Inhabiting Awareness is the Essence of Mindfulness Practice
- Jan Kabat Zinn, Mindfulness for Beginners
Every twenty-four-hour day is a tremendous gift to us.
So we should all learn to live in a way that makes joy and happiness possible. We can do this. I begin my day by making an offering of incense while following my breath. I think to myself that this day is a day to live fully, and I make the vow to live each moment of it in a way that is beautiful, solid, and free. This only takes three or four minutes, but it gives me a great deal of pleasure. You can do the same thing when you wake up. Breathe in and tell yourself that a new day has been offered to you, and you have to be here to live it.
The way to maintain your presence in the here and now is through mindfulness of the breath. There is no need to manipulate the breath. Breath is a natural thing, like air. like light: we should leave it as it is and not interfere with it. What we are doing is simply lighting up the lamp of awareness to illuminate our breathing. We generate the energy of mindfulness to illuminate everything that is happening in the present moment.
-Thich Nhat Hahn, You Are Here
These words of Thich Nhat Hahn (“Thay”) take me back - decades ago when I first began to practice mindfulness meditation. Although I now stay away from directives (like “should”), the sense and spirit of Thich Nhat Hahn”s message stays with me. Is it possible for us to live in a way that makes joy and happiness possible? I like the challenge of that exploration and curiosity… which Thay begins in this passage.
Jon Kabat Zinn says:
The challenge of mindfulness is to be present for your experience as it is rather than immediately jumping in to change it or trying to force it to be different.
Whatever quality of your experience in a particular moment, what is most important is your awareness of it. Can you make room for awareness of what is unfolding, whether you like what is happening or not, whether it is pleasant or not? Can you rest in awareness, even for one breath, or even for one in-breath before reacting or trying to escape to make things different? Inhabiting awareness is the essence of mindfulness practice, no matter what you are experiencing, whether it arises in formal meditation or in going about your life. Life itself becomes the meditation practice as we learn to take up residency in awareness- this essential dimension of our being that is already ours but with which we are so unfamiliar that we frequently cannot put it to use at the very times in our lives when we need it the most.
But if through bringing an ongoing intentionality and gentle discipline to both formal and informal practice, mindfulness were to function increasingly as our “default setting” so to speak, our baseline condition that we come back to instinctively when we lose our emotional balance momentarily, then it could serve as a profoundly healthy and reliable resource for us in challenging times.
- Jon Kabat Zinn, Mindfulness for Beginners
Do we ever find ourselves wishing things were different from the way they are? May we just breathe, and allow what is here - right now? May we simply be "lighting up the lamp of awareness"?
In; out.
Deep; slow.
Calm; ease.
Smile; release.
- Thich Nhat Hahn, You Are Here