The Basics of Dzogchen

There are many different practices in Buddhism, just as there are in Christianity. Dzogchen is a set of practices within Tibetan Buddhism. Dzogchen is translated as the Great Perfection or the Great Completion. These teachings are based on the understanding that within each of us lies a primordial state of perfection. Lama Surya Das, a leading Buddhist teacher and author of Awakening the Buddha Within, has many books and lectures that cover this special set of practices. We also talk about this state as Buddha nature or our innate goodness. However, I’m sure many of us have days when we don’t feel like there is any goodness to be found. But even then and even now, it is here, just waiting to be uncovered, just waiting to be nurtured, just waiting to be allowed to shine. The teachings of Dzogchen encourage us to discover this innate goodness, to practice cultivating it, then put it into action in our lives.

We don’t have to wait to get reborn, we don’t have to even decide whether reincarnation is true or not. We just need to practice being present, and find out for ourselves if what they are saying is true. A great quote from a Dzogchen master named Manjusri is, “One instant of total awareness is one instant of total freedom and enlightenment.” Dzogchen breaks down this idea of “enlightenment” into bite size pieces.

There are three primary points in Dzogchen: View, Meditation and Action.

The Glimpse/View: To recognize one’s own nature

Meditation/Practice/Path: To practice resting in that nature

The Result/Fruition: To sustain that awareness

The basic premise of Dzogchen is that everything exists in the natural state. Imagine that everything you need right now exists in this present moment. No place to go, nothing to do, just be present and you will find whatever you need. How can this be? Imagine that whatever answer you are struggling with, whatever situation is worrying you, that the process for solving this issue is to first do nothing. Now, of course, many of us already choose the method of “doing nothing”. We do nothing because we are afraid, or we do nothing because we can’t decide, or do nothing because it seems too difficult to think about the problem. So, I’m not talking about THAT kind of doing nothing—I think most of us have all already mastered that. This is actually a different kind of “do nothing”. This is about being fully present in this moment and being open to the huge potential that exists in each moment. So maybe “being open and present” is a little doing, but mostly not doing--not being distracted, not struggling, not over-analyzing--just relaxing into the fullness of the present moment.

Most of us have already had a glimpse of being fully present. Recall a time that you were in nature or playing a sport well or listening to a great piece of music or see great art, when you felt “in the zone”, a sense of all things being connected, a sense of life being perfect, nothing to be added or subtracted. That is awakening. That is what this is all about. There is a state of being that we all can realize and cultivate.

One of the things I love about Buddhism is that it is very practical. This is not about anyone telling you what to believe. Buddhism is about offering up a new way of looking at the world, then you have to go try it out for yourself. It’s not enough to just read about it or hear about it. Test is for yourself. You decide if it works. And Dzogchen teachings are the same. There are people who came before us, who were kind enough to show us the path that worked for them. They found some techniques that worked, for breaking down pre-conceived notions of how they viewed the world, and now we have an opportunity to learn from their experience.

Dzogchen is the meditation teaching of non-meditation. We’re not trying to get to some higher level of consciousness; we are not trying to create some vision or special experience. We are practicing just being. We begin by bringing awareness to the breath, just breathing in and breathing out with awareness. But focus on the breath is not the end process. It is a stepping stone to just resting naturally in the moment. Imagine that you are in a dark room, with windows so dirty that you can’t see out. Your sense of the world would come from all the experiences that you have had inside that dark dirty room. Now, imagine one day that your arm accidentally brushes up against the window, and a little dirt is removed, enabling you to see a little bit of what lies outside the window. This little glimpse might encourage you to begin washing the window little by little until you see more and more of what’s going on around you. The dirt symbolizes all the thoughts and sensations that cloud our sense of being. There’s no reason to get mad at the dirt. We don’t need to feel badly for having the dirt—everyone has some. We just need to clean the windows. We are cleaning the windows of our awareness. With all this cleaning, we might then realize that, in truth, there is no window; there is no room. It’s just a mental construct that we created in order to define who we are. But with the practice of awareness, of seeing beyond our thoughts and sensations, we start to experience the fullness of life. When your window was dirty, the fullness of life still existed. There were still many other things happening beyond your small room, but YOU didn’t know it. This is a good illustration of the glimpse that Dzogchen is talking about. The glimpse of the fullness of life begins with just washing the window a bit.

The second step in this process reminds us that, to expand the number of moments we experience fully, we need to commit to and then follow through with practice. We commit to practice no matter how difficult or frustrating it might sometimes be. Oftentimes, early on in practicing mindfulness and meditation, we are struck by all the crazy thoughts and projections that we place on ourselves and the world. It can be somewhat unsettling. It may make you want to jump up and run out of the room and never meditate or be mindful again. BUT, this second step reminds us to stay put, to hang in there, to keep trying. As Pema Chodron says, if you can manage to hold your seat, especially during the tough times, great progress can be made. if you can manage to not get freaked out by what you’re experiencing, and to just sit and observe how your mind tries to hold onto its old way of viewing the world, then you start to see the incredible possibilities that truly do exist in this world.

Another powerful mindfulness exercise is described by Don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements. He suggests that we imagine we go back to our childhood, before we were given words to describe everything, before we personally had an experience of so many things. From this place of innocence and not-knowing, look around at everything and everyone and imagine that you are seeing and experiencing this world for the first time, without words or experiences to pre-judge. Imagine that you are experiencing yourself without words, without preconceived notions about who or what you are. By taking away our words and our memories, we can start to recognize what a huge impact our words and memories make on how we interpret the world that we live in today. In this way, we start to see the world anew. Dzogchen teaches that this is NOT just a mental exercise, that you really do have the ability to start fresh in each moment.

The last step and of course continual step, is action, continually expanding the moments spent in full awareness. With the glimpse, then practice, you begin to embody this new way of living in more and more moments of each day. You discover more and more ways to see the world and yourself in a fresh new way. You rest in the full view of life more often and that becomes your pattern, your “habit”, when the synapse of your brain become rewired.

There is a wonderful Dzogchen poem by the Venerable Lama Gendun Rinpoche:

Happiness can not be found
through great effort and willpower,
but is already present,
in open relaxation and letting go.

Wanting to grasp the ungraspable,
you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as you open and relax
this tight fist of grasping,
infinite space is there -
open, inviting and comfortable.

Nothing to do or undo,
nothing to force,
nothing to want,
and nothing missing -

Emaho! Marvelous!
Everything happens by itself.

Imagination

(To listen to the talk, click here)

In our search for happiness, imagination is one of the most powerful tools available to us. Stephen Batchelor has a wonderful chapter on imagination in his book Buddhism Without Beliefs. In it, he describes that the three most important factors in mastering mindfulness and meditation are:

• First is commitment. We make a conscious commitment to ourselves to devote time and effort to this worthwhile practice.
• Second is technique. We study and practice the techniques of mindfulness and meditation in order to master them.
• Third is imagination. It might seem surprising that he would elevate imagination to such importance. Why would we need to have imagination in order to awaken?

Why meditate in the first place? Why care about learning mindfulness? To relax? To de-stress? To find answers? There are many different reasons to begin a meditation practice, all excellent motivators in their own way. But one of the best motivators is our imagination. We imagine that life could be different. The first step in learning anything new is imagining that things could be different.

When people get depressed, one of the most debilitating aspects is that they cannot imagine living without being depressed. When we are in pain, it seems that we lose our ability to imagine life without pain. We all get caught up in the experience we’re having, clinging to it with the unconscious assumption that things will never change. And yet, it is possible. In the midst of a difficult experience, in the middle of reacting in our old unskillful ways, we can remember to imagine how things might be different, we can awaken to the incredible experience of living beyond our limited thinking and feeling.

How might we use our imagination as a powerful tool for passionately living life? Here are some ideas to consider.

First, we can recognize the ability to access imagination in each moment. Each moment is sacred—not just the ones spent meditating. Each moment. We are creating our life moment- by-moment. When we feel stuck in a certain situation or overwhelmed by the circumstances in our lives, we can remind ourselves to leverage the power of imagination to see clearly the breadth and depth of each situation, the possibilities beyond our limited way of thinking. We are deciding moment-by-moment how to live. Most of the time, we fall back on the easy answers, like what our parents did, or what our friends are doing or what we think we should do. We might think of so many moments as just getting through life, doing what we have to do…

Rodney Smith, a Vipassana teacher, encourages us in the following way: “We often feel our everyday existence is a distraction from our spiritual intention. When this happens, life is divided between the sacred and mundane, and the mind pits one concept against the other. But belief shapes reality, and if the belief is maintained that the sacred lies somewhere else other than Now, our spiritual life will be governed by that limitation.” We can choose to see the sacred in each situation, know our practice is not separate from living in each moment, visualizing the vast, limitless resource of imagination that creates our experience.

Second, we can practice using imagination. Our ability to think beyond our limitations is a learnable skill. Visualizations can be a powerful part of the practice, like the loving-kindness practice that we do, or imagining ourselves as the Buddha. These visualizations may at first seem corny or superficial, but that’s still a good place to start. Buddhist teachers encourage us that, even without thinking anything is changing, we are planting seeds. We know that a flower or plant begins to grow beneath the soil once it is planted, regardless if there is any change visibly seen. So are the seeds of love and compassion calling forth the awakening of innate Buddha nature, just by the mere practice of imagining.

Think of yourself as an artist. Each of us is creating a life. Each of us is writing the unfinished story of our life right now. Each of us is making choices about how to live our lives right now. The limitations that we think exist are in most cases, self-imposed. Take a few minutes, and imagine all the possible ways that you might live your life from this point forward. Think beyond your current circumstances, beyond any assumed limitations, beyond any self-imposed constraints, beyond, beyond. With this willingness to stretch beyond our boundaries, each of us can more wisely choose the possible ways we could live life to its fullest.

Third, we can never run out of imagination. Everyone feels down at times, we get sick, and get old, we feel scared and angry and frustrated. But, the truth of our being is that there is a never-ending source of light within us. We may feel angry, but we are not anger. We may feel afraid, but we are not fear. Thoughts and emotions are NOT who we are. We can remember that we are pure awareness, we can imagine that we are love and compassion. We can imagine being fully awake, fully present.

This innate goodness within us is like the Sun. The sun is always shining. It never stops. It doesn't need something outside of itself to shine. It just keeps shining--no matter what. There may be clouds in the way, it might be nighttime, so we don’t see the Sun, but the Sun is still shining. The light of our being is the same way. It might be covered up or out of view, but it’s still there . This unique point of awareness is always present in each moment.

Who or What is having this experience of living anyway? Who or what is having these thoughts or feeling these feelings right now? Who or what are you? Loosen any certainty that you are a certain way, loosen the clinging to misconception that life must unfold in a certain direction, that living is limited to a few old emotions and recurring thoughts. Imagine that you are not a thing or a body, but rather pure awareness manifesting anew in each moment. Imagine the possibilities.

Know that imagination is always available, in every moment, to every person. Access it, exercise it, strengthen it, leverage the power of it, use it as the fuel for our lives unfolding, and know the power it provides for transformation.

In fact, we would not have this Buddhist path, these powerful teachings, if the Buddha had no imagination. He would have not found a new answer, because he would not have imagined one to exist, and therefore would have not gone seeking a new way of living. That’s the power of imagination.

The Four Mind Changers

The Four Mind Changers

Buddhist teachings often sound extremely negative because there is all this talk about suffering and getting sick and dying. That does sound pretty grim. Don’t we all just want to be happy? Most of us try to ignore death and dying, staying as far away as possible until we are confronted with the harsh reality of life. There is only one cause of death that everyone suffers from. The cause of death in all cases is birth. Every one of us who has been born, by the very nature of living, are going to die. (Except allegedly all this vampire stuff out these days, but that’s another story…) The Buddhist teachings are shouting at us in order to save us from misery—Don’t sleepwalk through life! Wake up to that fact and decide how you shall live your life purposely and fully.

A well-known Buddhist meditation is this simple phrase: Since death alone is certain and the time of death uncertain, what should I do?

Looking at life in this raw state of reality can cause us to wake up. Once we see these things more clearly, we can start to live our lives more fully present. It is cliché to talk about the person who is sleepwalking through their life to suddenly be given a fatal diagnosis, then finds the happiness and peace that they were looking for all along. Do we need a fatal diagnosis to wake up? If so, then know right now that being born is a fatal diagnosis. Knowing that, what should we do? Stephen Batchelor has an excellent chapter on this meditation in his book, Buddhism without Beliefs.

Another tool for our awakening is called the four mind-changers or four reflections to turn our minds toward the Dharma, or the truth of our being. There’s a wonderful commentary on these teachings in the book by Joseph Goldstein entitled, One Dharma, if you’d like to learn more.

The first reflection encourages us to contemplate the preciousness of our human birth. We all often take being alive for granted. Imagine all the activities and events that had to take place or not take place for each of us to be here in this very moment. Human beings are somewhat fragile, and Living isn’t always easy. We each have had our own challenges, the issues in our lives that we have grappled with. Each of us, we all navigated through all the dangers and pitfalls of our lives to arrive at this moment right now. So, to experience the this incredible point of awareness is quite miraculous. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring. We don’t know for sure what will happen this afternoon. By contemplating this fact, we can pour ourselves wholeheartedly into this moment. This is another paradox in Buddhism. To live life fully, we must recognize how easy it is to not live. This first reflection is telling us to not take so much for granted, to wake up with gratitude to this experience of life in all its complexity.

The second mind-changer or reflection is challenging us to wake up from this dreamlike state of pretending that anything is permanent. As most of us experience, western culture is often about accumulating things, accumulating experiences and even accumulating people in our lives. Checking off the list of things and activities and people we “need” to be happy, and wanting ourselves, and those things and those people to not only be a certain way, but to also stay whatever way it is that we like them to be. We try to control our lives so things can stay fun and cushy. But no matter how much we try, we cannot make things stay the same. A child once told Thich Nhat Hanh how grateful she was that things change. Otherwise, she would never grow up! So, we are asked to try loosening up, not trying to force everything and everyone to be just the way we think we want it or them to be. With this reflection, we are practicing accepting the ever-changing-ness of life. It doesn’t mean that Buddhists don’t do anything productive. It means we act from knowing that everything is impermanent and knowing that deep happiness will NEVER come from external things, activities or people.

“We’ve enclosed ourselves in a relatively small space by thinking. It binds us in, and we’re not aware that we’re living in a tiny, cluttered room. BUT With the practice of mindful awareness and quiet reflection, it’s as if the walls of the room are torn down, and you realize there’s a sky out there.” - Larry Rosenberg, The Art of Doing Nothing (Tricycle Magazine, Spring 1998)

There is tremendous power seeing things and actions and people with fresh eyes, adding compassion and wisdom to each situation instead of a checklist for improvement. This is critically important to the way we view our own bodie, our own lives. Many of us are constantly trying to get things just right. Get a new haircut, find the perfect dress. Instead this reflection is encouraging us to waking up each morning and first focus on full awareness, instead of first on the to-do list. This idea seems like the polar opposite of what we have been taught to do, but it’s been proven to work a heck of a lot better than the method of accumulation and looking for external happiness. Our lives are like the sand mandalas that are made, everything we have will eventually wash away. We may wish for certain things in our lives to change more quickly or other situations to not change at all. But the question is: How do we look at each situation with curiosity and non-judgment. Our lives will continue to change and morph and become something entirely different, whether we want to or not. The joy of the journey is determined in whether we ride the waves of uncertainty, or grasp at everything with tight white knuckles.

The third reflection is that everything we do has consequences. In Hinduism, the belief is that karma is unrelenting; if this then that, there’s nothing you can do to “save” yourself from unskillful past actions. But Buddha turned this idea of karma on its head. His taught that yes, there is the law of cause and effect, but it is far more helpful to focus on what we are doing right now in this moment, than to worry about what we did ten years ago. How can we be more kind and more generous and more grateful and wiser right now? There is this element of grace that exists in Buddhism. The idea is that we can wake up at any moment and begin increasing the compassion and wisdom in our lives.

The four reflection is about how labeling things as good, bad or irrelevant is causing us suffering, If we don’t try something new, we will continue to get the same suffering in our lives. If we focus on what we’re afraid of, on what we don’t want, then we will have no time to learn from all the new experiences in our lives happening moment- to-moment. This reflection is encouraging us to see what truly is and work with it. Sometimes suffering may seem too harsh a word, but even that vague sense of dissatisfaction is robbing you of the joy just waiting to be experienced. Don’t live your life settling for good enough when it comes to experiencing joy and happiness. We might try to continue old unskillful habits rationalizing this is what we like, this is what we con’t like, and we don’t care about this other stuff. True happiness will always depend on what is within us, not what is happening to us. Aldous Huxley said that the measure of man is not what happens to him, but what he does with what happens to him.

So, this last reflection on curiosity and non-judgment is about fully experience “not knowing”. What if it was okay to not know, but to keep asking the question with an open heart? What if the answers that we are seeking are there in the silence of each moment? What if admitting that we don’t know and sitting in silence with that was the best way to find the best answer. The Buddha taught that not knowing frees us to find new answers. We can rest with the idea of “I don’t know”.

So, the four mind changers/reflections are:

• The preciousness of our human birth
• The contemplation of impermanence
• The law of cause and effect
• The fact that craving, aversion and ignorance causes suffering and will never bring us complete happiness

These four reflections are powerful tools to support us in transforming our sense of living, to infuse deep happiness into life, regardless of our external circumstances:

Purpose of this teaching is to see with fresh eyes, to hear with fresh ears, to taste, to smell, to feel the warmth of the breeze on your skin, as if for the first time. This week, imagine that you are experiencing some activity for the very first time. Imagine that you truly don’t know, and see how that changes the experience.

Since death alone is certain and the time of death uncertain, what should I do?

The Four Immeasurables

The Four Immeasurables

"Compassion and love, joy and equanimity are not mere luxuries.
As the source both of inner and external peace,
they are fundamental to the continued survival of our species."
--His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama

During the time of Buddha’s enlightenment, there was the beginning of a shift from a purely agrarian economy to some capitalism that was springing up in small towns around Northern India. One of the things that Buddha discovered was that along with the process of selling and buying also came greed, corruption, stealing, killing. Although the time may have been long ago, it seems that our financial situation continues to have elements of greed, corruption, stealing, killing. Buddha identified a reaction in people, that can happen in good times and in bad, when people feel a primitive sense of lack and poverty, have a sense of separation from one another, a desire, a craving to gain advantage over others, a need to put up defenses. As Buddha reflected on the negative impact of these thoughts and feelings, he could see that they were arising out of a sense of craving, aversion and ignorance. This reaction caused great suffering in the world then, and it causes great suffering in the world now.

So what do we do? Where do we begin? Is it an impossible task to overcome these historic and monumental struggles within and around us? The Buddhist teachings encourage us that there is a way to get better address the challenges we face. The Buddha discovered that we can get beyond these struggles: First, by recognizing them for what they are, then by practicing a kinder way of being and living, to see things more clearly, to act more compassionately and wisely.

One of the practices that the Buddha developed to help cultivate these attitudes and actions are call The Four Immeasurables, The Four Sublime States, which are LOVING-KINDNESS, COMPASSION, SYMPATHETIC JOY and EQUANIMITY.

The short prayer practice goes like this:

May all beings have happiness and the cause of happiness,

May all beings be free from suffering and the cause of suffering

May all beings have sympathetic joy which is free from suffering

May all beings come to rest in the great equanimity which is beyond attachment or aversion to friend, enemy or stranger.

The Buddha taught the following to his son, Rahula (from "Old Path White Clouds" by Thich Nhat Hahn):

"Rahula, Practice loving kindness to overcome anger. Loving kindness has the capacity to bring happiness to others without demanding anything in return. Practice compassion to overcome cruelty. Compassion has the capacity to remove the suffering of others without expecting anything in return. Practice sympathetic joy to overcome hatred. Sympathetic joy arises when one rejoices over the happiness of others and wishes others well-being and success. Practice equanimity to overcome prejudice. Non-attachment is the way of looking at all things openly and equally. Myself and others are not separate. Do not reject one thing only to chase after another. I call these the four immeasurables. Practice them, and you will become a refreshing source of vitality and happiness for others."

So, the practice of the Four Immeasurables calls upon each of us to try to cultivate these four feelings and actions. In these practices, sometimes we don’t initially feel very loving or joyful. We start to say this prayer about everyone being happy and peaceful, and we don’t feel very happy or peaceful ourselves. Just sit with those thoughts and emotions; make friends with them. Feel it completely, then go back to the practice of visualizing being loving and kind. This practice is not to whitewash over longstanding emotions. RATHER, it is to uproot those old habitual emotions, see them for the illusion that they are, and replace them with kinder and more productive ways of viewing the world.

Loving-kindness - I want all beings to have happiness and feel love.

Compassion - I want all beings to be free from suffering.
Sympathetic Joy - I want all beings to never be separated from sublime joy
Equanimity - I want all beings to live in equanimity, beyond judgments of friend, enemy, stranger.

Love, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity practice is a way to transform our world:

1. We see more clearly how we are interacting in the world.

2. We explore a new way of being, to be open to new ways of seeing ourselves and others.

3. We learn to fully embody these experiences as we deal with ourselves and others.

Using Awareness to expand the possibilities

In Buddhism, we practice mindful awareness, striving in each moment to be fully aware of what is happening. Many of us seek out this practice because we feel stressed and overwhelmed by our daily lives. It might seem that mindfulness is about relaxing and letting go of that which we are stressed about. But have you ever tried to relax and let go, only to find yourself holding on more tightly? This is the illusory bind that our minds put us in. In Buddhism, we are taught about the paradox of mindfulness, the paradox of practice, that to truly let go, we must first be fully aware, to be mindfull is to be aware in three ways—by not pushing away, by not holding on to, by not ignoring. Just being awake to what is happening in each moment.

These three instructions are the key to being fully mindful in the moment. These practices of not pushing away, not holding on to, not ignoring enable us to become aware more fully of what is. We start exactly where we are at. It is only from that starting point, that we can then see new possibilities in our lives. The practice of mindfulness is the doorway to these new possibilities, new ways to see our selves and our lives and others. By seeing more possibilities in our lives, we give ourselves the gift of a deeper, richer, fuller experience of living.

As I shared a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been so struck by the simplest of sayings from George Santayana. “Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness. “ So, how do we become aware of what is possible? In Buddhist practice, knowing the full range of possibilities can only occur by being fully present in each moment. We are taking in information in each moment, processing the world around us. But we most often take in information and immediately filter it through our past experiences. Some of this filtering is good—we learn early on that stoves are hot and that we don’t want to put our hands on a hot stove or we will get burned. But other of our filters are not so simple or so serving. We might have had an abusive parent, whose actions caused us to believe that we are not worthy of love, that there is something wrong with us, that we are something less than. It might seem that pushing those experiences away would be the best way to overcome these horrible misperceptions. But, once again the irony of mindfulness is that we must first be fully aware of what we are thinking, what we are feeling, how we are responding, in order to open ourselves up the full range of possibilities.

Albert Einstein has some wonderful quotes about seeing our selves and our lives with fresh eyes. One quote is that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The other quote I love is that "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." These are very Buddhist perspectives, encouraging us to see everything and everyone in our lives, including ourselves with a fresh perspective, like seeing with new eyes.

The paradox of the practice of mindful awareness is that by not pushing away, not clinging to, not ignoring, we start to see things and people and situations in our lives more clearly, and we begin to create new possibilities. On most days, most of us probably spend our time reacting in conditioned ways. We wake up in the same way, we brush our teeth in the same way, we drink our tea or coffee in the same way, we respond to the stresses in our lives in the same way. So, how do we wake up in the middle of our lives?

There are simple ways to try this theory out. One way to open ourselves up is to change our routine in some way. For example, tonight when you brush your teeth, you could try holding the toothbrush in the opposite hand that you normally use. It seems simple enough. But, research shows that something as simple as using a different hand to brush your teeth causes your brain to grow new neural networks. By not reacting in conditioned ways, we are actually training our brains to see ourselves and the world in new ways. We are creating new neural networks that enable us to create new possibilities in our lives.

Another simple exercise that we can try is in this moment, cross your arms. Something we all often do. Just cross your arms in this moment. Now, try crossing your arms in the opposite way. There are so many ways in our lives to shake up our old way of seeing things. The loving-kindness practice that we do at the end of each hour is another way to be open to new possibilities. We do this visualization and continue to be present with what arises. Sometimes when we are visualizing the person in our life who we find it difficult to be with, we don’t feel very loving and kind towards them. The practice calls on us to stay open to the emotions and thoughts that arise in the moment of trying to send them loving-kindness. We practice staying present with whatever comes up. And this age-old practice has been proven to help open us up to new possibilities, new ways of seeing the people in our lives, new ways of seeing ourselves, new ways of responding. So, this simple practice of mindful awareness can transform our lives in uncountable ways. Not pushing away, not clinging to, not ignoring things in our lives, but rather waking up to, bringing awareness to, seeing with fresh eyes, the habitual reactions in our lives. In that moment of clarity, in fact only in that moment of clarity, can we choose a new way of responding, a new way of being.

This new way of being is said to be the ultimate freedom.

In the teachings of Tilopa, a buddhist teacher around the tenth century, he says:

“If you strive in this endeavor, you will free yourself from the imprisonment of the endless cycle of suffering.

If you meditate in this way, you will burn the veil of karmic impurities.

Therefore you are known as “The Torch of the Truth”.

Each of us can strive to not push away, not cling to, not ignore our conditioned ways of being and see life full of new possibilities. You are “The Torch of the Truth”!

What does "being in the moment" really mean?

There’s an often quoted statement in Buddhist writings about “Being in the Moment”, and encouragement about the freedom that arises from just being in the moment. In Buddhism, we are taught that being fully present is the doorway to true freedom, to deep happiness, not dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, not acting out of conditioned habits. But what does that really mean?

There is a wide spectrum of interpretations to “being in the moment”. One extreme is to use it as an excuse for bad habits. Haven’t we all had those moments where we tell ourselves that we just want to “be in the moment”, we don’t want hassle with changing our bad habits, we don’t want to think about the consequences of our actions. We’re having fun, or we just want the relief that comes from acting in old, comfortable ways. And yet, from a Buddhist perspective, this is NOT what being in the moment is about at all. In Buddhism, being in the moment is about being compassionately aware of what’s happening, and open to fresh ways of responding.

We all struggle against dogma, that tendency to want everyone and everything and every situation to fit into some nice little box, where one size fits all, one rule fits all. How easy life would be if there was one rule that fit all situations. The Buddhist precept of not killing seems so straightforward, but if you were in a situation where you could kill one person and save the lives of a thousand people, what would you do? The world is far too complicated to have any rule that would work in that way. So, in each situation, to be truly deeply happy, we must ask ourselves, “What is the most compassionate action in this moment.”

There was a quote from Noah Levine in Tricycle Magazine about transforming our survival instinct. We have been conditioned to care about ourselves and our families first. But in Buddhism, we’re asked to look from a higher level at the survival instinct, to a compassionate awareness for all. Noah suggests that being in the moment AND our long term survival is about asking ourselves, “How can I use my life’s energy to benefit all living beings?” Okay, that might be a bit of stretch to begin with, but I would offer a baby step of “How can I act without harming myself or others?” It might seem counter-intuitive, but it has been proven to be true. Taking a larger perspective would bring us more joy and more happiness versus continuing to focus solely on our own needs and concerns.

Noah Levine is speaking from experience. In his book, Dharma Punx, he talks honestly about his own addictions, living on the street, doing drugs, getting to a point where he cared only about his own obsessive needs, even stealing from his family and friends to feed his short term happiness. This is the extreme of selfishly being in the moment. For Noah, He was able to finally drop these horrible habits by first forcing himself to sit in the moment with each thought of wanting to do drugs, without acting on his desire to do drugs. Just sitting, just being, not acting upon, not knee-jerk doing, but holding back, examining, asking ourselves deeper questions. And he knows the pain in the moment, the frustration that arises when we try to hold back from reacting in our conditional ways. Just sitting with that frustration is about being fully present in the moment.

Each of us has habits that we know are not serving us, that have captured us and taken away some of our freedom. Think for a moment about those habits in your life that are ultimately causing you pain, even if they might be pleasant in the moment. The Buddhist path is at its essence solely about waking up in this moment in order to stop doing what is ultimately causing us or others pain.

The Zen Master Dogen describes enjoying momentary pleasures like licking honey from a razor's edge! To be fully aware of the dangers that come from being addicted to something that doesn't last. I would add that if the consequences of our actions were that immediate, like licking honey from a razor’s edge, most of us would stop doing them immediately! But since it’s usually not that immediate, we need some supporting tools to change.

The practice of “being in the moment” is a tool to help us stop reacting in old, conditioned ways. STOP! Wait for a moment. Wake up to those thoughts and emotions that are trying to lure us into old unskillful habits. The practice of mindfulness is about creating a gap between stimulus and response, buying ourselves some time to reflect on our options. George Santayana said that “Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.”

Waking up to what we are really thinking and really feeling and really doing is the first step in radically changing the way we live our lives. And, it seems that is often the biggest obstacle to starting a meditation practice. When we first start to really listen and observe what we are thinking and what we are doing, it can be very discouraging. We all have thoughts that we think and things that we do that we know are not serving us. The paradox is that the practice of mindfulness, of waking up in this moment is the ONLY way that we can get beyond these obstacles to happiness. To support our practice of staying present, we can remind ourselves that the possibility exists for a deeper long term happiness that is there in each moment, just waiting for us. All we need to do is try to stay compassionately present. Each moment is an opportunity to begin again, to try anew. To Start over. To start fresh. Thank goodness for each new moment to begin again.

We may not get it right every time, but the teachers are telling us to just continue trying, to make being present/being mindful/being compassionately aware a priority, and soon it will work a little , and the more we keep trying, the more often we will succeed.

So, perhaps this week, each of us can look at some thoughts or actions in our lives that are not serving us in the long term. Identify what it is that is not serving the greater good. And see what happens when we just be in the moment with that old habit, with the desire to just be with, not to immediately act on, but to create a gap that can help uncover all the new possibilities.

George Santayana said that “Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.” – and that is what being in the moment is all about.