Surrender Yourself to the Present Moment
Listen to the music of your breathing in and out.
Your heart is playing music
Your lungs are playing music
You just tune to that kind of music
Whenever feelings and emotions arise you allow that music of breathing to embrace it.
Thich Nhat Hahn
In his podcast, entitled “Surrender Yourself to the Present Moment”, Thich Nhat Hahn reflects on two wings of the bird.
Upon reflecting on surrendering yourself to the present moment, I have taken reflections from Thich Nhat Hahn’s meditation above and Josh Hollingsworth, PhD.
The first wing is the Buddhist term, Samatha (pronounced Shamatha).
The first meaning of Samatha is stopping.
To understand the practice of stopping we look to Gatha, a poem;
I have arrived, I am home.
These are moments when you are not running after something, you are not searching for anything at all. non-striving. You are completely at ease in the present moment. [This is an ideal present-moment experience of Samatha- Being completely at ease in the present moment is something to which we may only attain after many hours- possibly years- spent in practice; and perhaps not even then]. When we have the intention to stop running, one of the first things we may notice is that our bodies do not stop. Thankfully. Our hearts continue to beat, our breath continues rhythmically, and our mind continues to wander, be distracted. For some, sensations, tension and pain may also continue to be part of our experience.
Thich Nhat Hahn reminds us that the habit of running is very strong in us. He relates that we need a strong will and a big desire to stop.
Gatha may be used in four positions in the body; sitting, standing, walking and lying down.
Vipasyana is the practice of looking deeply in order to get an insight.
In Chinese, Samatha and Vipasyana are the two wings of the bird;
the Transformers path of insight and stopping
It is said that when you have the insight that everything is already there. You are already what you want to become namely a Buddha. Then you feel like there is no longer any need to run. That is why the insight allows you to stop. Without insight no matter how hard you try you cannot really stop. So Samatha is not possible without Vipasyona and Vipasyona is not possible without Samatha. Imagiine a bird flying with only one wing; it is very difficult.
The first meaning of Samata is to stop running.
To stop altogether running. You may have a wound in your body; you may have a cancer. We may have something like that in our body.
We may have a wound in our soul, our consciousness. We may have some despair, a lot of injustice , a lot of anger if you feel deeply wounded and have came with all of these wounds in our body and our consciousness, we want to heal. And healing is possible with the practice of stopping. If you don’t know how to stop running the healing cannot take place, that is why the purpose of “samatha”is to help you to heal. When you breathe in, you breathe in in such a way that makes healing possible. Because your in- breath is not a fight, an act of fighting. Your in-breath is an expresion of arrival.
I have arrived, I don’t need to run. If your in-breath is like that it has the power of healing. And that in-breath releases all tension, releases all the tension that in-breath all your body and your feelings to relax. As the Buddha says, “Breathing in, I relax my body. And in another exercise the Buddha said, “Breathing in I relax my feeling, my emotions”
You can only relax your body when you stop. So your in-breath has the capacity of stopping.
When your in-breath has the capacity of stopping, [leading you to stillness] it becomes very pleasant.
The ability of our bodies to heal is, some believe, is a gift from God; that he created the natural world and He created each of our bodies with the ability to heal itself. Others may believe in another higher power, and still others may simply believe in our body’s capacity to heal itself. Sometimes help from the medical profession is necessary. Often, what is essential is for us to “get out of our own way”- to use our capacity to allow our minds to rest, and to bring our attention to our breath.
Allowing our minds to be, so that our bodies may just breathe in that capacity for healing. Your in-breath is not an act of fighting anymore. It is deeply enjoyable. That is why you are here to breathe in, in such a way that every in-breath has the power to heal. Every in-breath allows your body to heal. And if you feel relaxed, the fighting is no longer there. The struggle is not there, you know that your in-breath has the capacity for healing. And you have faith in it… …You have faith in your in-breath. You know your in-breath well. It is you who knows that your in-breath is relaxing. It is helping you to stop altogether whether your in-breath helps your body to be free from tension. And if you can breathe in like that, you can touch your in-breath in depth, and you know that your in-breath has the power for healing. And when you make this step of mindfulness a step that can bring you home to the here and now a step that can help you stop running altogether, a step that can allow your body to relax, completely. You know that that step has the power of healing. And you can afford yourself one step like that, two steps like that.
Walking from the Upper Hamlet to the lower Hamlet, you maight make several steps like that [intentional]. 50, 100, 200 steps. And every step brings healing.
Why don’t you do that? And each step is a healer. And when you make a step like that you don’t have to struggle at all. because making a step is not an act of struggling, an act of fighting it is total surrendering. You surrender yourself to the present moment. You surrender yourself to the power of healing that is inherent in your body and in your consciousness. Because you need to believe in the power of healing of your body and of your consciousness. Nature has the power of healing. You may believe that when the Buddha touches you he has the power to heal, or he just touches you , you heal. But this kind of healing you can witness too by yourself.
When you cut your finger if you cut the vegetables without much mindfulness, you may cut your finger. But you don’t panic. Why do you not panic? The blood is running from your finger, but you don’t panic because you believe that the body has the capacity of manding the wound, of healing. You don’t have to do much, you just clean it. Because you believe that in a few hours it will heal itself. We have to believe in the power of the body to heal itself. The only thing that we should do is allow our body to heal, and not to intervene a lot* And there is something we need to do. We need to rest. But we don’t know how to rest anymore. Mankind has lost the capacity of resting. And resting is the ground of healing. Because resting like that you allow, you authorize your body to heal. Panic and worry can get in the way of authorizing your body to heal. Resting can allow the natural healing power. Many of us complain that we don’t have time to rest.
In today’s world we may have access to wonderful treatments and medications that make a huge difference in our body’s ability to heal. It is always important to check first with your doctor, and to assess the best approach with his or her help for your specific condition. Thich Nhat Hahn sites a technique that is available to most of us, that may be untapped or underused. This technique is our innate ability to access the healing power of our mind and body that is available when we can manage the thoughts, the negativity bias, our anxiety, our fears - that may prevent our minds to freely allow our body to use the power that it has to heal. Sometimes, in times of trauma and other situations that produce severe or acute symptoms, we need professional help, and that is primary. We are happy to help direct you. If this is your situation. or that of a loved one, please do not hesitate to reach out to us.
I like to say that I’m a pharmacist who knows that health behavior change is the best medicine. That’s not to say that medications are useless, quite the contrary. Medication adherence is a super-important health-habit, but it should be accompanied by healthy lifestyle change in most, if not all, cases.
Josh Hollingsworth, PhD
Finally, in closing, the folling from a Navajo Prayer
In Beauty May I Walk
In beauty may I walk;
All day long may I walk;
Through the returning seasons may I walk.
Beautifully will I possess again
Beautifully birds
Beautifully butterflies…
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk;
With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk;
With dew around my feet may I walk.
With beauty before me may I walk
With beauty behind me may I walk
With beauty above me may I walk
With beauty all around me,
may I walk.
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, lively;
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, living again…
It is [begun] in beauty.
It is [begun] in beauty.
Navajo Prayer