Running with the Mind of Meditation Review - Part 3 - Garuda and Dragon

The Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche is the leader of Shambhala, a worldwide community of centers to help people enrich their lives either through the Shambhala Buddhist study and training or through hosted courses. He’s written many books and teaches all over the world. He’s now written a book about running and meditation called Running with the Mind of Meditation. This isn’t the first book to combine spiritual elements with athletics endeavors, in this case running; it is the first written by an important worldwide spiritual leader. It’s written with the depth and length of his experience as a spiritual leader, and with many years of running and training including 9 marathon finishes. That combination is what brings the unique flavor of this book.

The book itself is written in six sections: Running with the mind of meditation, Tiger, Lion, Garuda, Dragon, Windhorse. The titles of each section come from the Shambhala tradition and path of warriorship where each section builds on, deepens, and includes previous sections. This review will also be written in several sections to capture the essence of each section and how to enfolds into the next.

Part 1 of this Review is here.
Part 2 of this Review is here.

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The garuda is a mythical eagle-like bird that when hatched is instantly able to fly and observe everything and is representative of the third phase. Mipham calls this phase the outrageous phase. Outrageous in an awesome sense not a reckless sense. Outrageous in that it’s time to stretch ourselves surpassing previous limits, and within that remaining grounded in the mindfulness and awareness attained through the lion and tiger phases.

Mipham describes this outrageousness in several ways. One is simply to be spontaneous within your already familiar environments, maybe do some sprints, or run on the other side of the street. It’s also about reawakening to the freshness and all the stimuli on a normal run. Another way is to try something more than you’ve done before. In the case of running this could be challenging yourself to run farther or faster than you’ve run before, or with meditation to perhaps try a whole day or meditation or even several days. A third way is to simply do something new, like trail running or more hills, or a new set of roads altogether.

Within this newness and freshness there is still the attention to mindfulness and detail and the panoramic awareness and appreciation of the environment learned in earlier phases. Now it goes deeper with more understanding of ourselves and the way our mind works. We observe a clear mind, completely present during runs and meditation which notices everything, but isn’t distracted by anything. As Mipham describes, “Our attention rests on the experience of the mind being fully present, cognizant, and aware.” These changes bring about more balance and freedom in our runs, our meditation, and our minds. “Maintaining a balanced, meditative space on our run, we are able to relax and make and accurate assessment of what we’re doing. That is the practice of the garuda.”

This phase seems like a crossroads of so many ideas and foundations bringing forth a greater profoundness in our running and meditation, and because of this depth it seems more conceptual and harder to describe. What I like in this section is that Mipham offers more of his own personal experiences of the garuda phase sharing experiences of some of his runs revealing this new way of being. With the basis of the lion and tiger phases, the garuda phase seems outrageous in the new fulfillment of fun, peace, depth, balance, and freedom.

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The dragon phase truly represents a unique phase where our personal mystery and experience thus far meets that of the world. Mipham’s words within this section are profound and truly anything I write wouldn’t do it justice. I’ll offer a few quotes from Mipham with the hope that they offer a glimpse of what’s there and motivation to read the book for yourself to discover the meaning for you.

“Running and meditation both have a secretive and mysterious quality that is beyond words. The dragon embodies this feeling of deep purpose – beyond expression and only to be experienced.”

“Dragon represents wisdom, intelligence, foresight, and omniscience. In the dragon phase of our running, we are basing our activity on intelligence and compassion. We are no longer running for ourselves, but to benefit others. Extending ourselves, we join with others to run for a charity or a cause, like world peace.”

“The dragon phase is where our true magnanimity of our being begins to truly shine.”