Mindfulness Of The Present Moment (Talk 2)

What does it mean to live in the present moment? Suggested Reading: The Power of Now (Eckhart Tolle); The Films: Click, Groundhog Day

Cost of each talk is one good deed, to be completed within 1 year.* The deed must be sincere to count, such that the doer feels something inside when the deed is complete. Healthcare Workers who served during the pandemic are exempt from the cost of all talks.

Transcript

Mindfulness of the Present Moment The word mindfulness is used quite frequently these days,

Often to refer to many different things.

How to eat mindfully,

Live mindfully,

Do this or that activity mindfully.

But what does it really mean to live in a mindful way?

What does it mean to live in the present moment?

Well,

How do most people live?

And the answer is most people do not live in a mindful way.

We live in a very unmindful way.

The way I like to describe it is as if you were checking out in a grocery store.

So let's say you finish shopping and you start to line up at the grocery store.

You go to the back of the line and you see all these people in front of you and you think,

I'd rather not be here right now.

I'd rather be in the middle or in the front of the line.

A few minutes pass and you're now in the middle of the line.

You see people in front of you and say,

I'd still rather be over there right now.

But you see people behind you and you say,

Well,

At least I'm not back there.

A few more minutes pass and you are now at the front of the line.

You're about to check out your groceries and you look back and you see all those people behind you.

Even though you are at the front of the line,

You still say,

I'd rather not be here right now.

I've spent so much time in a grocery store.

I'd rather be at home doing something else.

And so the idea is you go through life always wishing things were different,

Always wishing that you were somewhere else.

You always feel that the grass is greener at the other side,

On the other side.

Our mind is always distracted,

Looking for new and interesting things to entertain us.

When you sit down at a restaurant,

You see what people around you have and are eating and think,

Hmm,

That looks better than what I have.

When you're at work,

You'd really rather not be at work and all you can think about is when work is over.

During the weekday,

You think about what you are going to do on the weekend.

When you're on a weekend,

You loathe going back to work.

During your working years,

You keep looking forward to your retirement.

And once you retire,

You look back and say,

Oh,

Those years were nice when I was still working.

We look at stillness in life as a waste and we think we should always be productive,

Always moving forward,

Always doing something.

And as a result,

We have what develops as a checklist life where you're looking to knock things off your checklist.

You go through your day listing all the things you have to do and one by one,

You check them off as if suddenly when you reach the end of your checklist,

You will be happy.

But the next day you just produce a new checklist.

Unfortunately,

We look at life as if it were a race and that as soon as you reach the end,

You have won.

And so we look at those check marks to see how we are doing in the race.

Unfortunately,

This is a false way of looking at life.

Instead of looking at life as a race,

We should look at life as a piece of music with a beginning a middle and an end.

The end is not necessarily happier than the beginning and it's not necessarily better than the middle,

But all pieces are part of the same music and we should enjoy all portions equally.

If we're not living in the present moment,

What do we spend our time living or when do we spend our time living?

We often spend our time living both in the past and in the future.

In the past,

We spend our time thinking of the good things and the bad things that happened in the past and these prevent us from living fully in the present moment.

As for the bad things in the past,

I like to think of the example of if you were on your way to your beach and while you were in the car,

You had a big fight.

When you finally arrive at the beach,

Instead of being able to enjoy the atmosphere of the beach and relax,

All you can think about is a fight that you had in the car.

And so your remembrance of your anger and conflict prevent you from enjoying the present moment at the beach because you are thinking about the bad things that happened.

The good things that distract you and prevent you from enjoying the present moment do so in a different way.

I like to give the example of if you go to a restaurant and you look on the menu and you see grandma's pie and you think about the pie that your grandma used to make when you were younger and how much you enjoyed it.

Your dinner companion,

On the other hand,

Has never tasted grandma's pie and so has an open mind about what they are about to order.

So you order grandma's pie along with your companion and for you,

It does not taste like what you had in the past.

It is just not as good.

And so because you are comparing your present experience with something of the past,

It prevents you from enjoying it as much as your friend who found the pie was delicious.

And so all the things that you had in the past,

Whether a relationship,

Possessions,

Power,

Money,

Status,

Anything,

If you keep comparing what you had in the past to what you have in the present,

It will prevent you from enjoying the present moment.

In the same way,

Bad and good things in the future also prevent you from enjoying the present moment.

The bad things are worries and anxiety.

So if you keep fearing things will happen or worrying about things to come,

It will also prevent you from enjoying the present moment.

We will talk about this more in detail in the fourth talk.

So good things prevent you from enjoying the present moment.

Good things that you are thinking about in the future.

I call this setting up conditional happiness.

It uses the phrase,

When XYZ happens in the future,

I will finally be happy.

Meaning I have set conditions on the happiness that I will experience.

So when I graduate,

When I finish this job,

When I finally get married,

When I have 10 children,

When my 10 children leave the house,

When my 10 children come back,

When I retire,

When I'm out of retirement,

When XYZ happens,

I will be happy.

The problem with conditional happiness is that sometimes it never arrives.

XYZ sometimes never happens or it takes a very long time to happen.

And so all those moments from now until XYZ occurs or does not occur,

I spend waiting,

Waiting to be happy.

So what is the nature of living mindfully in the present moment?

There is an aspect of situational acceptance.

Not wanting anything in your life to be different than it is right now.

It comes with an understanding that you cannot change your present moment.

Let me repeat that.

You cannot change your present moment.

Your present moment has come about in your life based on everything that has happened in the past and the past cannot be changed.

As a result,

Your present moment cannot be changed.

The only thing that is available to you is to decide what to do in your present moment.

But understand that your present moment cannot be changed.

There is an idiom which I think identifies living in the present moment and that's don't cry over spilled milk.

So when you come across spilled milk,

You have to understand the present moment means the milk has already been spilled.

The past has already come about.

The fact that it has spilled cannot be changed because that has happened already in the past.

And so you can react in many ways.

You can yell,

You can scream,

You can try to find who spilled the milk,

You can try to do harm to them.

But the idea is it doesn't change your present moment.

The only thing to do is to clean it up.

We can go from a concrete situation like spilled milk and slowly work our way into more complicated situations.

Say one day you are stuck in traffic.

You can yell,

You can scream,

You can be angry that you are stuck in traffic.

And yet your external circumstances do not change by being unhappy with your present situation.

All that happens is that you are unhappy.

Instead,

Make peace with the fact that you are stuck in traffic and spend some time listening to music or pondering the past or pondering the future or just enjoying things as they are.

If you wake up one day and have plans to go outside to do something,

But when you look outside,

The weather has changed and you can no longer do it.

You can yell,

You can scream,

You can try to wish things were different.

Or you can accept the present moment.

Change your plans and do something else.

If you order a pizza,

Let's say you order a mushroom pizza,

And you show up and you get a pepperoni pizza.

You can yell,

You can scream,

You can do all sorts of things,

But understand that the present has already come about.

You cannot change your present moment because the pizza has already been made.

What is up to you is to decide how you react to the present moment.

This doesn't mean you don't do anything,

But that doesn't mean you have to be angry about it.

You can ask for a refund of your pizza,

You can ask for an exchange,

You can ask for a discount,

And you can ask them to make you another pizza.

But the idea is that all these things can be done without anger at the present moment.

As you proceed to get more advanced,

The next thing to do is to learn to accept other people as they are.

Just as you learn to accept certain events as they are,

You accept other people as they are and not wish they were different.

And finally,

The last step when you continue to progress is to learn to accept yourself as you are without wishing you were different,

Not wishing anything in your past,

Your present,

Or your future were different.

There's a yoga video which the instructor stated that the highest practice of yoga was self-love.

Learning to love yourself as you are without wishing anything were different.

I think there's something credible in what she has to say.

There's a subtle nuance I should mention here in that one should be careful to delineate between self-love and self-admiration.

Self-love means to embrace yourself as you are without wishing things were different.

It is wise to be careful not to tip over into self-admiration where you might gloss over your faults and sort of exalt your ego at the expense of looking at other people similarly.

The idea is you must be careful not to take self-love into narcissism.

There is also a subtle notion in the other direction where while people should find a spiritual path and develop,

There is an aspect where if you want things to change too much,

There may be an aspect of self-loathing contained within that.

Meaning if you want an incredible amount of self-change,

Be careful that you are not backing that up with self-loathing and hating yourself in the present moment.

One of the ways I like to test people to see if they are living mindfully is if I ask the question would you change anything in your life if I told you you only had three months left to live?

Meaning if you respond I would do this,

I would do this,

I would quit my job,

I would go apologize to that guy,

I would do this to that guy or say something to that person.

The idea is you have not been living mindfully.

You have been holding things in the past or waiting for the future,

But if you would change everything about your life because you were running out of time,

Then you have been not living well.

If you respond,

On the other hand,

I would not change a thing,

Then it is more likely you have been living in a mindful way.

There is an aspect of mindfulness of the present moment which includes being non-judgmental.

Looking events as they come and not judging them as either good or bad.

From the Buddhist tradition,

I call this the Zen way of looking at things.

The idea is when an event happens,

You don't judge it as good or bad,

And the reason you do not judge it as good or bad is because you do not know what kind of future outcome it leads to.

Sometimes good things in the present moment lead to bad things later on.

Sometimes things that appear bad in the present moment lead to good things later on.

Because you cannot tell the future,

You truly do not know which one is good and which one is bad,

And therefore as events come,

You do not judge them but wait.

In Stoic philosophy,

There is also an aspect of mindfulness which,

In my opinion,

Enhances it greatly.

As I mentioned last week,

The Stoics like to divide things into things that were within your control and things that were not within your control.

The things within your control were your impressions,

Your judgments,

And how you saw things,

And also your desire and your aversion,

Or whether you wanted something or didn't want something.

These were the only things crucial in life,

And these were the only things within your control.

Everything else,

Power,

Status,

Fame,

Health,

Your body,

Friends,

Family,

Your work,

Everything else was not within your control because it was subject to the forces of other people or external events.

And the idea was that these things that were not within your control,

You labeled as externals,

And you said these things are externals and they are neither good nor bad.

You did not judge them because you felt they were externals.

The only things you judged were things of the will and of desire and aversion.

There is a maxim in both Stoic and Socratic philosophy that it is not events which bother us but our opinions of them.

There are certain things we see in life and our opinions of them force us to judge events in a certain way.

So if you look at death as a bad thing,

When someone dies,

You will judge the event as bad.

If you see poverty as a bad thing,

When you see someone poor,

It will be looked at as a bad thing.

All this has to do with your basic concepts of what is good and what is evil.

But if poverty led to glory and death led to honor,

Then in some ways from a different perspective some of these things would not look so bad.

The idea was you were not supposed to judge these because they were all externals.

There is an idea in Stoicism.

The metaphor that was used was the foot as a part of the body.

So for a foot as an individual unique part,

It would be best if the foot was never dirty,

If it never trampled on anything rough,

If it was never cut,

If it never bled,

If it was never muddied.

But a foot does not exist by itself.

It exists as part of a whole,

As part of a body.

Sometimes for the benefit of the whole body,

It is best that the foot gets muddy,

It gets dirty,

That it gets cut,

That it gets damaged,

That it gets destroyed so that the body may persevere.

In the same way,

A human is part of a universe.

And sometimes for the greater good of the universe,

If it is fitting and best that a certain person,

Including yourself,

Suffers exile,

Execution,

Or illness,

Or death,

If it is for the betterment of the universe,

Then you must see that it is the same with the foot,

That it is for the greater good that you must suffer these things.

And so for Stoicism,

There was an idea that you should accept your fate if it led to that such direction.

There were famous Spartan commanders who stated that if by my death the city should be defended and prosper,

Then I would gladly live my life.

In the same sense,

If the universe demanded your suffering so that the world could be a better place for some greater plan that was not available for you to see,

You should accept it.

The great Stoic metaphor was that a man's life is similar to a dog being chained to a cart.

Wherever the cart goes,

It will take the dog.

The dog cannot move the cart.

The dog has one choice and one choice only,

And that is to run with the cart or be dragged.

Whichever choice the dog takes,

It will still go to the same place.

But the life will be much happier if it runs with the cart than is dragged by it.

One of the interesting ways in which he picked at this phrase,

A sort of Stoic mindfulness,

Was in a religious way.

He said that whatever happens is the will of God,

And I want my will to accord with the will of God.

In order to accord my will with the will of God,

I want whatever happens.

And so I alter my desire and my aversion to fit whatever happens in life,

Meaning anything that happens,

That's what I want.

He gave an example of if I were trying to enter a room and the door closed in my face,

At that very moment,

Instead of trying to yell and scream and bang on the door,

I would erase all desire from my body to enter that room.

In other words,

I would control my desire and aversion to match what has happened in the world.

The ideal way to live,

According to both the Stoics,

The Cynics,

The Socratics,

Was not wanting anything other than what you received.

The metaphor for this was the polite dinner guest.

So if there was a giant banquet where all sorts of different people were invited and you were sitting in the corner,

You ate what has ever served you.

Meaning if you were close to some dishes,

You ate those,

But you didn't try to climb over the table and go to the other side and try to eat things that were not near you or not convenient for you.

You did not try to gobble down every single dish that was at the table.

Whatever was served to you,

You accepted it.

This includes all the externals such as fame,

Power,

Status,

Money.

If these things fell in your lap,

You accepted them.

If these things were denied to you not to fall into your lap,

You accepted that and erased your desire for them so that you could live in a harmonious way.

The idea was you did not try to find harmony by changing your external circumstances to get what you desired.

Instead,

You harnessed your desire and your aversion to fit your external circumstances.

Another example of what they did was setting intentions in order to manage your desires and your aversions.

The example they gave was,

Today I will go to the baths and I will set an intention.

While I go to the bath,

I will not run into anything I do not want.

I will control my aversions.

When I go to the bath,

There will be a crowd,

I will be pushed,

I will be jostled,

Someone may steal my clothing,

All sorts of things might happen.

I might smell this,

I might smell that,

I might hear yelling and screaming.

But I will set the intention to go to the bath.

I will also set a secondary intention not to be pulled from my ruling center,

Not to let my aversion get out of control.

I will control what I feel so that I remain at peace while I am bathing.

The Stoics believed,

Particularly Epictetus,

That as you develop spiritually,

How you look at things will change.

The layman who has never experienced any sort of philosophical training,

When external events happen he will blame others.

So he can blame God,

His parents,

Other people,

External enemies.

When he starts to undergo philosophical training,

The next step is to blame the self.

Blaming the self and blaming your judgments and your inability to control your desires and aversions.

So you've run into what you didn't want because you have not been yet able to control your aversion.

You don't get what you want because you have not managed to control your desire.

You see terrible things happening because you have not learned to control your judgments.

And finally,

When you mature and become a philosopher,

You blame neither yourself nor you blame other people for external events.

So what are tools to help us live mindfully in the present moment?

One and probably the most efficient is mindfulness meditation.

Learning to practice mindfulness as you sit and meditate.

As thoughts come up,

As feelings come up,

Not wishing anything away.

Not wishing anything were different.

Not wishing for anything good or bad from the past or the future.

Not wishing to be anywhere else than you are right now.

Other activities which are helpful mindfully are things which you can do mindfully such as yoga,

Tai chi,

Qi gong,

All these different sort of practices which can be done in a mindful way where you are focused on one thing and not wishing for anything else,

Past,

Present,

Future,

Being in the moment.

Some people do this while gardening or doing their hobbies or even sports.

But the idea is you take that mindset and do it to the rest of your life.

Stop going through life as a checklist.

When you're cutting vegetables,

Embrace cutting vegetables and not wish you were doing anything else.

Don't wash dishes with full intention and presence and not wish you were doing anything else.

The idea is your mind is sort of being distracted all the time by the beeps of your cell phone and you are running here and there and thinking of this and that.

And the idea is to silence that cell phone and whatever it is you are doing to do it with full intention and presence.

This concludes my talk on mindfulness of the present moment.

If you benefited from this talk,

I ask in exchange for you to do one good deed.

This good deed is not limited by size,

Only by sincerity.

Some suggested additional reading,

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle,

Also the movies Groundhog Day and Click.

These may be helpful to understanding mindfulness of the present moment.

Thank you.

Reviews

This is the second talk in this series that I've listened to. While the concepts are familiar I've felt that I was left with a clearer understanding or a better example of the concept that will help me on my path. I will be continuing to listen to this series and performing my acts of charity and kindness.

Thank you, I will certainly do one good deed today!

Great.. Gratitude Gratitude Gratitude.

So helpful and important concepts that I will listen to over and over again. Truly grateful for these insights, thank you.