Buddhism is about 2,500 years old. It’s an oppressive amount of time. One hundred generations (give or take) have lived, shaped the world, and died during that span. No empire and few cities have survived since then.
Looking back in time one fifth of the way takes you to the time of Leonardo da Vinci. Going back halfway places you in the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne.
It is an ancient style of meditation.
But it is not the oldest.
There is a school of meditation that is still alive today. It extends much, much further back.
Forget 2500 years, we’re talking tens of thousands of years. It may be as old as the culture that created it, dating back 40,000 years.
If not more.
It comes from the native people of the Daly River region in the Northern Territory of Australia. This practice is called dad and it’s awesome.
Aboriginal people describe it as a silent conscience. Meditators sit for hours among nature, listening to the wind and the water.
You might think this sounds like mindfulness. It’s mindfulness, with a twist.
Buddhism teaches you to be present with the experience. Whatever your senses detect is for you to process with your full attention. No distractions, no judgments, until you lose yourself in your now awareness.
dadirri teaches you to listen to nature. Experience the senses, again, without distraction or judgment, with silence and full appreciation.
It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one. Listening in this way is active and interactive. You don’t just observe nature. Instead, you learn everything you can from her.
Meditation improves your problem-solving skills, even more than just thinking about the challenge. Because? Because meditation opens your mind to new thought patterns. If the solution is not in your conscious mind, then it must be in your unconscious.
I haven’t seen any studies on this, but I think it would be that dad outperforms regular mindfulness.
When your mind is open and you pay attention, you realize that nature can teach you a lot about your solution. The wind, the rain, the rivers and the earth keep your answers.
Do I mean it literally? Or am I speaking metaphorically and are you inspired by spending time in nature?
It doesn’t matter. Just know that if this idea sounds like fuzzy hippy nonsense, then you need to go deeper into your meditative trances. Your brain will not speak to you with words but with metaphors. If you need determination like a river, flexibility like the wind, intensity like the sun, or stability like the earth, this is how he will speak to you.
And if you don’t get an answer, all you’ve done is reconnect with nature more deeply than you ever have in your life. That alone makes it worth learning.
