Making the City Your Lake

By Jennifer Egert, Ph.D.

The Omega Institute sponsored a program in the city earlier in the year on Buddhist and Western psychology with Jack Kornfeld, Tara Brach and Mark Epstein. At one point in the weekend, Jack Kornfeld recounted a famous saying of the Buddha’s, “A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.”

When our lives are small, when we have a lot of tension, resistance and close off, then the challenges faced by life can exert a very powerful effect. However, when we are not closed, broaden our experience and create a “large, open life” then the challenges and sufferings we face become a smaller part of our overall experience and therefore impact us less. This made me think a lot about what a “larger lake” might look like in the context of city life.

The city can be thought of as a vast lake. So much going on. So much to do, to learn. So many directions we can take ourselves and our lives. Just open Timeout NY, or New York Magazine or any newspaper or local publication. At any moment in time, there is something to do that might broaden or enrich your life in some way and feed the effort towards a more mindful way of living. We can often be overwhelmed by the intensity of the city, but the same things that overwhelm might offer the opportunity for a richer life that lessens the impact of adversity.

Question for the week: How can the city broaden your “life’s lake?”