Do not pursue the past. Do not lose yourself in the future. The past no longer is. The future has not yet come. Looking deeply at life as it is. In the very here and now, the practitioner dwells in stability and freedom. We must be diligent today. To wait until tomorrow is too late. Death comes unexpectedly. How can we bargain with it? The sage calls a person who knows how to dwell in mindfulness night and day, 'one who knows the better way to live alone.'
I want to become acutely aware of all I've taken for granted.
The present is passed over in the race for the future; the here is neglected in favor of the there. Enjoy the moment, even if it means merely a walk in the country.
We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.
We are just living this moment; we don't have to live 150,000 moments at once. We are only living one. That's why I say you might as well practice with each moment.
When you are here and now, sitting totally, not jumping ahead, the miracle has happened. To be in the moment is the miracle.
One of the purest souls ever to live on this fallen planet was Nicholas Herman, known as Brother Lawrence. He wrote very little, but what he wrote has seemed to several generations of Christians to be so rare and so beautiful as to deserve a place near the top among the world's great books of devotion. The writings of Brother Lawrence are the ultimate in simplicity; ideas woven like costly threads to make a pattern of great beauty.
It has a lot to do with developing patience, not with the check-out person so much, but with your own pain that arises, the rawness and the vulnerability, and sending some kind of warmth and love to that rawness and soreness. I think that's how we have to practice.
Nowness is the essence of meditation. Whatever one does, whatever one tries to practice, is trying to see what is here and now. One becomes aware of the present moment through such means as concentrating on the breathing. This is based on developing the knowledge of nowness, for each respiration is unique. It is an expression of now.
Cultivate an ever-continuous power of observation. Wherever you are, be always ready to make slight notes of postures, groups and incidents.
Staying present, living in Presence is the best gift anyone can give to those they love.
