On the present moment
Image copyright: Colin O’Brady via The Guardian
I’m a reflective kind of person. My journal writing reflects thoughts, emotions, the people and events of my life. As a yoga and meditation teacher, I was taught to have a reflective practice. Not from a ‘that could have gone better’ stance, but to understand what was learnt, what worked well and what adaptations could be made next time.
Going through some old meditation notes recently, (I keep all my class notes, which means there’s lots), I came across a small slip of paper with a heading: ‘Breakthroughs & Breakdowns’. Written in April 2016, it bears a small sub-heading with a smiley face:
The combination of re-reading this note, coupled with an article in Tricycle magazine’s Spring 2022 edition: Extremely Still, I had an epic breakthrough.
I was behind on my subscription magazine reading - Spring editions had not been opened, when summer editions started to come through the letterbox. Settling in for some much-needed catch up time, this piece in Tricycle would normally have been overlooked.
For a number of years, I’ve wondered how meditation actually supports athletes. Having watched the Oxford / Cambridge boat race several years ago, it starts with the background to the team and their training. (I still can’t fathom how these giants of men all fit into the rowing boat). I recall that one of the teams were using meditation and it was an intrinsic part of their training.
Of course, I’m an advocate for meditation, yet the mechanics of how it helps in these particular situations was lost on me.
Reading O’Brady’s account of his meditation practice, it was these lines that stopped me in my tracks:
O’Brady noted that for most people, the goal of climbing Mount Everest can obscure the reality. “When people say ‘I want to stand on top of this mountain,’ they are picturing the dinner party where people say, ‘Whoa, you climbed Mount Everest!’ They are trying to achieve something that isn’t the mountaintop. Their mind is focused not on the present but on the future.”
I truly thought I understood about the present moment in respect of meditation / mindfulness. I’ve constantly taught about being in the present moment, watching whether your mind has drifted to the past, (am I rehashing moments that have happened, replaying the videotape of exchanges). Or moving to the future, (making assumptions of what might happen, what might be said).
My bolt of lightning…
Their mind is focused not on the present but on the future.
In a split second I realised what I’d been doing with respect to my university studies, and how my mind had actually been a contributing factor in the other half of the note from 2016, the breakdown.
From the outset, the study programme is all laid out and there’s grids of upcoming tutorials (dates in the future); upcoming essay submission deadlines (dates in the future); next module enrolment (dates in the future) and the real beauty, date of completion (studying part-time across six years, you can guess where that one was going and within that, I was always thinking of how old I would be at that future-point).
As things began to unravel, slowly then with more speed earlier this year, I spoke with student support about quitting. Over the course of several months I spoke with several support advisors and they all asked me to consider this:
Just imagine yourself x years from now, in your gown, on your graduation
Another future date.
At no point was there a sense of space for the present moment.
The pressures of full-time work plus study commitments meant little to no time for my meditation practice and others I’d been committed to as a Buddhist. I tried getting up earlier, but the cycle of long working days, menopause and really needing more rest (not less) didn’t work.
Ultimately my resilience reduced.
O’Brady went on to say,
I don’t ever think of summit day. I think of the process and the journey.
This reminded me of ‘the map is not the territory’. (That’s a story for another time on ordnance survey map reading whilst doing field trials in the Gower peninsula).
“The doing of the thing itself” and not the aftermath. “This is why we call it a practice” […] “I have achieved goals that are very ambitious by setting them […], then saying, ‘Forget about this. We’re on the path now.’
For me, this had a truly visceral impact - there really was the penny dropping moment.
The result?
I feel fantastic having arrived at this understanding and the importance of truly being in the moment.
And yes, my little sub-heading from 2016 was absolutely correct: “It’s ALL progress”.
Following my previous museletter in respect of the little feathered fellas I rescued, a week later I encountered a Jay chick whilst on my regular medicine walk (my term for being out in nature). Sadly it wasn’t a happy outcome.
My youngest daughter on hearing my tale said, “I think you took the Birdiesattva vow Mum, not the Bodhisattva one!”
On the topic of Bodhisattvas…I will leave you with a link to a video podcast I’ve watched twice now, featuring Miles Neale and Tashi Mannox.
Tashi was a former monk at Samye Ling’s in Scotland - we shared the same teacher - Chöje Akong Tulku Rinpoche.
In this video he shares a gem about the Tibetan alphabet I never knew before. (If watching the whole thing is a big ask, it appears at 1:06:34).
Until next time 🙏🏻