Now in a Can

Now In a Can

After having a fresh experience of the present moment I sometimes find myself feeling more free and relaxed. However, even as I try to write about it, sometimes the label gets used so much that we forget how fresh it can be. We can go from experiencing the world and our lives in a fresh open way with a mind that is attuned to the present moment, to a mind that labels our experience as "now" and leaves it at that. That is kind of like putting it in a can. Canned now is not really fresh. It's packaged in a label or concept. How do we go about avoiding putting our experience into a can? Well I think it has to do with having some kind of contemplative practice. Meditation practice is the most immediate way to keep the experience of nowness fresh. We need some time and space to see through the speed of concepts and labels and just be with what is. So if your now feels like it's a packaged product with a brand name label on it, then that might be a sign that a little bit of practice would help.

Does this sound like an advertisement? Now in a can, it's not so fresh.

Glass House in an Intersection

One of my teachers, Acharya Lama Tenpa Gyaltsen, once described the attitude we take to mindfulness with the analogy of a glass house. He said sometimes it is as if we think of mindfulness like a glass house in the intersection of a busy street. Can you imagine if your house were made of glass and it were in a busy intersection? Well we wouldn't feel safe in our abode and certainly with everything coming at us, our glass house would be destroyed. So I find that an interesting analogy. I do think that when we first try to practice being aware and mindful in ordinary daily life experience we feel so easily distracted the it seems impossible to maintain our mindfulness. We could be mindful of driving the car one moment, taking in the environment, and in the next moment our cell phone buzzes and our mind jumps to what could be happening next. Our mindfulness is lost and we are no longer in the present. Luckily, however, the present moment is not that fragile. We can easily get lost in frantic thought in what seems like the fraction of a second, yet what we could remember is that the present moment is never lost. Even when we get distracted, our mindfulness is not destroyed. In reality the present moment is more like a diamond. It is harder than diamond. So we could take more of an attitude of confidence towards mindfulness and the present moment. Appreciate and enjoy whatever arises moment by moment and if you get distracted, or thrown into a state of anxiety by a call you might be getting on the phone, then don't worry. These experiences do not need to harm our mindfulness. There present moment is still there waiting for you and awareness is also always available. We could remind ourselves that mindfulness is actually resilient and something innate to use as human beings. It takes some effort to come back to now, yes, but it is not like a glass house that is so easily damaged. No-one and no-thing can destroy the present moment!