MOL: The Practice Of True Presence

This is a Virtual Meditation on the Lawn session hosted by the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia with the guest facilitator, Leslie Hubbard. This guided meditation focuses on practicing true presence. Virtual Meditation on the Lawn is a free online live program hosted from September through May.

Transcript

Good morning,

An afternoon and evening to our global community of students,

Faculty,

Staff,

Alumni,

Parents,

And friends.

My name is Leslie Hubbard and I am the program director of student engagement and contemplative instruction with the Contemplative Science Center.

And it is truly an honor and a pleasure to be with you right here and right now and to have this opportunity today to share with you one of the meditation practices that has completely transformed my own life and you could call it my guiding North Star practice.

And I learned this practice from Zen Master Chait Anand Han in Plum Village,

France,

And it's called the practice of true presence.

And I learned this right after I graduated from college and I was on this journey more or less to figure out what am I going to do with my life because I thought I had an actually all figured out since high school,

But I was introduced to meditation in my fourth year in college and it completely turned my life upside down.

And the question I was like continuously asking myself is who am I going to be?

What am I going to do?

And what do I have to accomplish in life to be deemed successful and to contribute something meaningful to the world?

So these big questions.

So I walk into this mindfulness retreat and I go to the meditation hall on the first day and we start this meditation with this simple reflection on a subject that I totally wasn't expecting which was love.

And this reflection started with this understanding that the most precious gift that you can offer to yourself,

Your loved ones,

And to the world around you is not some material thing like money,

But it is your true presence.

And here we have a simple understanding of what love is.

Love is simply just to be there.

To be there yourself if you're not there for yourself and you not know what's going on in your body and your emotions,

Your perceptions.

So to love means to be there in order to be attentive to what's happening within ourselves.

That includes our joy,

Our happiness,

Our beauty,

And our pain and our grief and our sadness and fears.

And as we become truly present with ourselves,

We can begin to help the other people in our lives like our friends,

Our partners,

Our family,

And others to offer that presence to them as an actual gift.

And if you're not there for yourself or the other person,

How can there be love?

So the simple logic,

It's clear simply that to love is just to be there,

Fully there.

But the reality in this reflection was that most of us are not truly there for ourselves and for those that we love.

And there's a practice that we can do and the practice I will introduce to you today is a practice of mindful breathing that has some specific elements to help restore our presence and it can help us go home to ourselves and to be truly there for what's happening in our body and mind and for our loved ones around us.

So the simple practice I learned about 20 years ago has completely transformed my own life in the very foundation of what I think it means to live a meaningful life and that the value is not placed necessarily on when one achieves or produces that can be measured somehow by some external factors or metrics,

But the value and quality of one's life can be rooted in one's ability to live deeply this very moment and the moment after and to be truly there for ourselves and the people that we love,

Which I've learned takes a lot of focus and practice.

And much later in my life,

I learned that all of the research that psychologists and neuroscientists are doing right now around mindfulness and wellbeing all point to that having a life full of meaningful social connections is key not only to being more resilient,

But to being truly happy and to have meaningful social connections,

We have to practice being truly there for the other person.

And with the simple logic of this reflection,

Then the bedrock of being truly there for the other person rests on our own ability to be truly there for ourselves.

So this mindful breathing practice that we're going to do right now is the practice of true presence and has four qualities to it.

The first is practicing in such a way to learn how to restore our inner freshness and beauty that we can lose from time to time in our daily life.

And the practice of mindful breathing can help us release tension that we carry in our bodies and restore this freshness and inner beauty with the simple in-breath and the out-breath.

The second component is to improve the quality of our presence is to restore our stability and our solidity.

You can imagine a person who's not stable,

You cannot count on that person and that is why we need a kind of practice that can help us cultivate stability and solidity in us.

The third element to improve our quality of our presence is this simple concept of peace and tranquility.

So if our minds and bodies have too much anger,

Violence,

Fear,

And distraction in us,

We are not at peace and we are pulled away and literally overtaken by these kinds of emotions and therefore cannot see things clearly in the moment.

So if we all learn how to cultivate a little bit more peace inside of us,

Then this will transform into what I believe to be a happier workplace,

A home life,

An environment around us.

And the fourth element that can help restore our presence is this element of freedom.

And most of us,

Myself at the top of the list,

Do not have enough freedom inside as I'm overloaded with worries and fears and projects that I consider the utmost importance.

And I don't sometimes feel like I have enough space in my heart as a result to be attentive to things in the present moment.

And so when we have this kind of freedom inside,

We radiate a sense of wellbeing and people enjoy being in our presence and we can be fully there for the people in our lives.

So this practice of mindful breathing helps us cultivate these four elements,

Freshness,

Stability,

Solidarity,

Serenity,

And peace,

And freedom.

So on this note,

Let's begin this short practice.

Please sit upright in your chair with your spine straight,

But not stiff,

And take a moment and relax the muscles in your face and your shoulders and neck and find a place to rest your eyes,

Either completely closed,

Partially open,

Or gazing downwards in front of you.

And throughout this short practice,

I will offer a short phrase that brings forth these four elements that you can use to help anchor your attention on your in-breath and your out-breath and to restore your presence.

And after I say these short phrases,

They'll be followed by periods of silence where you can practice on your own being fully there for the in-breath and the out-breath with these qualities.

And remember that the mind isn't used to being fully present.

So we pull it back to that totally natural part of this experience,

Recognizing when we're not with the breath and then coming back to the breath over and over.

So now turn your attention to your in-breath and your out-breath and practice being fully there for yourself.

Breathing in,

I know that I'm breathing in,

I'm here.

Breathing out,

I know that I'm breathing out,

I am here with my out-breath.

Breathing in fully here with my in-breath,

Breathing out fully here with my out-breath.

Breathing in,

I'm aware of my body right now.

Breathing out can release unnecessary tension in my body.

Breathing in,

Present,

Aware of my body,

Breathing out,

Letting go of tension in the body.

Breathing in,

My body and mind are stable like a mountain.

Breathing out,

I invite the feeling of peace.

Breathing in,

Stable like a mountain.

Breathing out,

Feeling at peace.

Breathing in,

I am fully here in this moment.

Breathing out,

I have freedom inside of myself.

Breathing in fully here,

Breathing out freedom inside.

Now as we about to bring this practice to a close,

I leave you with this simple phrase to contemplate that to love is to truly be there for myself and my loved ones.

This is a kind of gift that I can cultivate in my daily life to offer to myself and the ones that I love by simply coming back to my in-breath and my out-breath to restore my true presence.

As we about to transition into our daily life,

We don't need to carve out special time to cultivate our true presence.

We can just get better slowly throughout the day at becoming more present with the people and things that we encounter.

As simple as our cup of coffee or the path that we walk on or housemates or even showing up with our full presence on Zoom calls or in classes.

And I'm well aware that we all have to practice social distancing.

That doesn't mean we have to lose the quality and value of our social connections,

However they show up in our lives.

So if your eyes are closed,

You can go ahead and open your eyes and a sincere thank you to each and every one of you who signed on this morning and to our partners,

CASH,

New Year's clubs.

Thank you to the fabulous Mick Watson,

Our operations director who's behind the scenes of the webinar making this moment possible for us as well.

And please stay in touch with the Contemplative Sciences Center by joining our mailing list if you're not on it already and following us on social media to learn more about our upcoming programs such as Sharon Salzberg,

Who's coming next Wednesday,

And the Daily Ten which starts in a week as well.

So thank you again and I wish you a wonderful day in practicing our true presence in various aspects of our lives.

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