How A Spider Listens

When I find spiders in my cell lately I have been catching them in a styrofoam cup that has a clear plastic lid. When I find flies, or other insects, I put them in the same cup. The spiders are kept happy, I think. The other bugs, not so much. I like to watch the spiders spin their webs, catch their food, and feed. The largest one gets most of the prizes, and she has even molted once already, much to my surprize! But she is still only about one centimeter toe-to-toe. I wonder how big she will get. The smallest are less than a millimeter toe-to-toe; barely even specks of dust. But they are just a bold as the largest. I saw one of the smallest actually pounce a fly that was the size of a house by comparison! All the spiders in my little cup (five to date) seem to be the same species. I have often said that all living creatures are potential teachers. From my spiders I have learned a lesson that I have been seeking for years. I did not understand why the Eastern teachers of peace and wisdom put so much emphasis on correct posture and form in their practice. The big spider in my cup taught me why. As I was watching her preparing and mending her web, apparently in anticipation of the particularly large fly that was in the cup at the time but not yet caught in the web, I was fascinated by her every move. But most interesting of all was when she finally moved back to the center of the web. As I carefully watched, she assumed the “listening position”. She grabbed several strands of the web and put slight tension on them. I could see her do this by the way the web moved as she settled down to wait. Then, once she had the right tension on the lines and the right position of her body and legs (with her legs symetrically arranged, probably so she could balance the slight tension on her body from the web) she did a very humanlike thing: she wiggled her behind as if settling in to a comfortable position. Then she did not move at all. She would remain completely still for as long as it takes for the “understanding to come” (i.e. the fly to become trapped in her web). I suddenly saw clearly that she was “meditating”! Many things I had read in Buddhist books suddenly made more sense to me. The need for proper posture in order to balance the slight tension we keep on the web of our experience. I already understood that meditation was a form of listening, and now I understood the relation that correct posture and form have to the act of listening. Of course, I cannot truly express the understanding I have “caught in my web”, using these words in this blog. But anyone who has experienced the way nature teaches us might at least smile at the lesson I have learned. I could ask no more.