A monk asked Tung Shan, "What is Buddha?" Tung Shan said, "Three pounds of flax".
Note: As a precursor, I am NOT advocating an all-out hedonism which I feel is very destructive. I can’t take the time to distinguish this view from hedonism because it’s frikin late, but understand that living in the moment is not the same as living for the moment and disregarding tomorrow.
Here's something that I've seen alot of in college (and it's become more and more prevalent as I've grown older): People not living in the moment. You know you've seen it, and, if you're like me, you're guilty of it also.
At its most innocent level, it is finals week. "I just want these tests to be over" or "Summertime will be SO nice". Unfortunately, halfway through the summer we've decided that school is awesome- no job, living with friends, etc. and soon enough we're back at school and the cycle starts again.
I’m thinking of a person who is always talking about the next trip, the next activity, the next weekend (maybe even the next night of the same weekend). A person can get so wrapped up in the idea of an activity that hasn't come to pass that they miss 80% of what they're doing in that moment. Unfortunately, this repeats during the very activity they were previously touting! I haven't heard many motivational speakers shouting to live life at 20%.
The same concept applies to the person who is at the party every Friday night, but is also on the phone at that very party talking to his/her friend to see if there is a better party.
I think this is a very important issue, but I think at the heart of it is our viewpoint. There is this flawed idea underlying all of this that looks at life as a checklist instead of a journey.
A quote to die by
"Life, of course, is something that can be enjoyed perfectly when all of my obligations are complete."
...
This statement is bad. It’s very bad. This thought process, this view that we have though we might not know it is profoundly detrimental to our lives and the enjoyment of our lives.
You've maybe heard this idea before but I don't think you can be at anywhere near your full potential in productivity, happiness, anything really until you've embraced this. From my observation, a loose pattern exists between these people who never really “dig” (as Kerouac would say) the present and a subsequent unhappiness.
Oh dear, what can I do?
1. Notice when you are looking forward to something and remember the present. The human mind, I think, has a way of embellishing things and ideas (of how great that party is going to be Friday night). The reality is that Friday won’t be as good as your mind makes it now, but this Tuesday afternoon at work is a whole lot better than you think it is at first glance.
2. Catch yourself saying the words “I can’t wait until”. I am not trying to say that looking forward to things is bad in itself. The excitement of a new undertaking is and should be exciting. All I’m saying is that that moment in the future is something you don’t have now, but you DO have the one you’re in, and understanding that is a big step towards enjoying your life more.
3. Notice the little things. If you’re having trouble enjoying a walk through the forest, don’t wait for a spectacular hilltop view which might never come. Instead, pick up a leaf from the ground. Look at it. Bring it right up next to your eye so you can see the intricacy, every little vein and its branching “sub-veins” bringing life to each part of the leaf.
4. This is just an idea I had. You could call it an exercise in Zen. The idea is simply a trip, a road trip, perhaps, with no destination. If you deliberately did not have a destination, then you could not look forward to a destination. If you wanted to enjoy your trip you would be forced to do it along the way. The drive, the stops, the conversation would have to consume your attention because there would be nothing else to take it. You could not depend on an idea formed in your head about a future activity.
Ok, this is getting long and I feel I’m just scratching the surface of what I could write. I’ll try to wrap it up (but that’s what I told her, giggidy).
At any moment there are infinite things you can see and an infinite way to think about these things. Enjoy that. I’ll leave you with a teaching method of Robert Pirsig, a Freshman English teacher.
He’d been having trouble with students who had nothing to say. At first he thought it was laziness but later it became apparent that it wasn’t. They just couldn’t think of anything to say.
One of them, a girl with strong-lensed glasses, wanted to write a five-hundred-word essay about the United States. He was used to the sinking feeling that comes from statements like this, and suggested without disparagement that she narrow it down to just Bozeman.
When the paper came due she didn’t have it and was quite upset. She had tried and tried but she just couldn’t think of anything to say.
He had already discussed her with her previous instructors and they’d confirmed his impressions of her. She was very serious, disciplined and hardworking, but extremely dull. Not a spark of creativity in her anywhere. Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, were the eyes of a drudge. She wasn’t bluffing him, she really couldn’t think of anything to say, and was upset by her inability to do as she was told.
It just stumped him. Now he couldn’t think of anything to say. A silence occurred, and then a peculiar answer: "Narrow it down to the main street of Bozeman." It was a stroke of insight.
She nodded dutifully and went out. But just before her next class she came back in real distress, tears this time, distress that had obviously been there for a long time. She still couldn’t think of anything to say, and couldn’t understand why, if she couldn’t think of anything about all of Bozeman, she should be able to think of something about just one street.
He was furious. "You’re not looking!" he said. A memory came back of his own dismissal from the University for having too much to say. For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see. She really wasn’t looking and yet somehow didn’t understand this.
He told her angrily, "Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick."
Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, opened wide. She came in the next class with a puzzled look and handed him a five-thousand-word essay on the front of the Opera House on the main street of Bozeman, Montana. "I sat in the hamburger stand across the street," she said, "and started writing about the first brick, and the second brick, and then by the third brick it all started to come and I couldn’t stop. They thought I was crazy, and they kept kidding me, but here it all is. I don’t understand it."
Neither did he, but on long walks through the streets of town he thought about it and concluded she was evidently stopped with the same kind of blockage that had paralyzed him on his first day of teaching. She was blocked because she was trying to repeat, in her writing, things she had already heard, just as on the first day he had tried to repeat things he had already decided to say. She couldn’t think of anything to write about Bozeman because she couldn’t recall anything she had heard worth repeating. She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly for herself, as she wrote, without primary regard for what had been said before. The narrowing down to one brick destroyed the blockage because it was so obvious she had to do some original and direct seeing.
He experimented further. In one class he had everyone write all hour about the back of his thumb. Everyone gave him funny looks at the beginning of the hour, but everyone did it, and there wasn’t a single complaint about "nothing to say."
In another class he changed the subject from the thumb to a coin, and got a full hour’s writing from every student. In other classes it was the same. Some asked, "Do you have to write about both sides?" Once they got into the idea of seeing directly for themselves they also saw there was no limit to the amount they could say.
-Brett
