It’s my one ‘day-off’ from Seva and I’m sitting at the end of the dock on the Lake observing the wildlife. There’s about a dozen cranes meandering around the shore line, calmly strutting and passively standing around the shallow edge. Nearby, one fat, outrageously large goose is surveying the group. He reminds me of a sheepdog herding cattle. The cranes don’t seem to mind him.
Suddenly in the middle of all that wonderful calm and peacefulness a mutt of a dog came chasing out of the nearby woods and raced towards them all! Everyone began to honk and quack and bark and scream and run and fly! The cranes took off together in flight and the goose got him self into deeper waters where the dog couldn’t go. It was a delightful scene produced by Mother Nature for this observer.
It took awhile for the calm to return, and now the whole group has returned to their meditations over on the property further west. 
Isn’t that like life? We’re having a nice peaceful day and then a disturbance comes. We get rattled. We yell. We object. We run away, thinking peace might return to us somewhere else.
The teaching here is asking us to take a closer look at our reactions. We are told that those reactions are most likely a coming from our past and not necessarily the proper response to what is happening now.
Running away from a hungry, excited dog is probably the proper response for the cranes and the goose. Yet, even though their peace was disturbed, no doubt they are calm again in this moment. I doubt they’ll need anty therapy to get over their trauma?
We humans, however, have a mind that retains memories, makes predictions, and plans for future. It jumps to lots of conclusions, and assumptions far beyond what is actually happening where the feet are. Some of us have wild imaginations that spin in or out of control. Some are absolutely delusional at times. The point is, like all the masters have said, stay in the now….and if a disturbance comes act accordingly if action is required. Otherwise, observe the responses in the the body and remember to breathe. Calm returns quicker that way.
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