Aloha Sangha

ancient wisdom for crazy times

Tag: present moment

this is why we meditate
In the present moment we discover a spontaneity beyond time, where there is no aging, no measuring, no comparing to what was, and no worry about what will be.
Perhaps I get a little carried away with Buddhist contemplation?
I mean, just the other day I felt compelled to pull over while driving to ponder whether in light of the radical teachings of impermanence, do I continue along as usual, making coffee, going to work and streaming my shows when I get home?
Perhaps I am ruminating on mortality as I recently had a birthday?
Aging. It kind of sneaked up on me.
Am I old? Well, according to John Shoven, a professor at Stanford University, someone age 65 is now considered old. No wonder so many nurses at work ask me when I am retiring.
I guess I am officially old at 68.
Woody Allen once remarked about his own mortality:
I don’t want to live on in the hearts of others. I want to live on in my apartment.
We know we are going to die. It’s only a question of when. Yet we console ourselves we have lots of time, much of which is spent planning on some better version of now.
Christopher Titmus recently gave a talk in which he quipped,
Taking an exam in chemistry is a picnic compared to taking chemotherapy.
Ulla-Carin Lindquist, at the height of a successful career as a newscaster in Sweden, was diagnosed with ALS. She kept of journal of her few years, published as Rowing Without Oars: A Memoir of Living and Dying, in which she wrote:
There is no bright future for me, but there is a bright present.
Reflecting on her line, I suspect life itself let her in on a little secret–that her mortality is not a problem to be solved, but a “brightness” disclosing itself right here, right now, in the present moment.
Even though I started studying Buddhism when I was 22, the depth of the teachings is really hitting me much deeper now. I appreciate aging as at the heart of the Buddha’s message.
Suzuki Roshi, whose talks in the 1960s became the classic book Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, taught that each breath was like a whole life, with a beginning, a middle and an end.
And that each exhale is a kind of dying.
In our practice, we especially get to know our out-breath, fading into a “sheet of white paper” as Suzuki Roshi described it. To which his student Mel Weitsman adds,
When the moment of death comes, our last breath is familiar and comfortable. There is no need to be afraid.
As we journey through the pages of our human story, our practice encourages us to be softer, more vulnerable, more caring, and loving.
And to flow with change.
In the present moment we discover a spontaneity beyond time, where there is no aging, no measuring, no comparing to what was, and no worry about what will be.
Ulla-Carin Lindquist, suffering from a terminal illness, was spot on:
There is no bright future… but there is a bright present.
This is freedom. This is love. This is peace.
This is why we meditate.
06/07/2024
be happy, meditate
Rather than striving to get rid of stress and confusion, see how these mental states act as a false barrier to our own natural calm, focus, and joy.
Mindfulness meditation is not just another way to fix what we feel might be broken in our lives. Maybe you struggle with low moods, motivation, or existential malaise. Maybe you feel lonely, or bored.
Do you sometimes feel like Peggy Lee when she sings “Is that all there is?”
Meditation, rather, is a way of discovering that whatever you may be feeling or experiencing does not define you.
As you get better at observing your inner world in the present moment, you see this world is just made up of so many mental images, self-talk, and waves of feeling tones in your body.
Our practice is about observing how these groups of experiences interact; e.g., how mental images interact with self-talk producing waves of feeling.
And these interactions often happen will-nilly in our minds.
As you separate the sensory pieces and greet each one with kindness they simply flow through. And this flow feels good.
But more importantly, you begin to realize that what you really are is unbounded joy and peace. Bad news happens, as it will from time to time, but it doesn’t define you, as …
Your sense of well-being is still there.
Rather than striving to get rid of stress and confusion, we recognize how mental states act as a false barrier to our own natural calm, focus, and joy.
What a relief!
We learn how to simply relax back into the peace and joy that was always there.
If you meditate to get something, some feeling or some imagined mental state, it becomes another goal, one which may lead you to judge yourself as failing or succeeding.
This reinforces what classical Buddhism calls “grasping and aversion” — and often leads to a scattered, anxious mind.
With time and practice, you discover an open awareness which is inherently free, peaceful and joyous. And you recognize this as a more profound and delightful “you.”
You start to appreciate the difference between pleasure and happiness.
Many of us live from pleasure to pleasure, with some waiting around in between.
But the happiness you discover with meditation practice comes from deeply experiencing your core, who and what you truly are. It’s more fulfilling than sense pleasures, which seem pedestrian in comparison.
There is no waiting around here; it’s on tap 24/7, with all the bandwidth you need.
One of my favorite meditation teachers, Cheri Huber, reminds us that:
It’s not so much what happens as it is how we are with ourselves regardless of what happens –that makes the difference in our lives.
But let’s be clear: sadness, jealousy, anger, fear, physical and emotional pain, all of it, will still arise.
But these are simply surface perturbations.
We’re talking about a radically profound change in the relationship with these experiences. Meditation is a tool to see right through them, to this inner core of unperturbed peace and happiness.
How cool is this?
Be happy, meditate!
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07/03/2023
when is the best time to meditate?
… when the mind complains it does NOT want to meditate, says the Buddhist monk U Tejaniya
I’m going to assume that you are like most of us who are into meditation–you struggle maintaining a regular practice, right; you might even ask when is the best time to meditate.
The instructions are so very simple—be aware of what is happening in the present moment. And yet, right away, we find this challenging and humbling.
We see that the mind has a mind of its own and won’t easily settle down.
Even for people I know who have been meditating for forty years–daily practice is not always a cakewalk.
When I was in graduate school we learned that the main work in therapy was working with our resistance. I think it was Irving Yalom who remarked that therapists meet clients where they are and take them where they don’t want to go.
This is what Saydaw U Tejaniya was saying in the opening line of this post. The best time to meditate is when our resistance is front and center. When we follow his advice we chip away at the basic resistance we all experience as humans.
Portrait of a Woman by Julie de Graag (1877-1924).
One of the first let downs is meditation is not what we thought it would be.
We are not trying to have an out of body experience, quipped one teacher, we are trying to have an in the body experience – with how we are, just as we are, in the present moment.
I remember reading a conversation between Jack Kornfield and Pema Chodron some years ago. They were talking about what makes the Buddhist approach to meditation special or remarkable, to which Pema Chodron added:
The Buddhist teachings are fabulous at simply working with what’s happening as your path of awakening, rather than treating your life experiences as some kind of deviation from what is supposed to be happening.
When I read that I just sighed. What a relief!
It’s good to create space, get settled, and have a little bliss-out at times.
But it’s during those moments that test our resolve that we see where we are stuck and what we need to work on, to let go of.
And what we work on in meditation generalizes out into our life.
That’s the magic of meditation.
Mindfulness is about getting down to the nitty gritty of our lives, exposing our vulnerability, and being with “whatever comes your way” as Sayadaw U Tejaniya says:
Looking for something which we think we are supposed to see is not mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness meditation is just being aware of whatever comes your way.
The nitty gritty of our lives is just this cup of far too hot coffee, this car which needs new tires, and which may not get me all the way to work today, or these construction workers invading my quiet morning.
Life isn’t supposed to go anyway in particular. And neither does our meditation.
We just show up for what is. Pema Chödrön explains:
We get misled by the ads in magazines where people are looking blissful in their matching outfits, which also match their meditation cushions. We can get to thinking that meditation is about transcending the difficulties of your life and finding this just-swell place.
But that doesn’t help you very much because that sets you up for being constantly disappointed with what happens every day at breakfast, lunch, and dinner—all day long.
A frequent complaint I hear from students is they can never find the right time to meditate.
If you are alive, like now would be a very good time.
Let’s have Sayadaw U Tejaniya of Burma have the last words:
Don’t assume conditions are bad for practice. There is a lot you can learn from what you think are unfavorable conditions for meditation. There may be unhappiness or suffering. Don’t make judgments that these conditions are bad for practice.
In Dhamma, there is only what’s happening. Accept the situation and be aware.
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07/10/2022
why I stopped making new year’s resolutions
I decided to not make any new year’s resolutions. Well, except maybe one. I resolve to just be myself.
I always felt making a set of resolutions meant needing to improve myself, be better at something, or change my body somehow.
The blogger Krista O’Reilly-Davi-Digui, a working, single mom who writes about minimalism and the anti-consumption movement, recently wrote:
What if I just accept this mediocre body of mine that is neither big nor small? Just in between. And I embrace that I have no desire to work for rock hard abs or 18% body fat. And I make peace with it and decide that when I lie on my deathbed I will never regret having just been me.
Oscar Wilde once quipped:
Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.
This year, I resolve to see how I am when I am being inauthentic.
I resolve not to try to be someone I am not; or some fantasy I want to grow into, like an enlightened Tom 2.0
And to use mindfulness to see through the masks I make to hide behind.
Can we find moments in our life when we can step back and reflect on a simple intention like this? To just be here, now, without pretense, free and open, relaxed and at peace?
Chicken Vendor, by Edivaldo Barbosa de Souza
I think much of what we deal with in meditation is about struggling with the way things are, and wanting things to be otherwise.
I suggest a maturing practice, a deepening practice, appreciaties the possibilities of relaxing.
Meditation can turn into a kind of extreme sport, with elaborate training programs for those aspiring to the elite ranks. But what if we set aside those fantasies for a while and just chilled, relaxed?
Carl Jung envisioned a major shift in understanding the spiritual path –rather than ascending a steep mountain path seeking perfection, instead we “unfold into wholeness.”
The wholeness that is who we are right here and now.
We are not so much attempting to vaporize up our bad karma or destroy our demons, as it is really hard to do a decent job of this; our struggling attempts can easily leave us with more problems.
Rather, perhaps we need to chill a little and embrace life in all its realness – messy, incomplete, yet vibrantly alive- now, without trying to improve or tweak anything. Trying to tweak things just brings more frustration.
And really, the present moment is un-tweak-able.
It’s just simply coming home again and again. No striving necessary.
As it says in the Zhuangzi, the ancient Chinese text from the late Warring States period (476–221 BC):
Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.
And in truly seeing this, that we are fully endowed with all we need, there may be a juicy-ness, afullness, some call it a joy, in just experiencing, without grasping or rejecting, what arises in the moment completely.
This is a quiet and deep joy that, in a way, has always been there, covered over by strata of reactivity and compulsiveness which subtly rule our lives, in one form or another.
Can we practice like this?
01/07/2018