Tag: Present moment

No regrets

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I am reading  some books by Stephen Levine. He has worked extensively with those who are dying, and writes about grief and loss. What he has found is that many arrive at the end of their life with regrets, wishing that they had done this or that, lived more fully here or there, realized their potential in this way or that. This has led him to emphasize living each moment fully, not limiting ourselves in this moment to our past or waiting for our future,  in order to have no regrets:

Most of life only lasts a moment. Then our life becomes a memory, a dream. We are only alive a millisecond at at time. This moment! Or as one teacher put it, holding his thumb and forefinger about a quarter inch apart, “All of life is only just this much–just a moment in time.” When we open to this very instant in which awareness produces consciousness, we are fully alive. Completely preent. Big-minded.

To the degree we are present for “just this much” this living moment, we are alive. Otherwise we numb to the vibrancy and beg upon our deathbed for one more chance.

Most think that living a “full life” means living into old age. But if you are not alive this moment, what makes you think you’ll be alive then? To live fully is to be filled with this moment. Present for this millisecond, this day, this week, this life.”

Stephen and Ondrea Levine, Embracing the Beloved

In this he echoes the words of Daniel Gilbert in his book Stumbling on Happiness. He too draws attention to not neglecting to do the things we want, to dare to choose certain paths that open up in front of us.

... most people think they will regret foolish actions more than foolish inactions. But studies show that nine out of ten people are wrong. Indeed, in the long run, people of every walk of life seem to regret not having done things much more than they regret things they did.

Developing your Meditation Practice, Stage 1 continued

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The first of these posts talked about placement – we consciously place our awareness on the breath, intentionally moving away from whatever activity we were doing before.  At the same time, just as we sit down to practice, we simultaneously form our intention. One Zen teacher once gave a conference speech in which he summed up the whole of meditation in two words – “intention” and “attention”. S o the first stage in meditation involves forming an intention, right at the start,  the moment one sits. Our intention should be something like, I will use this period to consciously observe the mind and get to know it better. In a sense, we set a gentle model for our activity over the next twenty or thirty minutes.

Why is this so important? Because if we rush into sitting without consciously being aware of changing our activity and forming our intention we can find the mind wandering very quickly. After a minute or two we find ourselves in the same daydreaming we were involved in for much of the day or continuing the activity we have just finished. We may very quickly fall into the activity of checking how we are doing in this meditation and comparing it to yesterday’s or to a model of meditation which we have in our heads.

So the first stage in meditation is focused on how we sit. It seems obvious but is of vital importance. If we start well there is a greater chance that our whole sitting will go well. In the next post we will look at stage two, how to work with thoughts.

Letting the past go

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Do not go after the past, Nor lose yourself in the future. For the past no longer exists, And the future is not yet here.

By looking deeply at things just as they are, in this moment, here and now, the seeker lives calmly and freely. You should pay attentive to what is really going on today, for waiting until tomorrow is too late.

The one who knows how to live calmly and attentively night and day is the one who knows the best way to be independent.

Bhaddekaratta Sutra

Not everything goes to plan 3: Change is a part of life

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Loss is a fact of life. Impermanence is everywhere we look. We lose loved ones. We lose our health. We lose our glasses. We lose our memory. We lose our money. We lose our keys. We lose our socks. We have to come to terms with this reality. How we deal with them is what makes all the difference. For it is not what happens to us that determines our character, but how we relate to what happens.

Lama Surya Das, Working with Loss

Not letting our fears control us 1: Let go

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The river flows rapidly down the mountain, and then all of a sudden it gets blocked with big boulders and a lot of trees. The water can’t go any farther, even though it has tremendous force and forward energy. It just gets blocked there. That’s what happens with us, too; we get blocked like that.

Letting go at the end of the out-breath, letting the thoughts go, is like moving one of those boulders away so that the water can keep flowing, so that our energy and our life force can keep evolving and going forward. We don’t, out of fear of the unknown, have to put up these blocks, these dams, that basically say no to life and to feeling life.

Pema Chodron