CHAPTER SEVEN

THE TIME IS NOW

A FRIEND ONCE SENT ME A CARTOON that shows three booths at a spiritual fair. The sign at the first booth says “Past-Life Readings,” and there’s a long line waiting to get in. The second says “Future-Life Readings,” and it too has a long line. The third booth reads “Present Moment,” and there’s no one there. To live in the present moment requires courage, practice, and dedication. Much of the time, our crazy monkey mind is chatting about past and future, past and future, past and future. What have I done? What’s going to happen? The Buddha’s radical response, whether we’re bored, brokenhearted, angry, frustrated, or lonely, is to be here now.

When I began to practice meditation, I had no idea what I was doing. I’d sit down and think about all my problems, endlessly reliving past dramas and anticipating future great adventures. I did this over and over for hours at a time, and once in a while for a few amazing minutes, my mind would become quiet and I’d feel a profound happiness. In spite of not knowing what I was doing, I hung in there, just to experience those moments of happiness, moments when I was truly present. It wasn’t until I met my first teachers that I began to understand that thinking is not the point of meditation.

Lady Luck was on my side. In my early twenties, I met two wonderful meditation teachers, Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein. Jack is a psychologist, Buddhist scholar, and meditation genius. Over the years, he has been a father figure for me and guided me along the path of becoming a meditation teacher. His years of training and his ongoing support have been invaluable. He is a true gift to me and to the world. Joseph Goldstein is one of the great Western teachers, having himself studied for decades with masters from India, Burma, and Tibet. He was the one person who helped me with my meditation practice on long retreats. Joseph and Jack have been friends with each other since the sixties, when along with two other teachers, they founded the Insight Meditation Society (IMS), a large center in Barre, Massachusetts. IMS offers retreats year-round, and every fall they have a three-month-long silent, intensive meditation course. Joseph has guided me during all of my long retreats and taught me the nuts and bolts of meditation.

After my first meditation retreat in the desert, I knew I wanted more. I was strongly motivated to heal from my pain through understanding the Buddha’s teachings and practices. In the fall of 1999, I signed up for my first three-month retreat at IMS. I was a little freaked out about being in silence for three months, but somewhere deep inside I knew I could do it and that my heart wanted it more than anything.

I arrived in the tiny town of Barre and discovered that I was the youngest person at the retreat by thirty-five years and the only person of color. I felt so out of place I began to doubt the whole thing—the people, the teachers, the program. I’d left my colorful community in Oakland behind, and I was filled with harsh judgments about these old people wearing dingy clothes and walking around in slow motion. I was sure I’d made a huge mistake. Maybe I should have gone to India or the Himalayas, places with real gurus and way cooler people. I couldn’t imagine how I would survive this place for a week, let alone three months.

The schedule was intense. We woke up at 5:00 a.m. and went to bed at 10:00 p.m. There was an hour of sitting meditation, followed by an hour of very slow walking meditation, and just that, on and on, all day long. We had breaks for meals but we were supposed to practice eating meditation during that time. Every evening, one of the teachers would give an hour-long Dharma talk to share aspects of meditation and core Dharma teachings.

On the first night, I got to see Joseph Goldstein and listen to him teach. I’m not sure what I was expecting; I had only seen a black-and-white headshot of him in a newsletter. But I was caught off guard by how regular he and all the other teachers were, not at all like my idea of Indian gurus. He didn’t have flowing, long hair and wasn’t wearing holy-looking robes, prayer beads, or any spiritual garb at all. He looked so regular I couldn’t believe it. He was dressed in khaki pants and a plaid shirt. He didn’t even look hippieish or sound New Agey; he didn’t use words like energy, chakra, or vibration. He had a deep baritone voice with an east coast accent that reminded me of one of my college professors. This was the great Joseph Goldstein? I had my doubts.

Despite these and so many other uncertainties, I had to admit Joseph had some serious meditation credentials. He had spent ten years studying in India with some of the greatest meditation masters of the twentieth century. He had authored some excellent meditation books and had been practicing for decades. In spite of my bad attitude, I recognized that he was all I had and I’d better listen to him. Someone was going to have to help me get through those next three months, and it might as well be him.

Over and over I coaxed myself: Come back to the breath. You can do it. Sit. Walk. Sit. It took a week before my mind went totally insane. I couldn’t understand what the teachers were saying; they kept obsessing about the present moment. What has that got to do with anything? The few times I was present, I felt an agonizing throb in my hip, volcanic anger, and a sharp stabbing in my heart. It was not fun.

My mind simply wouldn’t stop thinking. It kept exploding into thoughts, one after another—and they were manic, moving at five hundred miles an hour. I saw parts of movies, heard music sound bytes, and relived memories of the fourth grade, a trip to Mexico, ice cream sundaes, on and on endlessly. Thousands and thousands of thoughts burst forth like an insane kaleidoscope. It was painful and, most of all, exhausting. My head pounded and my stomach was in knots. All I wanted to do was go home, lie on my couch, watch TV, and eat chocolate. I was genuinely confused. Why am I putting myself through this?

By the time I had my first meeting with Joseph, I was a wreck, completely humbled and desperate for advice. During that meeting, all my doubts about him were destroyed. He was wise, kind, and extremely patient with me. After I described my hellish experiences over the previous days, he just smiled. His advice was simple. “Instead of reacting to everything that is happening in the mind, try to become mindful,” become aware and accepting of whatever is happening in the present moment. He encouraged me to notice each emotion and body sensation, regardless of whether it was pleasant or unpleasant.

When we feel angry, we often act out. We’re on a roller coaster ride, reacting to everything that appears in the mind. We direct our rage at others, verbally and sometimes physically, or we try to bury it deep down. When someone who’s repressing anger has a smile on their face, you can feel the rage seething beneath the surface, it carries a strong energy.

Mindfulness meditation offers a third way to respond to emotions. Instead of reacting or suppressing our emotions, we open to them. We learn to feel our anger, allowing it to be there for as long as it wants. This is a challenge. When we feel something painful, we want to get rid of it. Meditation teaches us to open as a witness and, if we start to react, to observe that. If we get angry, we notice that anger is present. That’s all. We greet every experience with respect, working skillfully with whatever is arising. Someone acts in a way we don’t like and we feel a strong sensation of anger: our hearts beat, our breathing gets fast, and we feel like reacting strongly right away. With mindfulness, we become aware of our emotions and learn to wait until the feeling dissipates, so that we can engage more skillfully with the other person.

Vipassana is a Pali word that means “clear seeing,” being with life as it is. We’re training our minds to be open, to be with what’s happening right now. Meditation teaches us how to be present. Using the body and the breath as objects, we cultivate awareness. Throughout the day we have the tendency to brace ourselves, and this tension is our armor. In meditation, we ease ourselves into comfort. We learn how to be.

People often come to retreats with an agenda—healing difficult relationships, overcoming health issues, desiring mystical states. Sometimes we “meditate” to escape or experience blissful sensations; we want to enter the light or transport ourselves to another time and space. We don’t want to feel the pain of our lives, so we try to meditate to numb ourselves. But meditation practice is not an escape; it’s the opposite. True practice is learning to turn towards whatever is rising in the moment. It’s learning to be with the truth of things. This path is about meeting your life, feeling what’s happening in the present moment. As you sit, emotions, often taking the form of bodily sensations, will arise. Be open to them. Be with what is. Stay present, whether you feel agitated, excited, or bored. Be with the boredom; hold it with love and nonviolence. Open to each moment even when it’s difficult. It can even be difficult to open to love and happiness. Whatever arises, allow and be present with it. Meditation is a pathway to inner peace, but it takes patience and practice.

Imagine a palace ten stories high with thousands of rooms. And imagine that for your whole life, you’ve lived in a single, tiny basement room and have never gone upstairs. In fact, you didn’t even know there was an upstairs. Then one day, you feel an impulse to look around, and you discover this vast, unlived-in space. You’ve done your best to keep things in your little room tidy, but as you climb up to the rest of the house, you see that it’s in terrible shape. The rooms have been abandoned for so long, there are massive amounts of dust, creepy crawlers, and just plain junk. Roaming the different levels, you’re shocked by the volume of trash, and at the same time exhilarated to see the potential. You get out your broom, dust rags, and mop and get to work.

The thousand-room palace is our mind, and this massive spring-cleaning is part of meditation, the “path of purification.” We explore all that has accumulated and decide what to keep and what to let go of. We discard layers of debris, some inherited from our ancestors; some from our childhood, some societal, and some residue from the state of our world. Regardless of how each piece of junk got there or to whom it belongs, it is our sacred task to clean it all up.

As we move from room to room, we face painful memories, some of which we’ve never shared with anyone else. After all these years, we feel our feelings, and it can trigger tears, terror, or rage. It isn’t easy to allow such strong emotions to move through us, but this is part of the healing process. Everything that has ever affected us physically or emotionally can be experienced as compressed energy being released. Allowing and accepting it all is vital. As each layer comes into awareness, sensations, memories, emotions, energy, and at times altered states of consciousness might arise. The mind goes through its shedding process. Sometimes the body follows; sometimes it leads. Layers of fear, rage, sorrow, and hopelessness can arise, and with the steadiness of mind developed through practice, we are able to allow this purification process to take place.

There is beauty and honesty in this journey. We shed the masks we’ve worn—masks of ignorance, confusion, and other layers that obscure the truth. We take down our smoke screens, our habitual defenses, so that we can no longer hide from the things in our own minds. Our ways of deceiving ourselves, and others, dissipate, and we feel entirely vulnerable. There is a nakedness in encountering the truth of the moment. Sad memories still come up for me as well as the pain of my mother, my father, my grandfather. But it doesn’t hurt as much as before because I’ve learned to bear witness, to sit like a buddha and ride out the storms. Meditation reminds me to listen, to wake up and pay attention, to remember that I’m part of the human family, connected to all of creation with its beauty and tragedy, suffering and freedom.

To begin, just sit comfortably on a chair or a cushion. It helps if your back is aligned; this allows the energy in the body to move freely. Close your eyes lightly, take a deep breath in and a deep breath out, and with your mind’s eye, feel the breathing and the sensations in your body. Relax your neck and shoulders; maybe move your neck a bit and gently rotate your shoulders. Relax your face and your jaw, your arms and your hands, letting the blood flow as you inhale and exhale. Settling this way calms your nervous system. Now relax your belly and bring your awareness there. We often tense these muscles, holding energy in our midsection. Releasing any part of the body that’s holding back energy can have a profound effect on our state of mind and our health. Let yourself arrive here from the busyness of the day. Bring your awareness inside you. Notice the rhythm of your breathing. Don’t force it; this is not a breath exercise. Let your breathing be natural, relaxed. Just use the sounds you hear and the sensations you feel to help you be present. Observe the rising and falling of your abdomen with each breath. There’s nowhere to go; just “be here now.” Each time you notice your mind wandering, bring the focus gently back to a sensation, a feeling, or to your breathing. In mindfulness meditation, we return again and again to the breath, sensations, and sounds. As you breathe in, open to life as it is. It can be helpful to meditate for a set period of time, like twenty minutes or half an hour. Be gentle, have lightness of heart, and be kind toward your hard working body and mind. Be patient with yourself. Cultivating the mind is like tending a garden. At first, the soil is compacted and strewn with litter. The first stage is to sit and watch, to observe the garden of your mind. In doing so, you see that the mind has a mind of its own. You might think, “My mind is restless and crazy.” That’s okay. Open to that. It’s organic and perfect. The next stage is to till the soil. Open to whatever is happening, whatever is present for you. Maybe you have a heavy heart, sadness, fear, or stress. You can learn to work with all these states; you don’t need to repress them or try to escape. The way to freedom is always through, staying open to things as they are. We use our body as the ground to cultivate awareness. Our mind might be off somewhere else, but our body is always in the present moment. Notice the rhythm of your breathing. You’re not controlling the breath. You’re just becoming aware of it. Notice where you feel the breath. It might be in your nose or mouth, your chest or midsection. Sense the breath rising and falling. There’s no need to force or control anything; each process has its own rhythm. As you sit, sounds, sensations, thoughts, stories, and worries will arise. Let them be in the background. When you find that you’re caught in a story or a sensation, return to your breathing. Whatever happens—birds singing, even the sounds of traffic or people talking—open to the present moment. Meditation is not a task. We’re not trying to gain anything; we’re just learning how to be present.

Sometimes while we’re meditating, we doze off. We sit down, and every now and then we get a moment that’s clear, but once we get quiet, it’s, “Goodnight!” We’re so stimulated so much of the time that when we’re in a warm, safe place, we breathe in and out and fall asleep! The mind just shuts off. We have to work with a sleepy mind. In our meditation practice, there are two energies which commonly come up that we can learn to balance. One is sinking mind or sleepiness. The other is restlessness. We can’t sit still. We want to run out and scream, and we don’t know why. Either of these two energies can make meditation difficult. Feel your body, breathe, open to what is happening, and name it: “sleepiness” or “restlessness.” These are energies; we can get interested in them and in doing so, we wake up the mind.

Find a time for practicing meditation that works for you. If you’re a morning person, meditate early. Some people sit as early as 5:00 a.m. If you’re a night person, you might want to meditate before going to bed. Find your rhythm, and meditate when your mind is most clear. Start to practice for small amounts of time; five or ten minutes a couple of times a day can be really powerful. Be gentle and kind in your awareness, friendly to your mind.

When we begin to live in the present moment, something transformative happens. We become more available to the wisdom and compassion that’s within us. There is a shift in consciousness, an awareness of truth, and we see things differently. Even when we revert to the old patterns, we can return to the present and, instead of reacting, become mindful. When one big story or obsessive thought-train ends, and just before we get lost in the next one, there is a moment called now. Sometimes we tap into it effortlessly and at other times we do so through practicing meditation. The present moment is medicine for the mind. It purifies ignorance and we are able to see things as they are, not as we wish they were, or even as they might appear. We take in this medicine of the truth by dwelling deeply in the present moment, and it heals us. It’s so simple we might overlook it. One breath, two breaths; one step, two steps, and the whole of the Dharma unfolds.

The devil whispers, you can’t withstand the storm. The warrior replies, I am the storm.

—ANONYMOUS