You Must Be Present to Win
In my work life, I sell library automation software. In this capacity, I often represent my company at trade shows where there
is usually a raffle to which the vendors contribute prizes. One of the rules is that someone whose name is drawn must be present
to collect his or her prize: "You must be present to win." So what does it take to win the prize in this instance? We have
to show up when the drawing takes place. In order to show up, we must set our intention to be present, and we must make the
effort to arrive at the appropriate time. Then, if our name is drawn, we win the prize.
In some ways, this is similar to our practice. We set our intention to meditate. We make a certain amount of effort to be
present. However, unlike the example I just gave, we don't just win if our name is drawn, we always win..... this is because
the quality of being present for our moment to moment experience is both an action or effort we can make and the result or
fruit of that effort. The more we increase our ability to be present for moment to moment experience, the more awareness we
bring to our daily life. The more aware we are, the more choices we have, and the more choices we have, the more opportunity
we have to live our lives without struggle, effectively and compassionately.
One way we can begin to understand conceptually what being present looks like is listening to or reading stories about others'
experience. Yet, we must not mistake the teaching for the realization that comes from direct experience. As Ajahn Chah, the
great Thai meditation teacher, has said, "The value of Dhamma isn't to be found in books. Those are just the external appearances
of Dhamma, they're not the realization of Dhamma as a personal experience." And the psychologist, Scott Peck, observed that
“….the journey of spiritual growth requires courage and initiative and independence of thought and action. While
the words of the prophets and the assistance of grace are available, the journey must still be traveled alone. No teacher
can carry you there.” Teachers open the door; it is up to us to step through.
Nevertheless, the teachings can be enormously helpful in pointing the way and also in inspiring us to persevere in our practice.
Many years ago I was introduced to one of my favorite teachings on both the act of being present and how that flows into effect.
There is a story of a monk who was being chased by a hungry tiger. The monk comes to the edge of a cliff, and looking over
his shoulder sees that the tiger is almost upon him. Perceiving a vine growing over the cliff's edge, the monk decides to
crawl over the edge of the cliff and climb down the vine. As he looks down, he sees another tiger waiting for him at the bottom
and the first tiger waiting above. The monk cannot climb back up nor can he go down without meeting death from a tiger. Meanwhile,
a little mouse is gnawing away at the vine above him. What to do? But just then, the monk sees a beautiful, perfectly ripe,
red strawberry growing within arm's reach. So, with a tiger above him and a tiger below him, he picks the strawberry and enjoys
the most delicious strawberry he has ever eaten!
So what are we to learn from this teaching? Although he appeared to be only minutes away from certain death, the monk could
enjoy the here and now, this present moment, while letting the next moment and whatever awaited him take care of itself. Like
the monk, our life sends us tigers--but it also continuously sends us strawberries. The act of being present means not worrying
about the tigers of our past or future experience (about which we can do nothing); the effect is that we can both notice and
savor the strawberries in this very moment.
In The Handbook to Higher Consciousness, Ken Keyes suggests this mantra:
May "I always remember that I have everything I need to enjoy my here and now--unless I am letting my consciousness be dominated
by demands and expectations based on the dead past or the imagined future."
Living in our relative, conditioned world, there are times when we must plan for the future and memories of the past, whether
pleasant or painful, come up. But we should remind ourselves that as real as these mind objects are, the only way we can experience
the past is as a memory and the future we are planning may never come to pass. If the mind is much caught up in either past
memory or the anticipated future, we may be missing the strawberries available to us in the present moment. A useful reflection
is to examine where our minds are caught in the past or future. Once we notice this, particularly when it happens, we are
no longer caught.
There's a very big difference in the experience of taking a walk, eating, or driving a car when you are fully present than
when your mind is caught up in other things. Most of us have probably had the experience of driving somewhere and realizing
when we reached our destination that we don't know how we came to be there. And although I'm sure no one here does this, we
have all seen other drivers talking on their cell phones and driving erratically or not consistently with the speed of traffic
around them--because they are not paying attention, they are not present for their immediate experience. As Thich Nhat Hanh
might say, "When driving, just drive!"
The French essayist, Montaigne, illustrates this point: "When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; yes, when I walk alone
in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts drift to far-off matters for some part of the time, for some other part I lead them
back again to the walk, the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, to myself." Just to notice when we are caught and
gently to return to the present.
In the Zen tradition, there is a form of meditation practice called shikentaza, which is practice without the support
of focusing on the breath or other techniques for concentrating the mind. Nothing is added to the flow of our moment to moment
experience. We are usually not awake enough to see how much we do add to our actual experience moment to moment. Our minds
make up stories, things we want to believe, assumptions built upon past experience and, in effect, we interpret reality to
suit ourselves. And unless we are very aware, this is usually a subconscious process.
To see how the mind makes up stories about what it thinks it knows, let's consider several examples. There is a well known
experiment involving the enactment of a crime, such as a bank robbery, where numerous witnesses are involved. Almost no two
eyewitnesses will give the same description of either the flow of events or the bank robbers. Law enforcement personnel know
that while eyewitness testimony is helpful, it can often be of questionable accuracy and is also subject to the influence
of whatever the witnesses subsequently hear about the crime. And the memories will also degrade or change over time.
Our minds seem to have a natural tendency to complete an incomplete mental picture or to fill in the details of a situation
or story until it makes sense to us. When you are in sitting meditation and you hear a sound you don't recognize, what is
the mind's response? Often, we find our minds interpreting the sound and clinging to that interpretation even when evidence
points to something else. The last time I sat a retreat at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in Massachusetts, I heard
a very loud sound that I couldn't identify. Immediately, my mind labeled it a train. Except that the train sound never went
away; it was actually a bulldozer involved in the construction of the new Forest Refuge. Even when my mind knew that the sound
couldn't be a train, it wanted to cling to the belief of train.
Another example is the Rorshaach test in which a series of ink blots is used as a psychological assessment tool. The test
consists of a series of indeterminate dark blots, but when test subjects are asked to interpret them, they will swear that
one set of blots represents a girl taking a bath, another a pair of butterflies, and so on. A test subject often assumes that
everyone else sees just what he is seeing, but in fact the interpretations are quite different from person to person.
The point is that the mind will instantly fabricate a meaning to our experience which we believe is solid and unchanging.
The poet Ruth Bebemeyer speaks to this:
We make up beds,
And faces,
And quarrels.
We make up poems,
And stories,
And morals.
But nothing's more made up, one finds,
Than minds.
We do not realize that our mind is creating reality from moment to moment and that the reality I'm perceiving is not the same
as yours. And yours is not quite the same as the person's next to you. Why is it important to understand this? Mainly because
when we are ignorant of this understanding, we are not really awake to the truth of the present moment. We may see tigers
where, in reality, there are none, and we may miss the strawberries. Or to put it another way, we aren't present for the prize
drawing.
When we begin to understand how our minds work, we don't take them so seriously!
Now it is easy to intellectually grasp the concept of being in the present, but how can we make it real in our direct experience?
The Buddha's instruction on this point was to offer a method of investigation. His deep realization told him that wisdom only
comes through direct experience of the present moment. Most of us are familiar with his instruction of ehipasseko--to
take the teachings of others not on authority or even on faith. The Buddha invited us to come and see for ourselves by direct
observation of the nature of the way things are. And so he taught a very effective method for calming the mind that involves
slowing down, looking and seeing what is going on.
Vipassana is the Pali word for insight or clear seeing. We train our minds in a particular method of careful observation,
which leads us to see the true nature of all conditioned phenomena. We learn that meditation practice is not about zoning
out of our bodies or present experience but, as the American teacher Jack Kornfield likes to say, to have an "in the body
experience." At first, we learn the mechanics of sitting or walking meditation, such as posture and breath awareness for one-pointed
concentration. We learn techniques for working with bodily sensations and thoughts and emotions. We begin to perceive the
feeling tone that accompanies all arising phenomena, observing whether our reaction to the sense object is pleasant, unpleasant,
or neither.
Henepola Gunaratana has written "The object of vipassana practice is to learn to see the truth of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness,
and selflessness of phenomena. We think we are doing this already but that is an illusion. It comes from the fact that we
are paying so little attention to the ongoing surge of our own life experience that we might just as well be asleep. We are
simply not paying enough attention to notice that we are not paying attention."
At first, meditation practice is strange to us like any new skill. Do you remember when you first learned to drive a car?
Most of us learn with a teacher, who teaches us the rules of the road, the mechanics of driving such as steering and braking,
what the dashboard instruments mean. At first, we cannot pay attention to all of it at once and we make mistakes. Many new
drivers have accidents that are mostly caused by their inability to pay attention to all the factors of driving as well as
not having become skillful enough yet in the techniques of driving. But as we gradually gain skill and discernment, we become
better drivers.
So it is with our meditation practice. At first, we wonder if we are doing it right, and why don't we seem to be having any
insights? We may feel that we are making no progress. It is helpful to have a teacher who can guide us in working with the
hindrances that come up in our practice. Doubt is considered the most difficult of the five hindrances because it makes us
want to give up; it is particularly helpful to have a teacher or kalyana-mitta, spiritual friends, who can help us work with
it. But if we persist, we gradually notice that our minds are becoming calmer, more concentrated, and we are becoming more
skillful at actually seeing what is going on. As we begin to notice how the mind works, our understanding naturally flowers.
We begin to discern where we are tangled up in attachment, fear or confusion and the natural fruit of this investigation is
greater awareness.
Slowing down, learning to be more present is a beginning. But often, initially, more awareness means more awareness of unpleasant
emotional states, such as fear, confusion, or anger. We have kept ourselves from acknowledging our difficult emotional states
because of aversion or fear that we cannot survive them. We may not yet have experienced the greater calm, joy, compassion,
equanimity and wisdom that we hear so much about. So while we may be more present, many of us, at least initially, are not
yet tasting the strawberries.
The great psychologist Carl Jung said, "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness
conscious." While we could spend another Sunday exploring how we might work with what Jack Kornfield calls "Necessary Healing,"
let us just say that there are a variety of methods for working with pain and conflict, including working with a teacher,
support group or therapist, or doing body work such as yoga or tai chi. The good news in the Four Noble Truths is that there
is a way to be free, not by escaping our difficulties, but by changing our relationship to them. And we can't change our relationship
unless we can see with clear, unobstructed awareness in this moment.
Jack Kornfield tells a story of his teacher, Ajahn Chah, who liked to ask his monks, "Are you suffering today?" And if our
discernment is very fine, like the monks, we might answer "Yes, there is suffering today," because we understand in a deep
way the inherent unsatisfactoriness of existence. Ajahn Chah would respond, "Still attached, I see." And so the monks would
look to see where the attachment might be.
The more we meditate, the more we begin to see the impermanence of all phenomena in a deep way. And when we deeply connect
with the arising and passing away, we also eventually see that there is nothing wrong, that this is a natural process that
happens according to conditions and causes that are there, even if we cannot see them. A fruit of this understanding is a
deep faith that the universe is ticking along as it should, according to its own causes and conditions. And we begin to accept
what comes within our experience--without exception and without judgment--as simply being part of the natural arising, staying,
and passing away of all phenomena.
Being present is the condition for clear seeing, but the key that unlocks our suffering is acceptance.
This acceptance must extend first to ourselves, with all our perceived imperfections. It must encompass profit and loss, praise
and blame, triumph and defeat. It must include our ignorance.
Many of us believe that aging, sickness and death happen to others, but not to us. We believe that we deserved that promotion,
not our co-worker. We ask, "Why did this happen to me?" as though we have in some way been singled out. Eventually, through
our practice, we see the truth within our dissatisfaction.
There is a native American saying that, "Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, when all the while there is a great wind
bearing me across the sky." We are just not aware enough to perceive it.
To the degree that we can both see and accept our moment to moment experience, we will suffer less. We will experience more
compassion, equanimity and wisdom. In the same way, the suffering that goes unrecognized or that we find in some way unacceptable
within us is the measure of the difficulties we will unwittingly cause others in the world.
The monk was able to enjoy the strawberry because he was both present enough to see it and could accept the reality of the
tigers without adding in fear of the future and what might happen to him in the next moment. Deeply understanding that all
is impermanent, that death is the natural result of being born, if the next moment holds death, nothing unusual has happened.
Shikentaza, nothing added.
And so we sit or walk, returning again and again to our breath. And we gently investigate sense objects as they rise and pass
away. Instead of our usual impulse to push unpleasant states away and cling to pleasant ones, we try, as much as is possible,
to just acknowledge and be with whatever comes. The Buddha showed us the way in this manner: As the story goes, when Shakyamuni
was striving for enlightenment under the bodhi tree, Mara came many times during that night to try to prevent him. But the
Buddha was determined and prevailed; his intention and effort were very strong. Throughout the rest of the Buddha's life,
Mara came to visit many times and always, instead of rejecting him, the Buddha would recognize Mara, and invite him in for
tea.
We cannot achieve enlightenment until we can accept the unacceptable, even within this very mind and body.
Sometimes we are impatient because we live in a time of instant gratification. We are subjected to constant advertising promoting
products that will instantly make us more beautiful, healthier, powerful, pain-free and so on. But as we meditate more, we
begin to see that where we are right now is just as it is, and our acceptance of whatever is arising and passing away grows.
The French philosopher, Simone Weil, beautifully describes this process: "Even if our efforts at attention seem for years
to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul."
Layman Pang lived in 8th century China and, while he rejected formal practice as a monk, he was determined to find enlightenment
on his own. He lived a simple life as an itinerant peddler. When asked about himself, he gave this verse:
My daily activities are not unusual,
I'm just naturally in harmony with them.
Grasping nothing, discarding nothing.....
Drawing water and carrying firewood.
Harmony within our lives grows when we grasp nothing but experience everything.
A hologram is a particular type of three dimensional photo image created by splitting a laser and reflecting one arm off an
object and the other onto a photographic plate. One of the characteristics of this three dimensional image is that no matter
what angle you look at it, you see the complete object and also if you were to take a piece of the image you would still see
the entire original object. Our practice is like a hologram: As we improve our discernment through meditation practice, we
notice that no matter what we are looking at, our understanding grows holistically. So if we examine impermanence, for example,
we will find that our understanding of anatta, or the characteristic of no solid, independent self, will also grow. If we
do metta, or loving kindness practice, our compassion and equanimity will also be increased. Seeing this helps me to relax
into my daily life because I know that no matter what the present offers to my experience, it is all, without exception, a
part of the practice.
Our challenge is not to become good meditators, adept at sitting long hours on the cushion. The Buddha's invitation is for
us to live our life fully in each and every moment, with clear seeing and a mind free of defilements and delusion. Meditation
is the tool, a skillful means of training our minds. It is a path, but not the destination.
Ajahn Thanissaro describes this path in The Wings to Awakening: "The image of the path is important....First, the path is
not the goal; it is simply the way there, just as the road to the Grand Canyon should not be confused with the Grand Canyon
itself. Even though many stretches of road bear no resemblance to the Grand Canyon, that does not mean that the road does
not lead there. Secondly, the path of practice does not cause the goal, it simply leads there, just as neither the road to
the Grand Canyon nor the act of walking to the Grand Canyon can cause the Grand Canyon to be. The goal at the end of the Buddhist
path is unfabricated, and therefore no amount of desire or effort can bring it into being. Nevertheless, the path to the goal
is a fabricated process, and in that process desire, effort, intent, and discrimination all have an important role to play,
just as the effort of walking plays a role in arriving at the Grand Canyon."
Peter Matthiessen, an American teacher, has said, "In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers
try to tell us." In the moment to moment effort to be present, we win. We savor the strawberries. That is the promise of
our practice.
Thank you.
