And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot
Four Quarters, Little Gidding, pt. 5
Hi, everyone.
I would say good morning, as it is a spectacular morning shining through my living room windows just now. I wish I could bring you back here with me and talk with you sitting next to me, watching sparkles of sun break through the dark grey of rain clouds outside. I hope you can imagine it. Have a cup of coffee and sit with me. This is one of my favorite moments: both this early morning place on my couch and the writing of this newsletter and I am grateful to know you might take a moment to be here too.
(I've been reading way too much fiction lately hence the fluffy over-description. Sorry. :)
To the point:
One of my students who shares an interest in Buddhism, in meditation and in a particular Bay Area Buddhist teacher, Phillip Moffit, told me yesterday about a Dharma talk on "What might have been" - on clinging to the past. As I sit in the unusual quiet of my house and listen to the talk I realize that clinging is one of my favorite pastimes, although not to the past. Clinging comes in many forms. I have spent very little time lingering on what I could have done or should have done so in large part my life feels free from regret. I have all kinds of stories about why that's true - some are good and some are not. In any case, in exchange for letting the past be I know myself to stretch far ahead to the future grasping at what I will do or become or create.
The future nearly always obscures my vision to the point of creating a constant state of frantic movement toward something not only outside the present, but outside myself. This ebbs and flows like all things, but when I feel lost, when I feel a lack of control, a sense of not knowing I begin looking at what I will do next. I make another plan, seek out another solution, set a clearer goal, use a better technique, generally imagining what it will be like in the future if I work a little more or a little harder. Everything already created and set in motion is lost to the greener shade of future's grass. Ah, well. So it is for me. And for you it may be different.
What I am aware of lately is the energy lost in such repose. Whether clinging to the past in reverie or regret or to the future in fantasy or anxiety, clinging wastes the energy that could be used to relish the singular moments of our lives and infuse them with richness.
This morning when I went to wash my hands I did something unusual - an experiment in being present. I slowed down enough to really look at my hands and feel them in the soapy warmness. I have nice hands I thought. Long fingers, strong nails, agile and strong. After all, they are responsible for my very quick and accurate typing speed, for which I am known to brag. Yes, I think my hands are beautiful and I am grateful for all that they have done and will do. Mostly, though, I don't notice. My story is I am too busy.
Phillip is known for using both T.S. Elliot and Trappist monk Thomas Merton to illustrate Buddhist teachings. This morning, not for the first time, I read again the following quote by Merton: "To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is itself to succumb to the violence of our times."
Yes, it is so, isn't it? This is one way of clinging to the future or even to the present. And yes, it feels violent. It feels like inner violence to myself often followed by self recrimination for what I have not yet done and should be doing. But, AND, if I decide - if only for a moment - to do nothing about any of it, to be still, to let it wash over me without identifying with the judgements then I feel the energy restored. I can see what one thing I need to do as the most important thing and the moment becomes rich even if it's uncomfortable or painful. Phillip talks about this as living in cycles, small moments of where you are now not where you could have been or where you will be. Our lives are many cycles at once: right now I am a writer, but I am also a mom and will be that completely in the moment. The cycle is right now, it's not next week or next year. It's not that I am 34 going on 64 with no time to waste. I am only here and right here is enough. It is. Enough.
"Said another way, don't make a panoramic movie out of your difficult schedule [or situation] such that you are constantly seeing yourself doing all that has to be done, as if it were going to be done all at once. Instead just do what has to be done right now, for that's all you can do. It may sound like a simple thing to do, but it is very subtle and difficult, yet so liberating!" Phillip Moffit, Article - Practicing Nonviolence Toward Self.
The moment of practice is a cycle too. When you practice you are practicing now. It's a cycle in which you commit to being present with where you are. Practice is presence. Practice is the act of expressing life as a return to the current moment over and over again. Maybe that's why maintaining my own practice is so difficult. Hmmm? You?
So, practice. Practice Pilates - being present in your body over and over again. Come in to the studio or do it at home, but do practice. You can't do Pilates without having a practice just like I can't call myself a writer without sitting down each day and writing. Each time I arrive it is a practice, it's the acknowledgement of value in one moment.
May you find richness in every moment, good, bad, difficult or easy. They all have value.
With gratitude,
Chantill
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