Simple Joys of Being

  I contemplate how, even though meditation is done in exactly the same way and at the same time or location, I seem to experience something different each and every time. I have never been bored of meditation, particularly because it involves the deepest form of mind-based inquiry, in which I have tried to explore what emptiness means, how all is experienced as empty, and what is mind or self. Why, then, can we not extend the wonders and joy associated with meditation to daily life? I would like to explore a few reasons here.

   First and foremost is the habitual way we conceptualize our day to day life and efforts. As soon as I engage in an activity that appears even remotely familiar to me, but which has been performed several times before, these habitual concepts start to kick in. Either I go into autopilot, or I subconsciously internalize the idea that "this has been done before", and so I start classifying the experience as something with little or no novelty value left inside of its core. Rather than choosing to let go of those filters and engage the present moment with a sense of adventure, I am using the conceptual mind to imagine that this moment has passed or has been created before.

   Secondly (and this may sound left of center), there's the fear of death. When I am afraid of my life being either incomplete or a "total waste of time", I am comparing my present experience with something I deem as more valuable or "worth my time". This has the effect of dividing and dulling the mind, as opposed to a mind that views this moment as perfectly formed and deserving of the utmost welcome. At the heart of this constant desire to compare one experience to another to rank its overall value or worth is a deep fear of identity annihilation. I truly feel that when we are calculating what we should be doing, we are identifying ourselves with a body which is destined in the end to be extinguished. In this way, we experience great suffering, the antidote of which is to rediscover the simple freshness of being in the present.

  Thirdly, and related to the second, is a kind of self-consciousness. When I am always reflecting on who I should be (some idealized picture in my mind), I fail to accept who I truly am in this very moment, and this creates difficulties for me and those around me. When I am not carrying this standard of how I should be before me at all times, I become more open to seeing both myself and the things around me for what they are and how they feel to me. When I am not fighting these ordinary feelings and experiences, I become a kind of phenomenologist of life: curious about what is happening in the embodied present, as opposed to chasing after abstractions or moral shoulds.