes and, if there’s nothing particular to continue attending to, we soften our focus again and keep watching. Sometimes we get lucky and see something interesting, maybe a grosbeak or hummingbird. Often, no sooner do we see a bird than it flies away. We sit some more and watch every movement, listening to every sound, for the next bird.
How many of us would continue birding if at every outing we merely saw the same robins, cardinals, and chickadees that we saw the last time? How many of us would make a lifelong hobby of that? We’re all too easily misled into thinking that value is to be found in the novel at the expense of the ordinary—the rare birds at the expense of the sparrows. But Zen practice helps us discover the profound and subtle radiance of the world.
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