The International Hitchhiker's Mudra

Hi friends!

Last month, we kicked off Summer, the season of wind-like momentum and cleared stuckness from our bodies and minds. This month is an exploration of how we move: the intentions that orient us and the openness that keeps us going. We’re asking “Where am I headed?” and “Can I let the journey itself loosen me?”

Last week, when I was in Austria, I got a lil lesson in this from (surprise, surprise) my constant teacher, Nature.

I was there to speak at the Buddhism & AI conference, to share the work I’ve been doing with Happier Meditation on Weave. It was a retreat full of scholars and technologists and teachers and entrepreneurs, all asking how Buddhist wisdom might help us set clear intentions and pathways forward through this wild next chapter in human-tech evolution.

The night of my talk, a few of us stayed out on the mountain till sunset, dreaming out loud about what we hoped all this might become. Below us, the valley was tipping into dusk and somewhere down there, past all the wilderness, was my B&B and my bed.

It occurred to me that looking out from this mountain top was a live metaphor for the whole conference itself: ideas and theories launched into rarefied air, lofty and hopeful and unimpeded. This ideation phase is a crucial part of making things happen, of course, and a fun one. We get to dream into the future and collectively aspire to making concrete change in the world. But there is this mountain peak, and there is that town below, and there’s no clear sightline between the two. None of us sees what lies ahead on the actual road. And how we navigate that space, will make all the difference.

By the time we said goodbye, the sun had almost set and the last ride down to town was gone. Oops. Five kilometers of mountain road stood between me and my bed. I wasn’t dressed for hiking (I had on my pancake-flat kung fu shoes), but the only alternative was to curl up sheepishly on a couch somewhere in the retreat centre, and I suddenly had a wicked desire to meet the road. So I pulled my backpack tight and thought, “Fuck it, I’m hikin’ it down!”…

The first stretch was gorgeous. Fireflies lit the narrow road, and the forest felt so alive I sang into it like some medieval fae-woman. But soon, the sun was gone, and the dark was getting thick. I turned on my phone flashlight and focused on the road.

A familiar voice piped up, asking what exactly I thought I was doing, trying to talk me back up the mountain while I still could. I ignored it and started jogging down the incline to cover ground faster. (My calves are still recovering 😅).

About halfway down, I reached the spot where I thought the forest would end. In my shoddy memory, I thought this was where the grassy, less spooky, rolling hills started. My friends, it was not. There was a tiny clearing… but the forest continued ahead. A black hole and a road with no shoulder and I still had miles to go.

That anxious voice kicked up louder. It listed all the ways a person could die on a mountain road at night. It wanted me to feel very stupid for trying this audacious thing. I wobbled, unsure, for a bit. Then, to my surprise, another voice piped up calmly: “My intention is to get down this mountain on my own wiles. And by that measure, I’m doing just fine.”

Yes. The first voice was arguing for retreat. (Turn back! Go with what you know! Don’t risk!) It wanted things to go exactly as planned and since they weren’t, it was getting cranky. But this other voice had no allegiance to a plan. It was open to moving with the circumstances. Standing there, in the murky middle of nowhere, I was suddenly overcome with joy and a feeling of power and of being as nimble as the wind.

So I tried something I’d never done before: I turned my flashlight on my thumb and stuck it out into the road. The international hitchhiker’s mudra. An intention placed on the breeze. Someone, please help me on my way.

Not thirty seconds later, the first car I’d seen in half an hour came down the mountain. A kind dude (just a lil bewildered at being hailed by a random Canadian girl on a secluded road at night) drove me down to the edge of town. Gleefully back under streetlights, I hiked past sleeping cow fields and houses until I finally crashed into my bed. Triumphant and sweaty and fully delivered.

Aspiration + movement. Like a left foot and a right foot, one giving clarity and the other momentum. Each useless without the other. It's how we move through every uncertain thing in our lives: the contemplative practices we hope will enlighten us, the relationships we hope will lead to love, the polycrisis we hope to heal, the technologies that will change humanity as we know it.

First, we set our intention. And we ask: Is it clear enough to sustain me through the doubt and anxiety that will inevitably come?

Then we move. And this time we ask: Am I clinging to a fixed idea of how this should all go? Am I willing to be surprised, to be humbled, to be changed by the journey ahead?

Bruce Lee calls it ‘being like water’. But in this elemental season of air, I like to think of it as being like wind. Curling between trees, and weaving new roads, and coasting like birds when we can.

We set our aim, like a pin on the horizon, then put one foot out toward it. Over and over again. And when the going gets really dark, we can stick our thumbs out. And we can drive each other home.

So this is what we’re practicing with this month! Aspiring greatly and moving flexibly. Join me at the moonlit sit 🙂

❤️ Lama Tasha

The Four Immeasurables (loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity) are the wildest aspiration there is: may all beings be happy and free from suffering, and may I help to bring that about. But held too tightly, each one becomes its own kind of pain. Love gets clingy, compassion fatigues into despair, joy gets giddy and untethered, and equanimity goes cold. We’ll move through all four as a turning wheel, where each one catches the last and keeps us moving along, warm and open and alive.

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