Hail Storms as Meditative Practice — Time’s Inevitable Blast of Change

© 2012 Peter Free

 

08 June 21012

 

 

Introduction — developing equanimity requires paying attention to change

 

Awareness is a requirement for well-founded spiritual development.

 

Awareness reminds us of time’s constant drip — while, at the same time, hinting at an underlying One-ness that feels (but probably is not) eternal.

 

In measuring Change’s emotional effect on us, we learn to accept the necessity of loss.

 

Hence, the spiritual utility of closely witnessed hail storms.

 

 

Hail’s contribution to a sense of the irrevocability of change

 

Last night, during a sequence of tornado warnings, a hail storm delivered golf-ball sized hail to our densely housed military neighborhood.

 

The storms advanced in two waves.  The first built to large grape-sized hail, mixed with rain.  After half an hour of varying intensities the turbulence passed.  I was moderately certain that our roof, pickup truck, and neighbors' property had made it through without significant damage.

 

Relief at expenses avoided.

 

Roughly half an hour later, the second storm came through.  It started innocently enough with double-pea size hail.  But paying attention to the cacophony of varied sounds, I began to notice some genuinely authoritative ones.

 

Drumming crescendos on roof and pickup were sporadically punctuated with by much louder wood box booms, glass window strikes, and metallic plonks that let us know that damage of some kind was likely being done.  Slightly larger than golf ball-sized hail was beginning to land on the ground.

 

Dents, shingle damage, and plant shreddings were being measured out by each hail strike.

 

Change.

 

 

The utility of focusing on individual hail strikes

 

Meditative utility lies in the way that hail divides time into discrete sections.

 

The before and after each impact — from undamaged to “injured” in an instant.  And nothing to be done that could prevent this flow of altered conditions.

 

Meditated hail is practice for Life’s larger pummelings.

 

 

The moral? — Significant dents in my truck’s body differentiate today from yesterday

 

Trivial on the spectrum of loss with which most people have to deal.   But good practice.

 

Paying attention to incoming and ebbing moments accustoms us to loss.  And to the utility of gratitude and relationship.

 

Even so routine an event as hail can focus our perception and our psyche’s response to Life’s tossed sea.

 

Awareness is painful and freeing at the same time.