Settling into the sitting posture,
With the eyes either open or closed,
Whichever is most directly a pathway toward the balance between relaxation and alertness that we cultivate.
Find the balance point between relaxing and settling in,
Brightening and lifting up.
Just enough effort,
Effort without effort.
It's a soft love of presence,
Delighting in presence,
A love of this body and a delighting in the body to keep us here and connecting with the posture of the body or the breath or the field of sound and sensation ever unfolding.
And we begin to stabilize our attention in the body,
In the aliveness of this very moment unfolding,
Letting everything else rest for now.
A common refrain in the Dhamma is that the past is gone and the future not yet appeared.
To grasp at them as we do constantly in thought is a kind of folly or entertainment.
I think what it does is it reminds us again and again of the stronger emotions.
We think about what was pleasurable or painful in the past,
What might be pleasurable or painful in the future.
We rarely think about that,
Which is truly neutral or peaceful.
And so thought spinning grabs onto intensity in the past and future.
Missing completely the present moment,
Which almost all the time is pretty simple.
And in a beautiful space like this,
Sitting in meditation,
The end of a day,
The cool,
Moist air outside,
First rains of the season,
This moment can be pretty simple.
What a gift to rest into a simple moment.
The past is gone,
The future not yet arisen.
So you feel the breath moving in the body,
Sounds swirling around the body,
Sensations making a field of body that you can sink into.
Your lifeline in a literal way,
Your lifeline in the present moment is sensation.
Sensation as it's being perceived is never past or future.
Always now,
Even if it feels like it's part of a story of the past or the future,
The sensation is now.
Even now is a bit of an illusion,
But there is this process of resting into what's happening as it's happening.
And now,
At first it feels like walking on a very narrow path,
Like a razor's,
Thin ridge top,
Say,
In the mountains with a steep fall on either side.
We fall into the past and lose ourselves in spinning thought,
Or we fall into the future,
We lose the present moment in spinning thought.
It takes some fierce love of uprightness and practice to learn to balance.
Concentration is a kind of balance.
And you're balancing on a narrow ridge.
You fall a little bit one way and immediately catch yourself gently coming back towards center.
The catching is gentle or else it goes too far.
The other way,
You aim for stillness.
You sink your weight down,
You soften the joints,
Move without startling the body,
Careful of your foot placement and the center of gravity.
It's not still,
But it's not falling.
That's concentration and that's presence in the first moments as we begin to stabilize.
The past is gone,
Future not yet arisen.
Walking the ridge path without falling on either side,
Slow and steady,
One breath at a time,
Until the feeling of not falling becomes familiar and we begin to relax even more.
The more we relax,
The less we wobble,
The gentler our course correction is,
The gentler our course correction is,
Until we're just walking,
Unafraid,
Far from falling.
Beginning to taste the peace of stopping entirely.
And practice in this way or with any meditation you cultivate.
Stay close with the body,
The breath,
The sensations as they arise.
If you want to refine focus,
Make the object smaller or more refined,
Like the breath just at the tip of the nose and just stay there,
Relaxing and brightening,
Letting go of past and future,
Intimate with the unfolding,
Mysterious,
Luminous present.
