Aloha Sangha

ancient wisdom for crazy times

Category: the present moment

shine on, you crazy diamond
Wellbeing, peace and happiness are hidden in plain sight, in the ever-present flow of experience itself, always right here and right now.
I recently completed an intensive, 30 day silent meditation retreat in California following a very strict Burmese Buddhist lineage, with formal sessions totaling sixteen and a half hours per day.
Each day began at 4am with the gentle sound of a bell signaling the start of another day of meditation. Each day was another opportunity to delve deep into the intricacies of my own mind.
When people ask “how was it?” I struggle to come up with an answer that seems to satisfy the person asking. “The water pressure was excellent” feels more genuine than any of the other responses I’ve come up with.
Flippant, you say? Yeah, maybe, but I’m good with that. Would I do it again? Absolutely!
This experience allowed me to appreciate not just the act of meditation itself, but also the subtle experiences of life that often go unnoticed. Even the act of drinking tea became a ritual, filled with moments of mindfulness. The aroma rising from the cup, the warmth against my hands, and the taste that lingered on my tongue became sources of joy and reflection.
As I get older, and meditate more intensively, I’m just blown away how every tiny little piece of what’s happening in this moment right now is an absolute miracle; this tapping of this keyboard and this upcoming sip of tea- ahhh.
The happiness of well-being
This line of thought leads to a deeper understanding of why we seek out such retreats. Meditation, at its core, is not merely an escape from our woes, but a way to confront and understand them. Many people join retreats with the hope of achieving clarity on pressing issues, emotional turmoil, or existential questions.
Yet, what I discovered was that clarity often arises from letting go of the need to control or understand anything. It is about surrendering to the flow of experience.
Surrendering into the wellbeing of every moment.
To say my time in retreat was somehow more powerful or more special than this moment right now really misses the mark.
So why did I go there, if the water pressure in this bathroom here is just as excellent?
Many of us are attracted to meditation to get over something, like anxiety, or to explore altered states for all sorts of reasons. We all have all manner of issues that at times can seem really heavy and serious, unbearable even.
But when I take a close look, whatever shows up in awareness is always dissolving and vanishing, constantly shape-shifting like some Marvel character.
Furthermore, this understanding leads to the realization that the challenges we face are often transient. They come and go, much like waves in the ocean. Each emotion, each thought, is like a wave that rises, crests, and eventually falls away. By observing this process without attachment, we cultivate a sense of spaciousness within ourselves.
The wellbeing of every moment is dripping with contentment.
When I try to hold on to something to seemingly deal with it, it feels like I’m trying to pin a tail on a space donkey.
can you pin a tail on this space donkey?
The historical Buddha appears to never tire of emphasizing that no-things ever actually form long enough to even be impermanent.
Yet, here we are, often feeling stuck. But stuck in what?
The experience was also a reminder of the importance of community and shared practice. Each participant in the retreat was on their journey, yet we were all interconnected through our shared silence and intention. The simple act of sitting together in silence created a powerful energy that was both comforting and enlightening. We were each like threads in a larger tapestry, contributing to a collective experience of healing and growth.
It’s precisely because nothing survives even for an instant, when we really look with focused awareness, that we’re never actually ever stuck. No matter how complicated and difficult our circumstance feels, it’s always just this.
I love Pink Floyd’s song from their 1975 album “Wish You Were Here” – Shine On You Crazy Diamond. No matter how complex and difficult, it’s always just this crazy diamond of reality as it is right now, shining a light that seems solid and real …
My time in the retreat grounded me in the present moment. Each second felt like a precious gift, and I learned to appreciate the subtle nuances of existence. It became clear that joy doesn’t always need to be flashy- sometimes, it’s found in the stillness between each thought, in the breath that nourishes our being, in the appreciation of a gentle breeze or the sound of rustling leaves.
The lessons learned during those long hours of meditation extend far beyond the retreat. They seep into daily life, influencing how I interact with challenges and how I perceive joy.
The practice encourages a gentle inquiry into the nature of suffering and happiness, inviting us to explore both with compassion. In this exploration, we often find that the answers we seek are already within us, waiting to be uncovered.
but is actually more like our beautiful Hawaiian rainbows, never staying the same, even if we gaze at it a second later.
What did I come away with from my long, often tedious hours of silent meditation?
Well, since you asked, it’s that phenomenal well being, peace and happiness are not the product of meditative huffing and puffing, but are always just right here, shining like a crazy diamond in plain sight, in the ever-present flow of experience experiencing itself, always right here and right now.
and that a good long, hard meditation retreat was just the thing to re-mind me of this incredibly beautiful state of affairs.
How wonderful, how marvelous!
Shine on you crazy diamond, not just in meditation, but in every facet of your life. Let this practice of mindfulness illuminate your path, guiding you toward a deeper understanding of yourself and the world.
11/28/2024
sit quietly and observe your thoughts
This simple practice helps release unhelpful preoccupations that creep into your mind space as you sit quietly and observe your thoughts.
As we release these unhelpful preoccupations, we find less need for distraction hits like the news. What would it be like to spend more time absorbed in mystery and awe rather than in your to-do list or newsfeed?
Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.
Lin Yutang
With our mindfulness practice we breathe, eat and wash in mystery and awe in every moment. Thomas Merton observed in his 1968 collection of his journals The Other Side of the Mountain how eliminating non-essentials, as Lin Yutang mentions above, is the heart of his monastic vocation:
I just need to have long periods of no talking and no special thinking, and immediate contact with the sun, the grass, the dirt, the leaves. Undistracted by statements, jokes, opinions, news.
Thomas Merton
Sure, obstacles will arise. It really wouldn’t work otherwise. Frank Clark observes:
If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.
With maturing practice, we can appreciate all obstacles as “grist for the mill” for this organic process of deepening insight and freedom.
The Buddha was on point here in the Dhammapada:
Let go of that which is in front,
let go of that which has already gone,
and let go of in-between.
With a heart that takes hold nowhere
you arrive at the place beyond all suffering.
We all experience difficulties, confusion and unhappiness. And even when things are hunky-dory, we sometimes worry if something ominous is just around the bend.
Yet our practice shows us glimpses of a fundamental OK-ness, a limitless essential freedom that is our birthright. So we go up and down between appreciating life as both a great mystery and a great misery, until the mind eventually settles down.
observe your thoughts
Mindfulness teaches us to pay attention and observe your thoughts in a way that doesn’t get sucked into whatever storms may arise in the mind, and let them pass, and rest in the settled mind of knowing you are aware.
As we familiarize ourselves with this heart of awareness, we see that whatever blocks the heart is mostly self-constructed- and insubstantial.
The twelfth-century Sufi philosopher El-Ghazali observed:
If you can lose it in a shipwreck, it isn’t yours.
As we rest for a moment, simply present, awake and aware, with no agenda at all, we step out of our habitual comfort zones of control, manipulation, into a space of natural open awareness.
We can’t lose this in any shipwreck.
I love the line by the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke:
Ultimately, it is upon your vulnerability that you depend.
As you sit quietly and observe your thoughts, you open little by little into the warmth and tenderness of our own essential vulnerability, our own heart of awareness, that we all need so much these days.
07/18/2024
softly, as in a morning sunrise
Meditation shows me my burdens were mostly imagined. But even imaginary ones can carry real emotional weight.
I remember this cartoon I saw perhaps 20 years ago while waiting at a doctor’s office. A woman and a man are sitting together at a coffee shop in some urban setting. The man looks over and says:
I’m sorry. I was so busy listening to myself talk I forgot what I was saying.
That cartoon has stayed with me all these years because it points to why I continue to meditate every day. Ok, just about every day.
I meditate to take myself less seriously.
Which reminds me of another cartoon that has stayed with me just as long. A Zen monk is walking along a beach carrying an enormous bag over his shoulders that’s so heavy his footsteps are like craters in the sand.
On the bag is written one word – ME.
This is a burden our meditation helps us set aside, the heavy bag called me. Setting the bag down, even for a few minutes when we meditate, lightens our steps and makes us more available to others.
It helps us not take ourselves so seriously we can’t engage in a meaningful conversation without it all being about me.
I first discovered Buddhism in 1979 at the age of 23 and attended my first 10 day vipassana retreat the following year.
And I still take myself way too seriously sometimes.
Some would argue that their burdens are who they are (maybe not exactly phrased this way). They are their struggles. And, if they try hard enough, they are their own victors.
Many of the issues and problems I have faced in my life I was so used to carrying around I didn’t realize they were burdens at all. But when they drop, ah, yes, I feel much lighter now!
Yes- meditation to take oneself less seriously is seriously important.
Meditation has revealed my burdens were mostly imagined. But even imaginary ones can carry real emotional weight.
The more meditation I had under my (imaginary) belt, the easier it was to see we don’t really need all that much to get along happily in this life.
George Carlin once quipped:
That’s all I want, that’s all you need in life, is a little place for your stuff, ya know?
And even that might be extra.
I love Emily Dickinson’s short poem “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” She nails the issue in a few verses and sticks the landing perfectly.
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
Often I read a poem I am convinced was written just for me!
There’s that pesky makin’-it-all-about-me again.
The poem sings of the beauty of being a “Nobody” in a boring and crass world of “Somebodies.” And then in lines 3 and 4 the poet realizes the reader is also a “Nobody” but says, shush, don’t tell anyone–they might find out.
Which is how I felt when I first started practicing Buddhism, that I had to keep my nobody-ness a secret because anyone I talked about “dropping the burden of self” looked at me as if I were crazy.
Meditation to take oneself seriously
From one nobody to another, I thank you Emily Dickinson for validating what I knew all along when I started on this path, that it’s such a relief to know how to melt the shell of me, and open to the mystery of this life- softly, as in a morning sunrise.
(thank you Dianne Reeves for that wonderful 1994 performance of this jazz standard.)
05/14/2023
on having no goals
As you set out on your meditation journey- avoid aggressive self-improvement. There isn’t anything to improve; the present moment is just fine as it is.
One of the trickiest aspects of mindfulness meditation is the whole thing about letting go of goals. It seems to make no sense at all to not have any goal for our meditation practice. I mean, if there weren’t any real benefits to this practice, sure, there would be no reason to continue this odd behavior.
But since there are, and we feel them, what’s wrong with seeing these benefits as goals? Like feeling more relaxed, happier, more peaceful and present. What’s wrong with wanting to feel more peaceful and less harried?
the problem with goal-directed meditation
We are told the problem is goal-directed meditation impedes appreciating the peace that’s already here. That goals trick us on a pre—conscious level into believing there is something better down the road as long as we keep up the practice.
A better, more improved peace. A peace 2.0. But If we bite on this hook, the here and now feels less peaceful.
That’s what makes this practice so tricky. Biting on that hook keeps us on the hamster wheel of evaluating and comparing. Of liking/ disliking. Of wanting/ not wanting. Of not good enough.
Sure, we are drawn to meditation out of a desire to feel better in some way–in an everyday sort of way, or perhaps in a more existential way. But here’s the rub–desire is desire, even if it’s wearing a cosmic cloak.
we can get agitated if a meditation session doesn’t turn out the way we expected
If we meditate with this desire to feel good, we internalize that meditation is all about feeling good, calm, and peaceful. And when we don’t feel calm or peaceful, we can get frustrated, even agitated.
We’ve just encountered the central issue the historical Buddha emphasized in his whole teaching career–that we somehow insist on having an experience other than the one we are having.
Every moment our nervous system is engaged in pre-conscious binary processing of sensory input as safe/ dangerous, of pleasant/ unpleasant. Then liking and disliking happen, which leads to the hamster wheel of wanting and not wanting.
The Buddha called this last process tanha, thirst. And if we examine all our day-to-day activities the Buddha claimed, we encounter this thirst on many levels. Even the small shifting movements you make while sitting on your chair in your office–not liking the sensations arises, so you shift, only to later not like those, either.
the four Noble Truths
This is the first of the Buddha’s well-known Four Noble Truths: the arising of tanha in the mind sets off a subtle chain reaction of –>> liking/ not liking–>> wanting/ not wanting–>> eventually culminating in the many varieties dukkha–stress, disappointment, pain, loss, anguish.
How we can skillfully relate to this tanha, evident even at the per-conscious level, is the central concern of our meditation practice.
This is on a micro-level. On a macro-level, this plays out as the insatiable greed of empires, the hatred between religions, the delusion of indoctrination and indifference.
But it’s the very same mechanism, which starts pre-consciously with evaluation, comparison, liking, disliking and quickly proceeds to happiness and sorrow on increasing orders of scale, often below the horizon of conscious awareness.
the Buddha’s answer
The Buddha’s answer was to nip liking and disliking in the bud, before it has time to muster an army. As we notice the thoughts, sensations, and sounds that arise in the mind, we practice non-reactivity.
The thoughts will settle on their own. We notice liking and not liking, but we don’t bite the hook. We don’t jump in and take sides. Expecting our meditation to produce certain results is taking sides big time.
Yes, we all start with a rebellious mind. That’s why this practice of goal-less non-reactivity takes a lot of patience. After we have been sitting for a few minutes, the mind can feel bored–> liking/ not liking. It wants to stimulate itself with some spicy fantasy, or when it’s melancholic, it wants to cheer itself up–> wanting/ not wanting.
And when it’s restless, tired, or cranky, it just wants to dive into a slice of Mac and Cheese Pizza.
don’t set yourself up for failure
As we set out on the meditation journey, it is crucial to avoid setting ourselves up for failure and avoid aggressive self-improvement. There isn’t anything to improve. It’s just about embracing 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 fine as it is, and so are you.
When reflecting on his teaching experience the contemporary Burmese meditation teacher Sayadaw U Tejaniya observes,
Many yogis tell me that meditation is difficult. What they are actually saying is that they cannot get what they want.
Ok, so we just explored the tricky issues of having goals for your meditation journey. We saw how they can create more problems than they solve.
mindless zombies?
If that’s the case, then are we to become mindless zombies when we sit on our cushions to meditate?
No, the issue was that goals tend to lead us out of the present moment by the process of comparing and evaluating we just talked about.
However, the true goal of our practice has never changed: the continual awareness of the present moment just as it unfolds, prior to the arising of liking and disliking, free of conceptual overlays.
Sayadaw U Tejaniya offer this guidance:
Don’t practice with a mind that wants something, or wants something to happen, or wants something to stop happening. The result will only be that you tire yourself out. You are not trying to make things turn out the way you want them to happen; you are trying to know what is happening as it is.
Just hang in there with all the liking/ disliking, and watch the wanting/ not wanting without jumping in to fix your unease. Yeah, takes patience alright, but it’s worth it.
After practicing like this, goal preoccupation slowly starts to wither. Those thoughts may still crop up; you just won’t care about them as much anymore.
And If it doesn’t go like this for you at first, it’s alright. Just continue your goal-less, present-moment centered practice.
You’ll thank me later.
05/03/2022
present moment happiness
As we soak in the healing waters of the present moment, the chasms between sacred and mundane, bearable and unbearable, dissolve.
We live in uncertain times. Putin’s recent cold threat of a nuclear strike against Ukraine, and the real possibility of our mutual assured destruction, escalates our unease. How do we live with such insecurity?
This is really the same question we looked at in a post two weeks ago. In light of the radical teachings of impermanence, do we just continue making coffee, going to work and streaming our favorite shows when we get home?
I still have that conversation with my old friend running through my mind, telling me about her stage four breast cancer. How do you live with this? 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.
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, in which she wrote:
There is no bright future for me, but there is a bright present.
Maybe she spent some of her last years reading Goethe and found his famous line:
The present alone is our happiness.
life’s little secret
I suspect life itself let her in on a little secret– that her mortality is not a problem to be solved, but rather a “brightness” disclosing itself right here, right now, in the present moment.
At times it may feel like the present moment is a bit overrated. A blur or a poof or a blip and it’s gone, followed by a procession of more present moments similarly vanishing.
At times I’d rather occupy my internal bandwidth relishing a juicy fantasy or rewriting an awkward episode of my personal history. I used to think like this forty years ago.
then I got into meditation
It took me a few years to realize I was living in a virtual reality populated by self-constructed avatars of my past and future selves.
Meditation reveals the present moment as rich and meaningful rather than a blur or a blip. Consider being on a train moving quickly through a large city. Looking out the window, all you can make out are swirls of graffiti or the blur of buildings.
Meditation slows the train, revealing the details of a vibrant city. When we apply the brakes to our mind, there’s a richness there poets know so intimately:
There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant . . . more dazzling than a window lighted by a single candle.
Charles Baudelaire
planning for happiness?
On one of my first 10 day silent retreats back in the early 1980s I spent hours in meditation planning how I could do another retreat later in the year. The irony of planning for something while it was already happening was sobering.
What’s more, the enormity of the time I was spending in the future floored me. I was constantly busy planning, missing out on so much of my life, as John Lennon suggests:
Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.
Not only was I frequently absent from my own life, lost in the past or the future, what little semblance of the present moment I had left was consumed with obsessive thinking, rumination and worry.
missing the moment
It’s easy to overlook the present moment for two reasons. First, it’s obscured by clouds of thought. It may look like a blurry Polaroid with no discernible image. Or a station a speeding train zips by.
Secondly, if we happen to catch a glimpse while watching a sunset or being present at a birth, or a death, when our mind suddenly stops spinning, it seems like a meaningless pause in the movie in our head.
Meditation counteracts these impediments. First, by selecting an anchor, such as the breath, and patiently returning to it when our mind wanders, the cloud-bank of obsessive thought thins out. We can now intentionally glimpse the present moment.
It’s no longer a stranger that comes to visit while watching a sunset or being present at a birth, or a death.
meditation as cultivation
Secondly, by repetitive training, meditation introduces the potential of the present moment. Rather than a meaningless break in the mental action, we learn to cultivate healing herbs in the garden of the present moment for the benefit of others.
this last point is often lost on beginners
Discovering the present moment is not the end of the spiritual path. It’s only the beginning. There isn’t a term for meditation in Early Buddhism. The work we do on the spiritual path is called bhavana, which translates as the cultivation of what the Buddha called wholesome states of mind, e.g., compassion, loving-kindness, tranquility and feeling joy in the good fortune of others.
calming the mind is just the first step
When we talk about meditation in the West, we often are talking about ways to calm our anxious minds. But in the East, calming the mind is just step one of a lifelong path of cultivating care and compassion for all beings.
As we soak in the healing waters of the present moment, the chasm between sacred and mundane dissolves, as in Baudelaire’s rapture at seeing that single candle.
We also train in being with the difficult parts of our life without being overwhelmed, allowing us to be more available to others. The chasm between the bearable and the unbearable similarly dissolves.
The joys and horrors of this crazy world are both meaningful and workable. We can grieve whole-heartedly with the father seeing his wife and two children lying lifeless after a Russian mortar attack on a street in Kiev.
As our weary minds regain their vitality, our hearts are at peace. Our life is no longer a problem to be solved, but an inexhaustible treasure for the benefit of all.
03/11/2022
practicing present moment awareness
The practice of present moment awareness shows us that whatever we are dealing with does not define us. Difficult stuff comes up, but it doesn’t diminish our well-being.
Maybe right now as you are reading this, you feel a little overwhelmed, anxious or bored. There is well-being in this, too.
Give this a try.
Make yourself comfortable and become aware of how your breath breathes all by itself. How your chest rises ever so slightly on the inhale, and relaxes on the exhale.
Notice how sunlight plays on your desk, how the traffic sounds just the way traffic sounds, the way the phone rings just as phones ring.
enoughness
Notice the enoughness of just this moment, of breathing in and breathing out.
As you settle into the present moment, ask yourself Is anything out of place, really?
The poet Mark Nepo observes:
When sadness or frustration shrinks your sense of well-being, when worry or fear agitates the peace right out of you, try lending your attention to the nearest thing. Try watching how the dust lifts and resettles when you blow on it.
Practicing present moment awareness allows us to simply observe what’s going on in our head. As we settle into this new modality, where we are not really doing anything, it’s like you are eavesdropping on yourself.
just observing
This soft shift from going, doing, comparing, judging, and thinking, thinking, thinking into just observing is like applying the brakes as we approach a stop sign.
Only many of us just roll right through.
But as we learn to slow down and come to a complete stop, we see how much we have to do with our discontent.
I love Rumi’s line here:
Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.
well-being in things are they are
Our practice is just coming back to this present moment awareness and discovering well-being in things just as they are. This discourages us from being pulled and pushed around so much by our judging, by our likes and dislikes.
And just this soft shift from the busyness of doing to this simple listening in shows us how we are contributing to our malaise moment by moment.
As the late Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah remarked:
If the house is flooded, can we just have a flooded house, and not also a flooded mind?
The Buddha saw we suffer because we don’t have what we want. Or because we have what we want but we’re afraid to lose it.
It’s part of the same mental programming of judging, of likes and dislikes. Living this way, we’re perpetually unhappy.
Our present moment meditation practice reveals that happiness need not be based on our likes and dislikes. There is something deeper. There is something more fundamental.
Just this, our life as it is, right here, right now.
relaxed effort
All that is required is a relaxed effort to be with whatever is coming up for us in the moment without judging or taking sides.
Can we be with our own minds in this way as we go about our busy lives?
Yes, we all have been through a lot this year. We all felt our share of panic and confusion and loss. We are human.
And because of our humanity we also are endowed with present moment mindful awareness and a way to feel pain and suffering without being undone by them psychologically and physically.
With mindfulness, fear becomes an invitation to look deeply and befriend the parts of oneself that feel afraid.
An invitation to be radically OK in the midst of change and uncertainty.
An invitation to feel pain and not be undone or defined by it.
responding with kindness and care
It’s also an invitation to respond with kindness and care.
Buddhism 101.
The American Buddhist teacher Willa Miller writes:
We are sitting with the unknown. The unknown is exactly what pulls back the veil. It offers a glimpse of the truth that nothing has ever been certain. This world with all its beauty and all its vibrancy is just so because it is not fixed, because everything is contingent. Life’s natural cousin is uncertainty.
As we prepare to go back to what we called our normal life, can we slip in a little more home mindfulness practice time?
From our home meditation huts, like the yogis of ancient times, can we keep the home fires of kindness, compassion, and present moment mindful awareness burning.
It will make a world of difference.
06/15/2021
Don’t worry about progress
Progress happens when you don’t think about it.
I was struck by a poem the other day while reading a new translation of the Therigatha, a small book of verse compiled in the beginning of the 6th century BC, by Buddhist nuns, chronicling their spiritual struggles and victories. It is also regarded as the earliest-known collection of women’s literature.
Here is the voice of the nun Vijaya, speaking with an elder nun about her difficulties with the practice of meditation:
When everyone else was meditating
I’d be outside circling the hall.
Finally I went to confess.
I’m hopeless, I said.
The elder nun smiled.
Just keep going.
Nothing stays in orbit forever.
If this circling is all you have,
why not make this circling your home?
I did as she told me,
and went on circling the hall.
If you find yourself partly in
and partly out—
if you find yourself drawn to this Path
and also drawing away—
I can assure you,
you’re in good company.
Just keep going.
Sometimes the most direct path isn’t a straight line
Just keep going is the advice given.
But more importantly, the advice is to not try to get somewhere. To stop comparing your practice with that of others, or against some lofty ideal of what practice should be.
Just be right where you are.
If sitting meditation feels too challenging, just circle the hall. But make circling the hall your practice.
Be right where you already are.
Over the last 25 years of teaching meditation, it’s become absolutely obvious to me that each person’s process is unique. And that there is a lot of suffering in comparing our meditation practice not only to some ideal but also to our past meditation experiences, enshrined in the cloudy opacity of memory.
making progress in meditation is like the meandering course of the Mississippi river
the path naturally oscillates, like sine waves
Wherever you find yourself is fine. Just work right there, with what you already have right under your nose.
Reading this poem reminded me of a conversation the Buddha had with a monk named Assaji, who asks the Buddha to come see him as he is ill and dying. The Buddha asks Assaji if he feels any remorse as his life comes to an end.
The monk replies yes, that he can no longer access samadhi, the blissful depths of meditative concentration, as he is so physically weak. He implores the Buddha:
Let me not fall away…
The Buddha responds that the spiritual life is so much about samadhi but rather more about bearing witness to what is, and noticing the impermanence of all things.
there is no falling away from the present moment
Like the nun in our poem going to her teacher confessing she can’t meditate, that all she can do is walk around the meditation hall outside in circles, Assaji begs the Buddha on his deathbed not to let him fall away because he can no longer meditate.
The Buddha’s advice is similar to that given by the elder nun in our poem–that there is no falling away as long as you remain exactly where you are.
Being where we are, and being with what at times may be uncomfortable, but that’s OK.
The advice is not to be with what is as long as it’s comfortable. The advice is just to be with it as it is. Don’t be concerned about making progress in meditation–that’s just another distraction.
troubles are emotional reactions to the world, not the world itself
The discomfort we feel is not so much located in the events of the world, but rather in our emotional reactions to them.
As the elder American Buddhist monk Ajahn Sumedho reminds us:
If we have the faith to continue bearing with these emotional reactions and allow things that arise to cease, to appear and disappear according to their nature, then we find our stability not in achievement or attaining, but in being – being awake, being aware.
Again and again just return to the present moment, opening to just what is right here for you; progress in meditation happens by itself.
Let’s let the 13th century Japanese Zen Master Dogen explain this:
Truth is not far away. It is nearer than near. There is no need to attain it, since not one of your steps leads away from it.
Let these words sink in, that not one of your steps leads you away from the truth of this moment, even if you are circling the meditation hall outside.
And following up on this own admonition, Dogen adds:
If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
So, my dear friends, as the elder nun advised us earlier — just keep going, with the “winds of the Dharma at our backs,” as my teacher Sharon Salzberg would say. That’s how you make progress in meditation.
06/10/2021
letting go of wanting happiness
Folks who meditate in order to feel better often find the opposite. Eventfully they see that it’s the letting go of the wanting of happiness, that actually brings it!
I can begin to answer by sharing a haiku I recently found:
Since my house burned down
I now have a better view
of the rising moon.
This moving haiku was written by Mizuta Masahide, a 17^th century poet and samurai. It has spoken to me deeply many times.
I am often asked why I meditate.
Depending on who asks, I answer something like – To clearly see why I suffer, and with that understanding to cultivate peace of mind and a kind heart.
I have personally found mindfulness practice does just that.
After his own spiritual awakening, the Buddha distilled his understanding of our human situation into three insights, traditionally known, in an awkward sounding translation, as the three marks of existence.
The three facts of life
Let’s just call them the three facts of life:
1. Everything is temporary;
2. We habitually react to our world with resistance, felt as tension and suffering; and
3. Nothing solidly happens by itself, everything is contingent on causes and conditions.
There is a cool feeling of relief when I acknowledge these facts for myself. They help me appreciate what’s truly important in this fleeting world.
They wake me up as I move through my life in a kind of daze, checking email on my phone, going from one task and one distraction to another.
Because everything is changing, a flower has poignancy. When I realize this, I pause.
And because everything is evanescent, everything is precious. Our obligation is to spend this moment well, with wisdom and compassion
Because I suffer at times, “the sure heart’s release” is more appealing.
And because everything is contingent on something else, I appreciate my interconnection and responsibility to everyone and everything.
The Korean monk Haemin Sunim, in his lovely book The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down, expresses the third fact in this way:
The whole universe is contained in an apple wedge in a lunch box. Apple tree, sunlight, cloud, rain, earth, air, farmer’s sweat are all in it. Delivery truck, gas, market, money, cashier’s smile are all in it. Refrigerator, knife, cutting board, mother’s love are all in it.
Everything in the whole universe depends on one another.
The Buddha taught that deeply experiencing these three facts with mindfulness in our daily life brings about wisdom and compassion, and greatly eases our distress and anxiety. I love Sylvia Boorstein’s line:
Life is like a continuous quiz show where the only question ever asked is:
“How are you going to manage whatever is happening now without confusing yourself and creating suffering?“
And daily life is the best place to practice releasing needless suffering and growing in love and compassion. Our everyday lives serve up unending opportunities that catch us, triggering our habitual reactions of “liking and disliking.”
Mindfulness allows us to catch ourselves before life does.
The issue is we find ourselves wanting to have a different experience in other than the one we are having.
For example, folks are often drawn to meditation out of a desire to feel better in some way. But if we meditate with this desire to feel good, we selectively internalize that meditation is all about feeling good, calm, and peaceful.
And when we don’t feel calm or peaceful, we can get frustrated, even agitated.
Despite repeated encouragement to relax and let go of our ideas about meditation, and our fantasies of how we should feel when it works, it can take a while for this to really sink in.
it’s the letting go of the wanting of happiness, that actually brings it.
letting go of the notion of self-improvement
Crucial to the practice is learning to be radically OK with ourselves just as we are in the present moment. In doing so, we also let go of the notion of self-improvement.
Mindfulness meditation often starts out by working with an uncooperative and rebellious mind. You know this mind-it’s the one that spaces out, goes into la-la land, feels anxious, and wants out.
It’s the mind that opens its eyes during group meditation, looks at the clock, and says “Ugh, ten more minutes!”
Mindfulness takes us right up to the boundaries of our physical and emotional discomfort. But it allows us to be OK there, to settle down, and lose the fear.
Folks who meditate in order to feel better often find the opposite. Eventfully they see that it’s the letting go of the wanting of happiness, that actually brings it!
Sayadaw U Tejaniya of Burma writes:
Don’t practice with a mind that wants something or wants something to happen. The result will only be that you tire yourself out.
In time you will delight in ordinary mental presence, and you forget about extraordinary anything. Extraordinary experiences are not the goal of meditation. They do come and go, as side –effects of your practice.
This is a huge turning point in your practice – the more you let go, the happier you are. You clearly see that ultimate liberation is the ultimate letting go of everything.
I will leave you this week with the words of the Thai forest teacher Ajahn Chah.
Do everything with a mind that lets go. Don’t accept praise or gain or anything else. If you let go a little you a will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely you will have complete peace.
Hey, is that a moon I see up there?
10/19/2018
mindfulness meditation practice and the tiny purple flowers by the side of the road
We already have what we need – “your brain and your heart are your temples, and your philosophy, kindness.”
It seems many of us get hooked by trying to get somewhere in our mindfulness meditation practice. We evaluate where we are now and feel there is some ultra-cool place, where meditation, if done correctly, will eventually take us.
But what is the striving to get to that magic place is compounding our subtle (and not so subtle) discontent? This is assuming, of course, you experience even a smidgen of discontent in your life,
(And if you don’t experience any discontentment presently, once you start practicing daily, well … you just might run into some, as mindfulness starts to percolate down into strata of our minds many of us have conveniently disregarded for years and decades.)
So here we are.
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.
Some folks I talk to seem to be unconsciously insisting they need certain things to get started with mindful meditation, such as the right book (or set of books), mp3s, DVDs.
To say nothing of understanding challenging theories and philosophies. Consider a remark by no other than the Dalai Lama:
There is no need for temples. No need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples. My philosophy is kindness.
Such a striking statement I feel shows that indeed, as Don Cupitt notes in his remarkable book The Great Questions of Life:
We are at the beginning (possibly in the middle, but definitely not at the end) of a global shift in the concept of religion, a shift away from the view of religion as a way of transcending the human condition and toward a view that religion is about embracing the human condition.
This “No need for temples and complicated philosophies” sounds a lot like John Lennon:
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today …
We already have what we need – your “brain and your heart “are your temples, and your philosophy, kindness.
With your brain and your heart, and with kindness and mindfulness meditation, we can truly “embrace the human condition” as Don Cupitt says.
When we embrace with mindfulness what is actually happening in the moment, be it stubbing your toe or your pride, we learn again and again that the fuller we can embrace “what is,” the fuller mind and body can relax and rest.
And in that rest there may be found a juiciness, fullness, some call it a joy, in just experiencing, without grasping or rejecting, what arises, 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.
In our meditation practice, the goal is not the deal, it’s the steps on the path. Each step, actually.
As Thich Nhat Hanh says, in the title to one of his books, “Peace is every step.”
One teacher I was very fortunate to sit a retreat with early on in my practice was Munindra, a Bengali teacher who trained in Burma. One of his students, Sharon Salzberg, recounts that when Munindra was asked once why he practiced his response was,
So I will see the tiny purple flowers by the side of the road as I walk to town each day.
Can we practice like this?
02/11/2016