Being in Nature Archives - Madhu Bazaz Wangu
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Being in Nature

Tuesday, December 9, 2025

Posted on December 8, 2025
in Awareness, Being in Nature, Flourishing
2 Comments

A Lazy Morning in Lhasa, Tibet, 2016 Three cheers for completing your year-long journey of mindful writing meditation practice! Today is a good day to journal! Let yourself be spontaneous, honest, and focused on journaling in detail what you learned about yourself and your writing life this year. Write until your mind can’t think of anything else about the twelve-month adventure you just completed. Here are a few questions to get you started. How is your focus on daily tasks now compared to before you began this journey?  How do you feel, artistically and spiritually? Do you feel more empowered?  Do you find yourself going deeper into meditating, journaling, walking and reading than ever before?  How has your writing skill and productivity benefitted?  How has your sense of awe and wonder over nature and simple things in...

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025

Posted on December 1, 2025
in #Nature Lover, Being in Nature, Daily Reflections 2025, Sharper Brain after Retirement, Spirituality, Travel
4 Comments

Bryce Canyon National Park National parks have created a new religion, that of secular spirituality; they have created new pilgrimage centers, the National Parks; they have created a new breed of parishioners, the travelers who love nature. We cannot experience the sacred or let creative and original ideas stir in our heart-minds while living a daily rut. Something has to shake us up, shatter our unexamined values, question our unanalyzed beliefs. This happens often midst the beauty of nature or listening to fascinating piece of music or viewing works of great masters. Nature, good books, and master artworks are all potent with enchantments. These magical things wait patiently for you to come to them. For you to cross the threshold from slumbering through life to living audaciously. You can’t encounter flowerbeds unless...

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Thursday, November 27, 2025

Posted on November 26, 2025
in #Nature Lover, Being in Nature, Daily Reflections 2025, Spirituality, Travel, Well Being
0 Comments

I had not heard about national parks until we came to the United States. When we visited Yellowstone National Park and Grand Canyon National Park in 2013… I. Had. No. Idea! I was enthralled by how awe and delight enraptured me in the presence of the natural resplendence. I was born in the lap of the Himalayas, in the valley of Kashmir. I was two years old when we moved to New Delhi the overcrowded metroplex with high-rise buildings. But it was home. To get away from scorching summer heat in the capital city, my family would return to the valley for a month. We exhaled in the most pleasant weather in my birthplace about which the Mughal Emperor Jehangir soulfully exclaimed, “If there is paradise on Earth, it is here, it is...

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Tuesday, November 25, 2025

Posted on November 24, 2025
in #Reading Poetry, Being in Nature, Creativity, Spirituality
4 Comments

It is said, the common characteristics of individuals who live in mountains, near rivers or oceans, in the wilderness and love to spend time in nature overlap with the traits of those who call themselves spiritual. These traits are kindness, peacefulness, compassion, and contentment with what is. These folks do not criticize or judge. They have motivating and kind words for others, and operate with an intention of making the world a better place.  One may ask, why is this so? What has nature to do with spirituality? Spirituality relates to people’s emotions and beliefs rather than their thinking or physical self and surroundings. Upon closer analysis six spiritual themes emerge: feeling of connection with something more than oneself, inner vibrancy, presence, joy, gratitude, and compassion. The data shows that those...

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Thursday, November 20,2025

Posted on November 19, 2025
in Being in Nature
6 Comments

In one previous post the inspiration I shared was about the aesthetic experience—what happens to an onlooker when they confront a great work of art. In that case, it was Michelangelo’s David. Today, I would like to share with you one of my spiritual experiences. The structure of the experience is the same, but its content is very different. This time it took place at a Kali temple in the small town of Hatkoti in the lower Himalayan ranges. First, I must introduce you to the goddess Kali. As a student of art history, I used to avoid studying her images. They depicted a gruesome and terrifying naked female adorned only with skulls and bones who dwelt in cremation grounds. But when I decided to write a book on Hindu and Buddhist goddesses—Indian...

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Tuesday, November 18, 2025

Posted on November 17, 2025
in Being in Nature, Daily Reflections 2025, Nonverbal Activities, Sharper Brain after Retirement, Well Being
4 Comments

Here’s to enhancing our six senses! Seeing: To sharpen your sense of sight observe art and witness nature. Begin to appreciate the world around you as if you are seeing it for the first time. When you encounter beauty in nature or view a great work of art, it excites not only your sense of sight but also all other senses. However, it takes time and self-training to be able to derive this level of sensory delight from viewing. Seeing Hearing:Enhance your sense of hearing. Listening to a favorite piece of music is the highest kind of hearing. Music restores order and reduces mental atrophy. A music lover absorbed in listening can feel one with the music. The two become one. The feeling of oneness stops time.  Similar to practicing solo, listening to...

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Tuesday, November 11, 2025

Posted on November 10, 2025
in #Reading Poetry, Awareness, Being in Nature, Sharper Brain after Retirement
2 Comments

Let’s focus on our wondrous senses this week. Do you think you exploit your body’s unlimited potential? That you pay100 percent attention to it? That you are aware how many possibilities it has for providing enjoyment even at our age?  The first step to awaken your body and mind is a 2-minute body scan, from the soles of your feet to the top of your head, first thing every morning while still lying in the bed. Be grateful to each body part and each sense for what it does. At this stage of life all our senses need help to continue functioning: eyewear, hearing aid, dentures, replaced knee or hip.  Perhaps most of everything else that mother nature provided you at your birth is in working condition. Whatever is not used to...

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Thursday, September 11, 2025

Posted on September 10, 2025
in Being in Nature, Meditation & Journaling at Ashby Ponds, Spirituality
2 Comments

The practitioners who intentionally sits in silence and solitude elevate themselves by realizing what it means to live in the awareness of the present moment. When you are aware you are lifted beyond your pain and sorrow. You feel true peace and happiness. You intuitively feel that are not your ego self but your aware self that is one with all there is and is always at peace. Your mindful life is the authentic life that is awake to the here and now.  What is a life of contemplation? It is to realize that we come to the world alone and we leave alone, that our solitude is absolute. To be an authentic individual is to watch our feelings, thoughts, sensations, activities and relationships as finite; and to witness our true...

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Thursday, August 4, 2025

Posted on September 3, 2025
in Being in Nature, Flourishing, Spirituality, Travel
4 Comments

On our way to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, the bus stopped for a photo break of the spectacular peaks of the Teton mountain range. The driver pointed to a log cabin in the distance, a cottage in the middle of a meadow of swaying yellow flowers and wild grass. I hurried to the restroom behind it but noticed a sign board: “The Episcopal Chapel of the Transfiguration” and wondered, what exactly does transfiguration mean? When I returned, people had already seen the chapel and left. Its sparce decoration and plain walls constructed with logs moved me. The space felt cool and comfortable. In front of a large rectangular glass window was a table on which was placed a cross flanked by two glass vases with fresh-cut flowers. I sat on the corner seat...

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Thursday, August 28, 2025

Posted on August 27, 2025
in #Nature Lover, Being in Nature, Travel
4 Comments

Nature is imbued with numen (spirit). Rudolf Otto, the German phenomenologist of religions, qualified the numinous (spiritual) as being mysterium, fascinans et tremendum. In other words: mysterious, awe-inspiring, and filled with terror. He used the Latin phrase, Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans to describe the dual nature of the experience of the Holy or the Sacred. It encompasses both a terrifying and awe-inspiring aspect (tremendum) and a fascinating/alluring aspect (fascinans). He argued that this profound emotional experience was at the heart of the world religions. I have experienced this in nature which I regard as Sacred. I would like to share with you two such experiences, the first being fascinating and the second terror inspiring. #1 Awe Inspiring and AlluringOur stay at Denali National Park in Alaska remained covered with mist and clouds. The guide had promised an unforgettable view of the...

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