Category: Meditation

There is no “there” there

Of course, like most people with even a rudimentary exposure to spiritual teachings, I have heard that the only moment is the present moment. I thought I understood this. But I have to tell myself the truth: I might understand this theoretically and even deeply in certain moments of heightened aliveness, but all of me doesn’t live this way. I know this because I have just uprooted a portion of my being that has been orienting toward a future “Promised Land”, a promised land that turns out is totally fictitious (I even have a new motto, “There is no promised land”).

Here’s how I discovered this: We have a new leadership team at ST and some part of me has believed that this new team was like “heavenly super stars” or a basketball team destined to win the championship and set all types of new world records in the process. And the fact is we do have a powerful new team that will bring the company forward in all kinds of new ways. But this new team is made up of HUMANS not heaven-dwellers. And there is no end to difficult business challenges and the complexities of human dynamics.

There are people in my mediation community who often take an attitude “don’t you know nothing ever really works out?”  And I have had a response inside that goes something like, “that is such a negative attitude….maybe it doesn’t work out for you because you are so negative in the first place.” But I think I understand now what is being pointed to in a statement like “nothing ever really works out” — not that wonderful things don’t happen but that our fantasies of some perfect future are just that – fantasies.

I was sharing all of this with my partner Julie before we were going to sleep the other night, sitting up in bed together on our new bright turquoise silk sheets. And I said “There is no promised land”. And she said to me “The promised land is right here.” And at that moment, our eyes met and the space of the room opened up, and it felt like we were melting into eternity. The edges of Julie’s body started dissolving into the space of the room and she looked like a deity to me, sitting on a bed of turquoise silk with pink and gold curtains behind her. And I knew she was right about the promised land, that if it exists at all, it is only because it is right here, relaxing into the beauty, brightness and space of the moment.

So now I am asking myself these types of questions: When I build up some vision of a promised land, why am I doing this? What ego need am I trying to have met by this or that fantasy? What is it about the present moment that I just can’t bear such that I need to create a vision of some idealized future? Why do I continue to invest in “there” when there is no “there” there?

I remember listening to Thich Nhat Hanh teach walking meditation. He offered the teaching that with each footstep touching the ground we could say silently to ourselves “I have arrived.” He pointed out how most people are always rushing ahead to some future moment, and he said, let’s look at this logically, the future moment you are rushing to will eventually be your grave. What’s the big hurry?

And what amazes me about the dharma is how endlessly deep it is (I heard Thich Nhat Hanh teach on this almost two decades ago and I thought “arriving in the present moment” was something I understood). I feel humbled (from the root word “humus” or earth) to have a fantasy bubble popped in such an obvious way, and to be returned to the earth, arriving right here in the groundless space of this moment, in the only promised land there is.

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Meditation as Loving Life

Tami Simon speaks with Lorin Roche, a renowned meditation teacher who teaches an approach called Instinctive Meditation. Lorin is the author of several popular books, including Meditation Made Easy and the forthcoming book The Radiance Sutras from Sounds True. He has also created the Sounds True audio learning program Meditation for Yoga Lovers. In this episode, Tami speaks with Lorin about the “posture” of welcoming all experience, ways that we can allow the body to teach the mind, and his radical understanding of desire, which plays a key part in his teaching on how we can create an individual approach to our spiritual practice. (68 minutes)

Free guide to meditation

When creating the (free) With Insight Guide to Meditation for Sounds True, I wanted to include a short quote for the front page, to summarize at least one way of approaching the meditative journey. When I came across the following description by my friend Shinzen Young, I knew I had found the right one. Nicely said, brother Shinzen:

“The ultimate expression of meditation comes when we can feel all the pains of the world, experience them with mindfulness and equanimity so they dissolve into energy, and then recolor that energy and radiate it out as unconditional love, moment by moment, through every pore of our being.”

Access all of the With Insight Guides here.

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Your original face

There is a famous Zen koan that asks, “What is your original face, the face you had before you were born?”

Whenever I have heard this koan, my first response is, “I have no idea how to answer that.” And of course, that is the purpose of a Zen koan, to confound the thinking mind and in so doing, wake us up to a deeper form of knowing.

One thing I have noticed is that the more I am able to sit in that not knowing state, to rest in a sense of “just being”, the more I can relax and feel what, if anything, is needed next. It is not a conceptual process; it is more like a listening. And from that listening, originality emerges (“original” meaning “from the origin” or “from the source”).

Waking up is not about copying anyone or anything. It can’t be. Because as soon as we are mimicking something, we are recycling someone else’s experience. We are one step removed from the source; we are no longer rooted in our own moment-to-moment revelatory experience.

My basic point here is that the more we discover our own Original Face, the face we had before we were born, the more confident we become in expressing ourselves in unique ways. In a sense, great spiritual teachers feel to me like great “artists of the spirit.” And like an inspired musician, poet, or painter, a spiritual artist knows that he or she must spend time in the space of not knowing and then trust the melodies, visions, words, and guidance that come through.

Sometimes people say to me that they are afraid of spiritual awakening because they are afraid of being erased, afraid that they will turn into a paste of nothingness. What I have found is that the more we drop the sense of being separate and disconnected, the more we tune to the underlying, unifying “hum” of being, the more we become plugged in to a current that begins to animate our life. And sometimes, the life force expresses through us in pretty outrageous ways. We take chances. We speak from our heart. We become a mystery to ourselves and a creative force in the world.

To take this even further, what if the more we discover our Original Face, the more our one-and-only physical face starts to express the love and beauty of the cosmos in unusual and distinctive ways? Abraham Lincoln is attributed with saying “Every man over 40 is responsible for his face.” I take this to mean that each one of us has a responsibility for the love and kindness and warmth and openness that our face communicates. What if the quality in our eyes, the shape of our mouth, the openness of our forehead, and even the character of our nose, is a direct expression of our capacity to know and rest in being?

At Sounds True, we often refer to the Wake Up Festival as a celebration of the “many faces of awakening.” And I love that phrase. I look forward to seeing each and every person’s one and only original face this August in the Rocky Mountains.

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Do you know what you want? … with Adyashanti

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Adyashanti

One of the most important questions we can ask ourselves on the spiritual journey, according to Adyashanti, is: What is it that I really want? Spending some time sitting quietly and contemplating this question – allowing it to take us into the depths of being – is a practice that each of us can do to learn more about what it is that is really inspiring and driving us at the deepest levels. Many of the world’s great wisdom traditions suggest a similar inquiry, and consider this question the foundation of any authentic spiritual life.

So, friends, what is it that you really want? When all is said and done, what is your heart calling out for, where are you being pulled, what is pushing you, what will this life sweetest, most precious, rare human life be organized around?

We shot this video with our dear friend Adya at The Wake Up Festival last year, where Adya opened our gathering in the gorgeous Rocky Mountains. We’re really happy that Adya will be joining us again this year, and hope to see many of you there.

Cooking as meditation… with Dr. Andrew Weil

In many contemplative traditions, it is said that we can practice meditation during the most ordinary activities, such as taking a walk, washing the dishes, or even in the midst of a busy day of emails. Here, our friend and Sounds True author Dr. Andrew Weil shows how the simple art of cooking – when engaged in a present, mindful, and open way – can offer a gateway into the experience of meditation.

We’d love to hear from you on how cooking and other so-called “ordinary” activities offer you a portal into deeper love, awakening, and aliveness in the present moment.

 

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