{"id":1947,"date":"2021-05-13T23:02:53","date_gmt":"2021-05-14T06:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/?p=1947"},"modified":"2021-05-13T23:02:53","modified_gmt":"2021-05-14T06:02:53","slug":"a-a-milne-on-mindfulness-meditation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/2021\/05\/13\/a-a-milne-on-mindfulness-meditation\/","title":{"rendered":"A.A. Milne on Mindfulness Meditation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A.A. Milne<\/a><\/strong>, the author who brought us Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh, and Piglet, doesn’t immediately leap to mind as a commentator on mindfulness practice. My mother began introducing me to his stories before I was old enough to read, but I don’t recall her mentioning meditation even once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decades later, when I was all grown up and serious, I hunted down The Tao of Pooh<\/em><\/a> and The Te of Piglet<\/a> <\/em>by Benjamin Hoff<\/a><\/strong> (who I just learned is a Portlander – thank you, Wikipedia). I was looking for the Tao and thought I might find it by looking over Hoff’s shoulder, but, whatever I found there, it never occurred to me that Milne might have been a student of Asian spiritual practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps I was missing something? As Pooh says, “When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”<\/em> These days I often find myself reading familiar words in new ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, in that spirit, I would like to share with you a short poem, “Halfway Down”<\/a><\/strong>, from Milne’s collection, When We Were Very Young<\/em><\/a>. I had heard the poem dozens of times over the years, but last Tuesday I read it aloud to some friends and heard something new: a delightful story about a child who likes to stop “halfway down”, sit, and … dare I say it? … practice meditation. Enjoy!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn’t any
Other stair
Quite like
It.
I’m not at the bottom,
I’m not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.<\/p>

Halfway up the stairs
Isn’t up
And isn’t down.
It isn’t in the nursery,
It isn’t in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head:
“It isn’t really
Anywhere!
It’s somewhere else
Instead!”<\/p>Milne, A.A. from “When We Were Very Young”, E.P. Dutton, 1924<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A.A. Milne, the author who brought us Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh, and Piglet, doesn’t immediately leap to mind as a commentator on mindfulness practice. My mother began introducing me to his stories before I was old enough to read, but I don’t recall her mentioning meditation even once. Decades later, when I was all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[35,37,11],"class_list":["post-1947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-children","tag-poetry","tag-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1947"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1952,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947\/revisions\/1952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}