If you sit with plants long enough, you might notice something: they reach for the light in a very different way to how humans reach for things.
The inner dynamic of the living thing does not appear to strain or track its progress.
Instead, a plant turns towards the sun through a biological, cellular process called phototropism.
It’s a response that requires no effort and no intention. The plant adjusts its orientation based on its needs.
Sit with a plant for an extended period, and something in you wants to slow down. Heart entrainment is the closest I can come to describing it.
You’re not trying to become a plant, but we are trying to borrow something of the quality of the living being we are attending to – something that looks a lot like attention.
The way it holds itself without being inert. The way it receives without grasping. The way its whole surface is available to what the world offers: to light, to rain, to wind, to warmth.
It does not try to prevent the rain or the cold. It does not filter through preference or judgement.
This is Domei. You’re not performing stillness or trying to manufacture receptivity. You are simply slowing the pace of your attention until there is a meeting point with what you’re sitting with.
This is effortless. By being with a plant, your breathing will change, your posture may soften, and your gaze will come to rest on the plant the way the plant’s own surface rests in light.
The practice means you are available for what may or may not occur. It’s unhurried and without agenda. You’re not trying to get anywhere.
I can talk around the subject, but only by doing the practice will you understand what I’m talking about.
From my experience, things happen in this slowing down. Not always. There is nothing dramatic, no cosmic insight, no realisation of being at one with the world.
But it happens enough that I keep wanting to return. I love the practice because my cataloguing mind – the internal commentary that starts the moment I wake up – loses its grip.
In the gap that opens, something comes forward. The Western contemplatives might have called this grace.
I’m not suggesting anything supernatural here. It’s actually far simpler. It’s what becomes available when you, with your wilful mind, stop getting in the way.
This is what we are trying to remember.