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.
