A few Zen teachers were talking about what we burn for at this point in our lives—the dharma, alleviation of suffering, peace—when one said: “I burn to relax.”

We laughed. For me, it brought up how busy we can be, working so hard towards a goal or to embody a particular vision that it feels hard to just let go and relax. But relax into what?

You can say: into who and what we are this moment. “That’s nice,” Bernie might purr, a small smile playing at the edges of his mouth. He used to say that when someone would answer with a Zen cliché expressed many times before.

Another answer might be: Relax into my body. Of course, I’m in my body right now, whether I’m conscious of it or not. Plato misled many people, including various religious traditions, when he posited his dualistic view of the body and mind, saying that the mind, or soul, is all about truth, beauty, and God, and the body is, in some way, its prison. Christianity adopted that view, as did my own religious Jewish background, especially in its East European manifestation (certain modern versions look at this very differently, I’m glad to say).

In these older, humbler times, I find myself trusting my body more than my mind, which merrily continues on with its thoughts, ideas, and projections, like the little boy playing with his Lego pieces as he sat with his father, Aussie, and me in the waiting room waiting for our cars to be serviced. Theirs was ready first and the father told his son to gather up the pieces that were all over the floor, but the boy just played on and on. That’s my mind to this very day. I’m aware of it: There’s Eve, with her mind full of the usual mishigas.

For 40 years I’ve started meditation by following my breath down to my belly and then feeling that beach ball expand and contract with the breath. If I can’t do that, I know that I’m back in the elevator to my favorite penthouse floor, with its tempting panoramic view of life and the world, with me as the voracious observer. Instead, I remind myself to spend time on the lower floors: You will find some things of interest there, too, such as the belly’s feeling with its organs, how the joints are doing, and the almighty back that keeps me up.

For much of my life embodiment meant not to let the mind be 10 miles ahead of the rest of me, planning, strategizing, trying to stay ahead of the game. Lately it’s had a different taste, pushing me towards some medical and dental procedures and antibiotics, making sure I pay attention to asthma and levels of energy. Yesterday my Einstein of a body told me to cancel my annual trip to Takoma Park in Maryland where I usually spend Thanksgiving with Bernie’s family.

No, no, a familiar voice resisted inside, trumpeting my lifelong mantra: You can rise to the occasion. You always have, so do it again. But rising to the occasion is like taking that express elevator that skips most of the building that holds up the top floors. Over my life there might be pain, discomfort, burnout or exhaustion, and the answer was always the same: Rise above. The call aways came from on top, never from the bottom.

I think my body wishes to finally bring me into congruence, reminding me—louder and louder all the time—of my true proportions, that going slower often leads to wiser destinations, and that the waystations close to home, such as the birdfeeders I’ve begun to fill for the winter, are as important as wherever it is I want to go.

It also brings up the materiality of things, the very materiality of matter that Plato thought served to imprison the spirit. The feel of the notebook on my desk, the water going down my throat as I drink, the sharp cold hitting my face when I’ll step out the door just before closing the house for the night. We experience so much through our mind. We deny the world around us—the smell of laundry hanging on lines in the basement, the texture of a sponge cleaning up the sink, the diaphanous tissue I reach for—an intimate and visceral relationship. Instead, we make of them memes, icons, dreams.

I get impatient with Aussie as she sniffs and sniffs at the grass. “Come on!” But her obsessive sniffing is nothing like my obsessive thinking, reflecting, and defining. If Henry the Illegal Chihuahua is addicted to his stuffed toys, my addiction to mind is quite similar.

Religious and philosophical thinkers have often said that the things of the world were frivolous and unimportant, even pathways to sin. But I’m gaining a new respect for thingness, the flat feel of the top of my wooden desk and the suppleness of the leaves of the nearby plant as they fall over the edges of the pot. Where have I been all these years, I sometimes ask myself. I love things!

The challenge for writers is to make the thingness of what they describe in their writings palpable: what wetness feels like, the clunk of a dish hastily put down on the counter, the rough edges of Aussie’s hair by her tail. The practice of embodiment is no different.

Each morning, I walk out to the back with a lit stick of incense to offer to our wooden Kwan-yin. Tomorrow morning it will be well under 30 degrees Fahrenheit when I go out in my house shoes and a scarf around my vulnerable throat, and I will feel the hammering of the cold, the fingers curling around the incense, and the frost on brown leaves which will cause me to slow down and walk with more care. I will bend down to plant the stick in the holder and feel that compassion is not necessarily warmth or comfort, but also brass tacks, concreteness, and the vitality of matter.