Waking Up to Your World

One of my favorite subjects for contemplation is this question: "Since death is certain, but the time of death is uncertain, what is the most important thing?" You know you will die, but you really don't know how much time you have to awaken from your cocoon of habitual patterns. You don't know how much time remains for you to fulfill the potential of your precious human birth. Given that, what is the most important thing?

Every day of your life, every morning of your life, you could ask yourself: "As I move through this day, what is the most important thing? What is the best use of this day?" At my age, it's somewhat frightening when I lie down at night and look back at how the day went, and it seems I moved through it in a snap of the fingers. Was that an entire day? What did I do with it? Did I move even slightly toward being more compassionate, loving, and caring; toward being fully awake? Is my mind more open? What did I really do? I feel how little time there is and how important the way we spend it is.

What is the best use of each day of our lives? In a day that is quite short, each of us could become more sane, more compassionate, more gentle, more in touch with the dreamlike quality of reality. Or we could bury these qualities more deeply and come into contact with a solid mind, withdrawing further into our own cocoons.

Every time a habitual pattern strengthens, every time we feel taken over by autopilot, we could see that as an opportunity. (...) When we perceive that we're hooked, that we're on autopilot, what do we do next? That is a central question for the practitioner. One of the most efficient ways to work with that moment when you see the storm of habitual tendencies forming is the practice of pausing, or creating a gap. We can stop and take three conscious breaths, and thus the world has a chance to open to us within that gap. We can allow a gap within our state of mind.

Before I say more about pausing consciously and creating a gap, it may be useful to appreciate the gap that already exists in our environment. An awake mind exists in our surroundings; in the air and wind, in the sea, in the earth, in animals; but how often are we actually in contact with it? Are we sticking our heads out of our cocoons long enough to truly taste it, experience it, let it change something in us, let it penetrate the usual way we look at things?

If you set aside some time to practice meditation formally, perhaps early in the morning, there is much silence and space. The practice of meditation itself is a way of creating gaps. Every time you notice you're thinking and you let your thoughts go, you're creating a gap. Every time the exhale is going out, you're creating a gap. Perhaps you don't always experience it that way, but the basic instruction in meditation is designed to be full of gaps. If you don't fill your practice time with discursive mind, with your worries and obsessions and that sort of thing, you have time to experience the blessings of your surroundings. You can simply sit there, quiet. So perhaps silence arises in you, and the sacredness of the space will penetrate.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps you're already taken over by the work you have to do today, by the projects you didn't finish from the day before. Perhaps you're worried about something that needs to be done, or that wasn't done, or about a letter you just received. Perhaps you're taken over by a busy mind, taken over by hesitation or fear, depression or discouragement. In other words, you've gone into your cocoon.

For all of us, the experience of our entanglements differs each day. Even so, if you connect with the blessings of your surroundings; the quietness, the magic, and the power; perhaps that feeling can stay with you and you can go into your day with it. Whatever you're doing, the magic, the sacredness, the expansiveness, the quietness, remain with you. When you're in contact with this larger environment, it can cut through your cocoon mentality.

On the other hand, I know from personal experience how strong habitual mind can be. The discursive mind, the busy mind, worried, taken over, disoriented, is powerful. That's all the more reason to do the most important thing; to recognize how powerful the opportunity of each day is, and how easy it is to waste it. If you don't allow your mind to open and connect with where you are, with the immediacy of your experience, you could easily become submerged. You could be completely taken over and distracted by the details of your life, from the moment you get out of bed in the morning until you fall asleep when night comes.

You become so taken over by the content of your life, by the minutiae that make up each day, so self-absorbed in the big project you have to do that the blessings, the magic, the quietness, and the vastness escape you. You never emerge from your cocoon except when there's a noise that's so loud you can't help but notice it, or something shocks you, or catches your eye. Then, for a moment, you stick your head out and notice "Wow! Look at that sky! Look at that squirrel! Look at that person!"

The great Tibetan teacher of the fourteenth century, Longchenpa, spoke about our unnecessary and pointless focus on details, becoming so caught that we can't see what's right in front of our nose. He says that this useless focus extends moment to moment, creating a continuum, and thus days, months, and even entire lives pass. You spend all your time just thinking about things, distracting yourself with your own mind, completely lost in thought? I myself know this habit very well. It's the human dilemma. It's what the Buddha recognized and what all the teachers who have lived since then have recognized. It's what we're facing.

"Yes, but...", we say. Yes, but I have work to do, there's a deadline, there's an endless stream of emails I need to deal with, I have to cook and clean and I have my chores. How should we deal with everything we have to do in a day, a week, a month, without losing the precious opportunity to experience who we really are? We have not only a precious human life, but this precious human life is made up of precious human moments. How we spend them matters greatly. Yes, we have work to do; we don't just sit around meditating all day, even within a retreat center. We possess the real essence of relationships; the way we live together, how we rub up against each other. Facing difficulties alone, withdrawing from people we think are distracting us, doesn't solve anything. Part of our dilemma is learning to work with the feelings that relationships bring us. They also provide the opportunities to do the most important thing.

If you spent the morning lost in thought, worrying about what you need to do in the late afternoon, already working on every gap you can find, you've lost several opportunities and it's not even lunchtime yet. But if the morning was characterized by at least some spaciousness, some opening in your mind and heart, some gap in your usual way of being pulled along, sooner or later that will begin to penetrate the rest of your day.

If you haven't become accustomed to the experience of openness, if you haven't acquired any taste of it, then there's no chance that the afternoon will be influenced by it. On the other hand, if you gave a chance to openness, no matter whether you're meditating, working on the computer, or making food, the magic will be there for you, permeating your life.

As I said, our habits are powerful, so a certain discipline is necessary to step out of our cocoons and to receive the magic of our surroundings. The practice of pausing; the practice of taking three conscious breaths at any moment when we notice we're stuck; is a simple yet powerful practice that each of us can do at any time.

The practice of pausing can transform each day of our lives. It creates an open door to the sacredness of the place where you find yourself. The vastness, the quietness, and the magic of the place will dawn on you if you allow your mind to relax and let go for just a few breaths of the narrative you've been working so hard to maintain. If you pause long enough, you can reconnect with the exact place where you are, with the immediacy of your experience.

When you're waking up in the morning and haven't even gotten out of bed yet, even if you're running late, you could just notice and release the narrative and take three conscious breaths. Just be where you are! When you're washing your face, or making coffee or tea, or brushing your teeth, just create a gap in your discursive mind. Take three conscious breaths. Just pause. Let it become a contrast to being all caught up. Let it be like popping a bubble. Let it be just a moment in time, and then move on.

You're on your way to do whatever needs to be done that day. Perhaps you're in your car or on the bus, or standing in a line. But you can still create that gap by taking three conscious breaths and being right there, with the immediacy of your experience. Right there, with whatever you're seeing, with whatever you're doing, with whatever you're feeling.

Another powerful way to practice pausing is simply to listen for a moment. Instead of vision being the predominant sensory perception, let sound, let listening be the predominant sense of perception. It's a very powerful way to cut through our conventional way of looking at the world. At any moment, you can just stop and listen immediately. It doesn't matter which particular sound you hear; you simply create a gap by listening to it carefully.

At any moment you could just listen. At any moment, you could put all your attention on the immediacy of your experience. You could look at your hand resting on your leg, or feel your buttocks sitting on the sofa or in the chair. You could just be here. Instead of not being here, instead of being absorbed by thoughts, planning, and worries, cut off from the power and magic of the moment, you could be here. When you go out for a walk, pause frequently; stop and listen. Stop and take three conscious breaths. How you specifically create that gap doesn't really matter. Just find a way to punctuate your life with these moments free of thought. They don't need to be minutes free of thought; they can be no more than one breath, one second. Punctuate, create gaps. Once you do, you'll notice how vast the sky is, how vast your mind is.

When you're working it's so easy to consume yourself, particularly with computers. They have a way of hypnotizing you, but you could have an alarm on your computer that reminds you to create a gap. No matter how challenging your work is, no matter how much it's catching you, just keep pausing, keep allowing some gap. When you're hooked by your habitual patterns, don't see that as a big problem; allow a gap.

When you're completely wrapped up in something and you pause, a natural intelligence clicks in and you have a sense of the right thing to do. That's part of the magic: our own natural intelligence is always there to inform us, as long as we allow the gap. While we're on autopilot, dictated to by our minds and our emotions, there's no intelligence. It's a rat race. Whether we're in a retreat center or on Wall Street, it becomes the busiest, most tangled place in the world.

Pause, connect with the immediacy of your experience, connect with the blessings; free yourself from the cocoon of self-involvement, talking to yourself all the time, completely obsessed. Allow a gap, gap, gap. Just do that, again and again and again; allow yourself the space to notice who you are. Notice how vast your mind is; notice how vast the space is that never went away, but that you've been ignoring.

Find a way to slow down. Find a way to relax. Find a way to relax your mind and do it many and many times, continuously throughout the day, not just when you're hooked, but all the time. At its root, being caught by discursive thought, continuously self-involved with discursive plans, worries, and so on, is about attachment to ourselves. It's the superficial manifestation of ego clinging.

So what is the most important thing to do each day? With each morning, each afternoon, each evening? It's to allow a gap. Whether you're practicing meditation or working, there's a continuity underneath. These gaps, these punctuations, are like opening holes in clouds, opening holes in the cocoon. And these gaps can extend so that they can permeate your entire life, so that then the continuity is no longer the continuity of discursive thought, but rather, a continuous gap.

But before we get swept away by the idea of continuous gap, let's be realistic about where we really are. First, we need to remind ourselves about what the most important thing is. Then, we need to learn how to balance that with the fact that we have work to do, which can cause us to become submerged in the details of our lives and taken over by the cocoon of our patterns all day long. So find ways to create the gap frequently, recurrently, continuously. That way, you allow yourself the space to connect with the sky and the ocean and the birds and the earth, and with the blessings of the sacred world. Give yourself the chance to step out of your cocoon.

Originally published at lionsroar