Tag: Present moment

Just being aware

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This quote, from a essay by Anne Dilliard, is as good a description of the simple  – but difficult – act of paying attention, that moment before we add words to what we are experiencing. It is something which we keep working at, slowing down the continual commentary which accompanies everything in our mind, working on our capacity to just let thing be:

This is it, I think, this is it, right now, the present, this empty gas station, here, this western wind, this tang of coffee on the tongue, and I am petting the puppy, I am watching the mountain. And the second I verbalize this awareness in my brain, I cease to see the mountain or feel the puppy. I am opaque, so much black asphalt. But at the same second, the second I know I’ve lost it, I also realize that the puppy is still squirming on his back under my hand. Nothing has changed for him. He draws his legs down to stretch the skin taut so he feels every fingertip’s stroke along his furred and arching side, his flank, his flung-back throat. I sip my coffee. I look at the mountain, which is still doing its tricks, as you look at a still-beautiful face belonging to a person who was once your lover in another country years ago: with fond nostalgia, and recognition, but no real feeling save a secret astonishment that you are now strangers. Thanks. For the memories. It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator – our very self-consciousness – is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution, cutting us off at both ends.

Annie Dilliard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Everything comes down to how we work with time

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Everything comes down to time in the end – to the passing of time, to changing. Ever thought of that? Anything that makes you happy or sad, isn’t it all based on minutes going by? Isn’t happiness expecting something time is going to bring you? Isn’t sadness wishing time back again? 

Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Letting the breath be

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We are all breathing. The first instruction is just to know that we are, not in an intellectual sense, but to be aware of the simple sensation of, the in-breath and the out-breath. Even in this instruction we are learning something extremely important, to allow the breathing follow its own nature, to breath itself. We are not trying to make the breath simple or keep it shallow. We are seeing how it is.That flies in the face of our lifelong conditioning to control, direct and orchestrate everything. We’re terrified of chaos, afraid that if we don’t keep things in their place they will all fall apart. Most of us are quite good at controlling, and what we’d really like is to be even better at it. Our tendency is to ride the breath, push it along, help it out…..

That isn’t the instruction. The instruction is to let it be, to surrender to the breathing. We are learning even in this first instruction the art of surrender.

Larry Rosenberg, Breath by Breath

Not out of reach

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Our true nature is not some ideal that we have to live up to .

It’s who we are right now,

and that ‘s what we can make friends with and celebrate.

Pema Chodron

Giving the mind a break

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The first of the basic practices to which I was introduced as a child – which most teachers introduce to beginning students … is known as “shamatha”. “Shama” may be understood in a variety of ways, including “peace”, “rest” or “cooling down” from a state of mental, emotional or sensory excitement. Maybe a modern equivalent would be “chilling out”. In other words, “shamatha” means abiding in a state that is rested or “chilled out”, which allows the little bird to just sit on one branch for a while.

Most of us, when we look at something, hear something, or watch a thought or emotion, have some sort of judgment about the experience. This judgment can be understood in terms of three basic “branches”: the “I like it” branch, the “I don’t like it” branch or the “I don’t know” branch. Each of these branches spread out into smaller branches: “good” branch;  “bad” branch; “pleasant” branch; “unpleasant” branch; “I like it because…” branch; “I don’t like it because…” branch; “could be nice or not” branch; “could be good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant” branch; and the “neither good nor bad, pleasant nor unpleasant” branch. The possibilities presented by all these branches tempt the little bird to flutter between them, investigating each one.

The practice of shamatha involves letting go of our judgments and opinions and just looking at, or paying attention to, what we see from whatever branch we’re sitting on…. Rest there on one branch. Attending to our experience in this way allows us to distinguish our judgments and opinions from the simple experience of seeing.

Yongey Mingyour Rinpoche, Joyful Wisdom

On change and constancy

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There has been very changeable, even cold, weather these past few weeks, and, as the photo shows, this morning stayed faithful to that, dawning grey and stormy on the Jura. As I have written before, looking at the weather is good practice, especially when it turns unpredictable, as it has been this Summer. Firstly, it helps us remember that there are many things which  happen in our lives – the weather, the behaviour of others, or  illness, for example—that we cannot  control. Thus we place our focus on the things which are within our control –  in the areas where we can train stability and constancy –  and do not waste energy on what we cannot influence. Setting aside some time in the day and in the week when we can rest and deepen our capacity to be focused is one way of doing that. The second lesson we can learn on a morning like this is somewhat the opposite – how to keep ourselves fluid in the areas that we do not want to make solid. Thus, whenever we notice that we are making certain emotions or judgments fixed and unchanging, we let go of them. Especially when we notice firm negative thoughts about ourselves – which normally flag themselves by beginning with words such as  “I always…” or “I am never able to”… – we can go back to the impermanence of the weather and remind ourselves that all things change. Then we can be kind to ourselves by realizing that this applies to us as well. We can let such thoughts pass through, just being aware of them, or hold fearful emotions more lightly, knowing they do not define us or how we are doing in our life.