Looking back on the motoring meditations above, my own experience has been one of learning the fragility of my facade!
There's nothing like being cut up on a commute; the guy who muscles his way into the traffic-flow, or the one who by-passes the queue at a lane-split junction and then dives back across at the top, obviously his life is too important to wait his turn like the rest of us ... I've seen a couple so aggressive recently that a fender-bender seemed inevitable ... and it's
de rigueur these days for at least one car the jump a red light, tailgating the one in front who was pushing his luck on the amber as it was ...
Or the scene I witnessed when a young dude in a big SUV was behind a young lady in a little SUV, with a kiddie in the back,
So I'm now building 'motoring metta' into my broader practice, although like Wil the intention is not to 'zone out' and wake up to find myself at my destination (and
that happens a lot more than we are conscious of), but rather be in the moment, in a little tin box, among other tin boxes, all trying to get somewhere ...
It's a curious thing. My old job commute involved a 15-mile run on a motorway, when all the traffic was in the other direction. I had three modes of transport: An £800 rusty old Nissan Micra
)). A shiny mid-size family car (a Renault
and then a Saab
) . A Honda Hornet 600
D).
In the Nissan, I'd have stereotypical BMW w*nk*rs crawling all over me to get by, they'd run me off the road if I didn't get out of the way ... there's obviously some awful dread that a picture might find its way onto Facebook of them stuck behind ... behind ... a second-hand, twelve-year-old Nissan, oh, the shame of it!
In the saloon ... no problem. All very civilised. Yet I'm no faster in the saloon than in the Micra, which was a delight, never failed, would barrel along at 80mph no problem ... but obviously a perceived affront to the masculinity of the man in his big car behind me.
On the Hornet ... of dear ... the BMWs are still swanning along at 80, and if they bothered to look in the rear view mirror, there I would be >>>
<<< c'mon! Move that lump of tin outa my way!
Not sure about motorcycling meditation, but I have prayed, and St Columbanus, the patron of motorcyclists, saved my silly arse on more than one occasion!
meditation.