Excerpted from Joel & Michelle Levey’s books:
The Fine Arts of Relaxation, Concentration, & Meditation
Luminous Mind: Meditation & Mind Fitness
Wisdom at Work  

“The tower is as wide and spacious as the sky itself…. And within this tower, spacious and exquisitely ornamented, there are hundreds of thousands…of towers, each one of which is as exquisitely ornamented as the main tower itself and as spacious as the sky. And all of the towers, beyond calculation in number, stand not at all in one another’s way, each preserves its individual existence in perfect harmony with all the rest;…there is a state of perfect intermingling and yet of perfect orderliness…the young pilgrim sees himself in all the towers as well as in each single tower where all is contained in one and each contains all.” Avatamsaka Sutra

The following sequence of images and short meditations invite you to bring a more creative mind to transforming the many ordinary activities of daily life.

We once spent some time with a Native American teacher named Thundercloud who taught us a beautiful water medicine prayer-blessing. When you drink water, you pray, “May this water as it flows through me become medicine, and strengthen the earth, and purify, and bring food for people, and renew the people.” Can you imagine how it would change your life if at least sometimes during the day when you turned on the faucet, drank water, or urinated you were to remember this prayer?

The classic practices of the lojung or “thought transformation” teachings in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition also offer many creative meditations to transform every ordinary act into a gesture of creative universal compassion. For example: You can drink a cup of water to quench your thirst; or you can drink a cup of water and transform it with a prayer and a creative meditation into a bowl of healing nectar; or you can drink a cup of water with the prayer and motivation that by drinking this water, and quenching your thirst, may the thirst of all beings be quenched and fulfilled by this simple act.

You can walk out a door mindlessly. You can walk out a door mindfully. You can walk out a door with the wish, prayer, affirmation, and visualization that as you walk out that door you lead all beings from darkness into light, from limitation into the boundless space of infinite freedom and potential. When you close the door, the possibility of returning to ignorance and delusion is sealed forever, for all beings. Similarly, as you come in from outside, you can do it mindlessly, mindfully, or as a gesture and affirmation of leading people from being lost in the confusion of their outer lives into the deep, clear, lucid, loving presence of their innermost being.

You can sweep the walk or wash the windows with disdain for all the dirt and debris, or you can sweep and clean as though you were actually purifying and polishing you mind and bringing forth the unobstructed clarity and purity of your innermost being.

Though such meditations may or may not actually have an outward effect on the world, they are powerful for opening and transforming your own mind and brain, making them more fit instruments to hold the dazzling reality of the potential within creation. They can also open your heart, burst the bubble of your own implosive self-centeredness and help you to live in a more loving, caring, and compassionate way. They can help you awaken a sincere wish in your heart that your life will in some small way reduce suffering and be helpful and comforting for others.

Once, when we were walking with Thich Nhat Hanh, he said, “Every mindful step you take you I take with you.” Imagine that as you walk you hold the hand of a beloved teacher’s hand. As you do, envision them holding the hands of their teachers who hold the hands of their teachers who hold the hands of their teachers. Draw strength and inspiration by affirming this deep connection.

When you say a prayer, chant a mantra, or do a ritual, can you imagine and affirm that you join in spirit with all those who have ever recited that prayer or chanted that mantra or performed that ritual throughout time ? As you do these things, you receive the blessings and the inspirations from them all into yourself while at the same time radiating and redistributing and affirming those blessings through you to all beings. As you light the Shabbat candles on Friday night, can you feel the spirit and the blessings of all your mothers and grandmothers? As you receive Holy Communion, you bring alive and affirm your spiritual solidarity with countless people throughout time in the one body of Christ. As you watch the sunrise and welcome a new day, can you imagine looking out through the eyes of countless people, throughout the ages, marveling with gratitude at the Great Mystery that continually renews and sustains your life?

The great Avatamsaka Sutra, the “Flower Ornament Sutra,” is perhaps the world’s most elaborate text for “seeding” creative meditations. It offers many mind-expanding images of the nature of the fully enlightened mind, including the following description of the ten wisdoms of a bodhisattva, a being who is committed to fully awakening to their True Nature and potential in order to help all beings to awaken as well. At a certain stage in such a being’s spiritual evolution, they are able to:

Bring all beings’ bodies into one body, and one body into all beings’ bodies;

to bring all inconceivable aeons into one moment, and one moment into all aeons;

to bring sacred things into one thing and one sacred thing into all things;

to bring an inconceivable number of places into one place, and to bring one place into an inconceivable number of places…

to make all thoughts into one thought, and one thought into all thoughts;

to bring all voices and languages into one voice and language, and one voice and language into all voices and languages;

to bring the past-present-future into one time, and one time into the past-present-future.

Remember, your motivation, creative vision of possibilities, and prayer will determine the actual effect of your meditation. Every action of your life provides an opportunity for awakening.