The Art of Zen Living

The days are long, but the years are short.

Over at The Happiness Project, Gretchin is talking about the third splendid truth.  Which I’ve quoted above.  I should also clarify that when I say All Things Mulch, I’m not talking about garden supplies.  Mulch is my male cat, pictured to the left.

Yoda, of course, is the little green jedi guy that chided Luke:

“All his life has he looked away—to the horizon, to the sky, to the future. Never his mind on where he was, on what he was doing….”

Wow.

What is the Present Moment, anyway?  To my mind, it’s the unchanging now.  Time is something that we have invented to help up make sense of the ever changing flux and flow that happens inside the unchanging Present Moment.

I know, right?  Makes my head hurt a little just thinking through that sentence.  Let me put it a different way.  Right now, in the present moment, I am writing this blog post.  Also in the Present Moment the Buddha attained enlightenment.  Also in the Present Moment, Jesus Christ hangs on the cross.  Truman gives the order to drop the first atomic bomb.  The first atomic bomb detonates.  The Spartans defend the pass at Thermopylae.  Babylon falls.  Rome rises.  All happening in the unchanging Present Moment.

So why do we spend so little time there?  Why do we always look away - to the future and to the past?

Mulch is currently on his way to bed - as I should be.  Just a moment ago, he was laying on my desk, alternately getting his belly rubbed and, when that wasn’t going on, looking at me with a look that clearly communicated his question: why am I not rubbing his belly?  What can I say?  Mulch is very much an “in the moment” kinda cat.  Through out this post, I’ll be talking a bit about human characteristics I see in the way Mulch lives his life.  I have no idea if he knows the way his actions appear to me - but his actions still remind me of important lessons.

Sympathetic Joy

One of the things Mulch does has always intrigued me.  Ever since he was a little kitten.  His companion, Megan, was always a lot more independant than Mulch was.  For every 8 minutes I’d spend petting Mulch, Megan would only need about 2 minutes of attention.  Mulch seemed to be aware of this, and when Megan wanted some attention from me, Mulch would either wait quietly until Megan was done, or if I was already petting Mulch, he would walk away from me so that Megan could have a turn.  That isn’t the most amazing part.  Mulch would sit and watch Megan get attention, and to all outward appearances, not only does he wait patiently, he also seems to be genuinely happy that there is love being given and recieved.  Too often we forget in our society, where just today I saw a woman wearing a T-shirt that read “It’s all about ME!”, we forget there there is great joy to be had in being genuinely happy for others.  I consider myself fortunate that Mulch is around to remind me.

The Present Moment Experience

Go to a quiet room.  Close the door and turn down the lights.  Light a few candles and turn out the lights if you need to.  Sit down on the floor, Indian style.  Wedge a firm throw pillow under your butt if you can - so that you’re sitting about half on the pillow.  Close your eyes, or leave them sort of half focused.  Put your hands in your lap, palms up, one plam laying on top of the other.  Breath in through your nose.  Feel the air flow in past the tip of your nose.  Exhale.  Repeat.  Welcome to The Present Moment.

If you’re like me, right about now is when my brain, tired of not having any input, jumps in and starts to yammer about something or other.

*sigh*

I can’t be too hard on my brain - it does a good job of guiding my body through this world, and it’s use to having a lot to say and to me paying attention to it.  It’s still learning how to not need my full attention all the time.  It still sounds weird to me to talk about my brain and “my” thought process as if they’re seperate from “me”, but I’m not at all sure that they aren’t.  If you’ve ever had a though that just popped into your head (or worse, took form and came out of your mouth) and then thought (or said) to yourself “Well where in the world did that come from?” then you know what I mean.

Meditation is a start, but it’s by far not the only way to be in The Present Moment.  What meditation does for me is to remind me what The Present Moment feels like.  It was only after I started to meditate that I began to recognize what a Present Moment Experience was.  That’s when I noticed that Mulch, more than any other animal I’ve ever met, spends a lot of his time in The Present Moment.  I started spending more of my time there.  To paraphrase Alan Watts, the nice thing about Buddhist spirituality is that is doesn’t confuse spirituality with thinking about God while cooking dinner.  Buddhist spirituality is to simply cook dinner.  The Taoists have a phrase that I like to describe this: Living in The World That Is.  When we are able to step back, and strip away the filters of our expectations, desires and experiences we are able to see what is actually there - The World That Is - rather than a world colored and created by our own delusions and desires.

Very cool.  When this happens, there is a clarity.  Understanding manifests, compassion arises, and doubt fades.  Happiness, bliss and equanimity occur naturally, because we are in tune with what is.  We understand, and things are Just As They Are.

I know, talking about it here makes it sound so easy.  In reality, I can usually make it almost a whole 45 seconds before I have some thought or another arise and grab my attention.  At which point I let that thought go and bring my mind back to the task at hand.  Believe it or not, this is an improvement.  There was a time I was happy to make it 10 seconds - so if you have a restless mind, don’t give up.  It’s called Buddhist Practice because it requires a LOT of pratice!

Well, that about sums things up (as much as they’re going to get summed up tonight, anyway), and as Mulch mentioned earlier, I really should be getting to bed.