Chapter 8. of High Altitude Meditation
Chapters on line: Description and Table of Contents / Introductory Notes / 1: Evolving Motives / 8: Ordinary
I was sitting with my mother in the bedroom of a country hospital. Fields were visible outside the window. But I was gazing at my mom stretched out unconscious with her torso raised a bit. One of my brothers was in a chair by her feet on the opposite side.
Her breathing was so shallow I could barely detect it. But I could see the pulse at her temple next to me. I was quietly watching it.
Then something changed. I can’t say what. One moment I was looking at my mother. The next moment I was looking at a corpse. Physically she looked the same. But it felt utterly different.
Her pulse continued, nevertheless. Then stopped.
A few minutes later it started again. Then it stopped again.
And that was it. It never restarted.
I walked around the bed. My brother and I hugged. Then I went back to my chair. “What do we do now?” he asked.
I shrugged. I was not indifferent. But our mom had just died. What could we do?
A nurse came into the room and lifted my mom’s arm to take her pulse.
“She’s gone,” I said.
The nurse looked at me motionlessly. Her eyes began to tear. “I’ll leave you alone with her,” she said. “And I’ll let the doctor know.” She quietly left.
“Bless her,” I thought.
I was surprised by how ordinary the moment of her death seemed. Perhaps I expected a long boat of Vikings to row up the hall, lift and lay her body ceremonially into the boat, and then row off into the horizon. Or if not that, at least a distant roll of thunder. Or the birth of a grandchild. Or a literary award for one of her plays.
But it did not seem special at all. An image arose of my mother walking a path through a field. Life had dropped her on that path sixty-three years earlier. She didn’t start in a special place. And now life had left her at no place in particular. But she was gone.
A few weeks later at her memorial service, her older sister — my aunt — told me that my mom had been the Valedictorian of her college class, the top student. I had never known that. She had just been my mom. Apparently, it had not occurred to her to mention it to me.
I pictured her walking up to a podium to receive that award. It must have been a special moment. But was it? It was unique, to be sure. But every moment is unique. By itself, that doesn’t make it special.
I realized I had quietly carried a misunderstanding. I thought life must start someplace extraordinary and end someplace exceptional when, in fact, it begins and ends in ordinary moments. We may reach a place that seems special. But it usually doesn’t stop there. It just goes on. Then it ends. Life force evaporates at no place in particular.
I confess that I used to think spiritual practice would take me some place special or make me something extraordinary. Certainly meditation had taken me places that I had not imagined possible. But lack of imagination is nothing to brag about.
As my meditation gets more refined, it seems more ordinary: simple, comfortable, and homelike. The buzz fades and I find myself smiling for no particular reason. I think, “How did I miss this before?”
What about this moment? Can we welcome it? Can we let it be as it is? Can we welcome the subtleties of how we feel about ourselves and those around us? Can we expand and spread out until we feel part of everything and everything feels part of us?
Then perhaps you and I essentially become one and the same in our ordinary, vast home.
Welcome what is.
Let it be as it is.
Surrender into the expanse.
______________________________
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
– T.S. Eliot (“Little Gidding”)
Copyright 2025 by Doug Kraft
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How to cite this document
(a suggested style): "High Altitude Meditation: A Practical Guide to Advanced Buddhist Practice,
8. Ordinary, by Doug Kraft, www.easingawake.com/?p=HighAltitudeOrdinary."