We are all between past and future, birth and death. Can we see, now, the gifts Life is offering us? Can we be here? If not, can we choose to return as many times as we need to? Here is here, wherever you are at any one moment. That is taking home with you.
Two Zen monks in robes and shaved heads, one young and one old, sit side by side and cross-legged on the floor. The younger looks somewhat quizzically at the older, who is turned toward him. The older says, "Nothing happens next. This is it."
Yet, within this nothing-happening is movement. Silence has a lot to say, and stillness has a lot happening. Can you be aware when you are trying to live in next and return to this is it?
* * *
Being mindful is being heartful-being in our bodies and the whole environment we are presently in with intimacy and awareness, not halfway. Wholeheartedness entails welcoming space for something fresh to arise and give itself, something given only by not filling the space with our agenda and ourselves.
Relaxing expectations of what is to be, needs to be, or ought to be allows this fecund spaciousness to arise. We begin to feel lighter. In learning this, life feels like a flow rather than a push. Curiosity becomes playful. Uncertainty becomes a friend. We can call this living without a period.
This being-present allows appreciating the moment, being gentle with ourselves, and availing oneself of the opportunities that are often missed by trying to escape in thought, which is, after all, futile. We allow attention to relax amid what is happening. We can return to the center, which is everywhere, by following our breathing in and out. A key is to feel ourselves as part of the whole setting rather than being someone looking out at it all. The whole will invite us in.
We practice this in meditation. Meditation may begin as a concentrative, focused practice. In time, we let attention expand. There is no longer a looking inward only. The looking can move in and out; sometimes, we feel the whole environment. We have developed a living with awareness. We discover the emptiness is not empty.
* * *
So, how much have you been where you have been lately? I offer a suggestion. Just sit and feel what arises, even if it is the feeling of nothing arising" - that, too, is something, a gift to you to receive. Nothing has a lot of something to give us. We can experience this opulent emptiness by relaxing wholeheartedly with this is it long enough. It begins to show itself.
* * *
*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2024. Permission is given to use photographs and writings with credit given to the copyright owner.
*Brian's book is An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love. The book is a collection of poems Brian wrote based on wisdom traditions, predominantly Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi, with extensive notes on the poetry's teachings and imagery.
