In It for the Long Haul

"As the mind becomes a little more quiet the sacredness of everything 

within and without becomes clear to us.”

-- Zen Teacher Norman Fischer

 

 “Be still.  Stillness reveals the secrets of eternity.
When there is silence one finds the anchor of the universe within oneself.”
― Lao Tzu

In the midst of the scurry of the past couple of weeks, I was especially aware of how precious each morning's meditation was to me.  

 

Sitting here at this aging MacBook Pro,  I take a long, deep conscious breath.  Feet firmly on the floor, sitting relatively erect, I take a full conscious breath.  My belly expands, then my rib cage.  Then, as I continue to inhale, my attention rises to my heart center -- and my awareness expands beyond the sensations in my body into the gracious spaciousness of Open Awareness.  

 

Here, I rest in the still, silent, expansive presence of the present moment.

 

Breath continues to breathe. Bodily sensations arise.  Eyes see.  Ears hear.  Thoughts emerge.  My fingers tap dance on the keyboard.   Letters appear on the screen.  I return to my breath, the sensations of my body and senses.  The spacious silence that exists within each moment reappears.

 

In my mind's eye, an image emerges.  I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  At age 80, I have now entered my ninth decade of life on this planet.  (Yikes.  I feel even older conceptualizing it like that.  I best just settle in with saying that I'm 80 years old. LOL)  

 

However I choose to hold it in my mind, it's clear that in the long haul of human life, I'm somewhere in the final lap.  I've got more many more yesterdays in my pockets than tomorrows.   I know that I'm not getting out of here alive.  

 

Taking another full, conscious breath, continuing to relax into an open-hearted presence, the tunnel and the light dissolve into the clear, expansive, luminous brilliance that is beyond endings and beginnings.  I'm at peace.

 

Once again, I know.  Home is where the Heart is.

 

Touching this silent stillness, even for a few brief moments, is like feeling the warm glow of a fireplace, snuggling at home on a snowy evening peering through the window at the moon.  Paradoxically, touching this silent stillness is also like sipping clear, crisp spring water on a steamy summer day.  In Stillness, a Presence emerges.  In a silent whisper, it sings of the Ineffable, an infinite space where the fundamentally mysterious and completely ordinary meet to form the fabric of Life itself.  

Simply Sitting Still

 

Although I use a variety of meditation techniques, have an active prayer life, and practice a set of daily spiritual rituals, the foundation of my personal practice for decades has been shikantaza.  I simply sit still with what Zen teacher Norman Fischer calls "the basic feeling of being alive."   (An article on Shikantaza by Suzuki Roshi)

 

Sometimes, it may take awhile for the dust to settle.  Yet, often enough, I can Simply Sit Still and allow the restless energy embedded in my body and mind to dissipate.  I can relax into the embrace of the expansive spaciousness of what contemporary spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle calls the Eternal Now.  Resting in the spaciousness of open awareness, a subtle, yet very real, healing emerges.

 

Of course, this is often easier said than done.

Conditioned as we are in this society, our attention is usually drawn into the thoughts, images, memories, and daydreams cascading through our mind.  Rather than sitting still, observing the experience of the present moment with a relaxed open gaze, we find ourselves lost in thoughts and images of the future or the past.  

Yet, the moment I simply notice this, a moment of Practice emerges.  If that noticing is precise, clear, open, calm, and non-judgmental, I have engaged Mindfulness.  It is a qualitatively different mode of consciousness.  There I approach the Gateless Gate to our True Nature.

At times, it is just that simple.  Yet, simple doesn't necessarily mean easy.   

 

Why?

Without Practice, moment to moment, how we experience our lives, is mostly just a bad habit.  The way we see and react to our experience, is primarily a result of our conditioning.  Thoughts and feelings arise, unbidden, to dominate our attention.  Most the time, we don't choose to think what we are thinking or to feel what we are feeling.  It just bubbles up from our subconscious.  

 

Without a conscious commitment to put in the time and effort to discover what so often remains beneath the threshold of our awareness, we are held in bondage by our past.   Creatures of habit, we are likely to create a future that contains the same old, same old.  We continue to experience the suffering that characterizes much of the human condition.   

 

Thankfully, there is Practice.

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The Journey of a Thousand Miles

 

Sometimes we need to prime the pump a bit before we can Simply Sit Still. Thankfully, there are techniques that help develop the concentration and energy needed to sustain us on the journey of unfolding discovery that is Practice.   

 

Among the various schools of Buddhism, and in other spiritual traditions as well, a common first step in the Practice is to use our own breath as our primary object of meditation.  Focusing on the actual sensations of breathing is a powerful means of developing concentration.  It also releases some of the energy that is wrapped up in our habitual, stimulus-response, emotional reactions and ruminations.  Although other meditation objects (mantras, visualizations, sounds, visual objects such as candles, etc.) can be just as useful as the means of developing this concentration, conscious awareness of breathing has several important benefits:

 

First, a focus on the breath enhances the mind-body connection.   

 

All too often, we're "in our heads." Conditioned as we are in a culture that has been immersed in centuries of capitalism, scientific materialism (and the distortions of dogmatic Christianity), it is easy to  loose touch with the embodied dance of sensations, emotions, and energies that are the ongoing basis of our lives.  Bringing our attention to our breath as it is experienced in our body joins the mind and body.  There, many of us are able to engage a calmer, yet more energized, state of being.  Simply Sitting Still, over time, the breath, body, and mind naturally relax. 

Secondly, a focus on the actual experience of our breathing process grounds us in the present moment.   

 

Lost in our thoughts,, we are often carried off into the future or the past.  The future often evokes overly fanciful or unduly fearful fantasies.  The past, all to often for some of us, evokes discomfort, guilt, shame, etc.   As Buddha, and many contemporary teachers from all spiritual traditions have pointed out, our connection to the present moment can take us beyond our fixation on those thoughts and feelings.  There, we are able to connect with ourselves, with others, with the world around us -- and with a vast, sacred, infinitely spacious reality that is, literally, beyond belief.  

 

A third advantage of establishing the sensations of your breath as a primary object of meditation is that it is always available and accessible -- until you croak.  Hopefully, by then,  your life and practice will have offered you the opportunity to personally experience the unconditioned and deathless realm beyond all thoughts and fears.     

 

(Sometimes it is helpful to use specific techniques to develop the ability to concentrate our attention even more fully on the breath before we can Simply Sit Still.  Here are two Helpful Tools. )

The Long Haul

As we devote more time and effort and heart to the Practice, as Mindfulness broadens and deepens our connection to the silent, vast, spaciousness of Open Awareness, I've found that things really do smooth out.  When you're in it for the long haul, Simply Sitting Still gets easier.  The Practice ends up doing you more than you are doing it.

Over time, beyond the difficulties and challenges of engaging with Life As It Is, a simple and mysterious Knowing, without words or beliefs, emerges.  Life's Sacredness becomes self-evident.

As in childhood, the simple, wordless wonder of Just Being Alive emerges --both on and off the meditation cushion.

It just takes Practice.