“The past is already gone, the future is not yet there. There’s only one moment for you to live.” – Buddha
For me, this has been a time of year when the long view of time slips into my consciousness. There’s always this tendency, at least for me, to take a look through the telescope of memory, a faux philosopher of all things past, then closing my eyes, imagining what’s to come. I guess I have been writing long enough to get tired of some lazy, recurring themes like this one.
I was sitting on my cushion, in the grayness of early morning, occasionally thinking about re-scrambling the word omelette of past and future. One of the anchoring sensations of the sit is that no matter where you travel between your ears, it is the breath that always recaptures your attention. It’s like a song, with lyrics that take you around the world of your imagination, but the rhythm always returns you to yourself, a place you’ve never left.
I had a moment of magical contradiction. This would seem to be when the last page of the calendar, hiding the emptiness of the thin, cardboard backing just underneath, calls out for recognition, an accounting of what it all means, this deck of twelve buoys in the endless sea of time. Then, in that mindless fraction between inhalation and exhalation, mapping the past feels like a silly exercise in futility, for the benefit of no one, not even myself.
Where is it that we actually live? Every single time you look over your shoulder, the view changes. We are all, each one of us, floating in a free falling space, temporarily tethered to an anchoring thought, immediately replaced by the next one. It is a wonderful illusion, comforted by the branding of the first and last name each of us carries, with a history that is a creation of where we happen to find ourselves each time we look back.
This year, rapidly running out of sand in the broken, hour glass, is one rich in its spiritual bankruptcy; all the more reason to let it float away into the infinite diaspora of our strangled humanity. It is us at our worst and not a picture I want to frame and preserve.
Come back to the cushion with me and please make yourself comfortable. If you can sit crossed legged, it would be great, but not necessary. Rest your hands on your lap, palms up, left resting on the right. Try and sit as straight as you can. Rest your tongue on the roof of your mouth. Let your eyes remain half open, sloppily focused in front of you. After that, it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you can stay there for a while, moving as little possible.
Your mind is going to run around, like a cheese crazed mouse in a maze, but it will start to tire out. You know, when you don’t continually feed a fire with kindling, it will begin to sputter, not making much of a fuss as it settles down into nothing at all, repetition giving way to calm.
This is where I was this dusky morning, thinking about being in the moment, not as some distant, esoteric concept, but just being right there on the cushion.
My friends, we are all living in this shit storm of today and spiritual suicide seems to be a breath away all too often. Christ, I don’t want to sound like some bullshit artist, caught up in his self-importance, imparting a message of ego-driven, masturbatory nonsense. Sometimes, when I read stuff about how to calm and cope, I get seriously annoyed. You’re never really told that doing a lousy job is a helluva lot better than not even trying. Platitudes are merely a direction you travel, because it’s the effort that’s the destination.
This is a tough time of year for so many of us. We’ve had a year to fill our emotional baggage, way to heavy to allow many of us to travel to the light. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I am older than most of you, but every single moment, every single inhalation, you are gifted the opportunity to transcend the choking weight of detail.
For the life of me, I will never be able to figure out why I am here, as if there is some kind of expectation, some greater purpose, perennially masked from my awareness. The truth is, I really don’t think so.
Whether you lay out the year passed or your life to this moment, I think it is about indulging in Ben and Jerry’s special flavor of Gratitude and Humility. The facts can’t hold a candle to the feelings. Regardless of what is behind you, do you still have hope in the possibilities ahead? Can you capture it right now, before you exhale?
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