Tag: Be fully present

A useful short practice

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The first technique I’d like to share – dropping – works to break the habit of being caught up in our thinking minds, lost in thought, and out of touch with our bodies. Dropping is not so much a mediation as a way to cut through the tension-building stream of constant thinking, worrying and speediness. It allows us to land in the present moment, in a grounded and embodied way.

In dropping you do three things at the same time: 1. Raise your arms and let your hands drop onto your thighs. 2 Exhale a loud, big breath. 3. Drop your awareness from thinking into what your body feels.

Just rest there being aware of your body without any special agenda. Feel your body with all its sensations, pleasant or unpleasant, warmth or coolness, pressure, tingling, pain, bliss, whatever comes into your awareness.

So in brief, drop, rest, and relax…let yourself relax from within. Give yourself permission to do nothing.

from the very nice book by Daniel Goleman and Tsonknyi Rinpoche, Why we Meditate: 7 Simple Practices for a Calmer Mind

Sunday Quote: Immersed

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Life is like music for its own sake.

We are living in an eternal now, and when we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present.

Alan Watts

Walk the walk

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An aikido instructor once described to me a test he took for promotion to the next level. Unbeknownst to him at the time, one-third of the test was determined by how he entered the hall and sat down before his name was even called. What the masters were looking for was whether the student was already in a continuous flow entering the hall, or whether he regarded the test as a separate point at which to turn on and impress the teachers.

Philip Toshio Sudo, Zen 24/7

In every moment

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What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.

To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: “Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?” There is simply no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one’s opponent. The same holds for human existence. One should not search for an abstract meaning of life.

Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Beautiful

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But now his liberated eyes remained on this side, he saw and acknowledged visibility, he sought his home in this world, did not seek reality, did not aim at any beyond.

Beautiful was the world if you contemplated it like this, with no seeking, so simple, so childlike. Beautiful were the moon and stars, beautiful were brook and bank, forest and rock, goat and rose beetle, flower and butterfly. It was beautiful and delightful to go through the world like this, so childlike, so awake, so open to what was near, so without distrust. The sun burned his head differently, the forest shade cooled him differently, brook and cistern tasted differently, as did pumpkin and banana. Short were the days, short the nights, every hour flew by swiftly like a sail across the sea, under the sail a ship full of treasures, full of joys.

All this had always existed, and he had never seen it, he had never been present. Now he was there, he belonged to it. Light and shadow ran through his eyes, star and moon ran through his heart

Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

Our greatest treasures

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Each line is worth a deep reflection in itself.

Simplicity, patience, compassion: These three are your greatest treasures.

Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.

Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are.

Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching 67, Stephen Mitchell translation