Going on holiday usually means leaving our normal routines behind. Different place, different food, different people, different timetable. This can sometimes make our usual practice more difficult, but it can also make things interesting.
During a recent holiday, I found myself exploring this in three different ways.
The first was very practical. I was sharing a hotel room, so sitting in meditation in the way I normally would was not particularly easy. I could have become frustrated because I was unable to follow my usual routine, but instead I decided to use my morning run as practice.
Every morning I went out for about thirty minutes. Rather than thinking of this as a substitute for meditation, I simply tried to pay attention to what I was doing. When running, running. Feeling my feet touching the ground, noticing the breath, the movement of the body and the road ahead.
Of course, thoughts appeared. Plans, memories and observations about the holiday came and went. The mind did what the mind does. When I noticed that I had disappeared into a story, I could simply return to running.
The second thing I noticed was comparison. Holidays provide endless opportunities for comparing one experience with another. This meal is not as good as the one we had yesterday. This view is more beautiful than the previous one. This person is not as friendly as somebody we met earlier.
There is nothing particularly wrong with comparing things. It is something the mind naturally does, and sometimes comparison is useful. But it was interesting to notice how quickly it happened and how easily the comparison began to replace the experience itself.
Am I eating this meal, or am I eating the comparison with yesterday’s meal? Am I looking at this view, or am I deciding whether it is better or worse than another one?
Again, there was nothing I particularly needed to do about it. I could simply notice the comparison and return to what was actually happening.
The third opportunity for practice arrived during the final half-day of the holiday, when I started feeling unwell.
I felt weak and disappointed. This was the end of the holiday and I did not want to spend it feeling like that. Alongside the physical discomfort there was another reaction: I wanted the situation to be different.
Why now? Why today? Why couldn’t this have happened after I got home?
The body felt weak, and the mind began adding its own commentary.
Once again, there was something interesting to observe. The physical sensations were already there. Fighting the fact that they were there did not make them disappear.
So I tried to listen to what my body was telling me.
And mostly, it was telling me to sleep.
So I slept.
There was nothing particularly profound about it. I did not need to turn feeling unwell into a great spiritual lesson. I was tired and weak, my body needed rest, and I rested.
Looking back, these three experiences became simple examples of how practice can continue when our usual routine disappears.
I could not sit as I normally did, so I ran.
I noticed the mind comparing one experience with another, so I became curious about the comparisons.
I became unwell, noticed my resistance to the situation, and eventually listened to the body and rested.
None of this required special conditions.
Perhaps this is one of the useful things about taking practice into everyday life. We do not have to wait until we are sitting on a cushion or everything around us is arranged perfectly.
Sometimes we run.
Sometimes we compare.
Sometimes we feel terrible and go to sleep.
And all of it can give us something to notice.
