What would life be like if we were simply to have a window into the unfiltered experience? While watching a Master Sheng Yen video tonight about mindfulness of the breath, he compared the method of breath watching to a kind of window into the present moment. We very rarely are able to see the present moment without the usual filters of the past and future. In fact, the lack of stillness can lead us to easily compare our current predicament to something we want more of. Or, as Marcus Aurelius relates, we wish to take "vacations" of the mind by going off to exotic countries, when in fact, the real vacation is resting in the present moment. One need not venture into some faraway planet or locale to get to this moment.
What gets in the way of this? Thinking does, as well as comparing what we have in the moment with what is past, or what we think could be in the future. When we have the mentality of "this could be the last and only moment there is", then there is no continuation, because the mind has simply stopped moving to the hypothetical next step. It resides in the here and now, where there is no judgment, because there is no dreadful prophecy of what's to come.
What's most interesting about this is that everything is always eternally now, but we are so often unable to see or feel that way, because of our mental projections. We fear retribution, stress, pressure, downfalls, bad things, all because our minds are in this constant state of comparing one moment to the next: weighing in on whether something will be good for us, bad for us or neutral, all the while not tuning into the effervescence of everything. This is what leads to a reified, stuck or depressed mindset: always thinking that things stay the same, projecting our fears into the future, and staying with what's already past. But the good news is that we can always renew ourselves by just looking at what's in front of us and continually unfolding.
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