WHAT NEXT?

WHAT NEXT?

Many people assume Zen is like a therapist couch and come to purge their faults. Others want to expose their personal opinions. Still others come to zazen hoping to be given answers to personal problems.

Such motives may be reasonable, but they may indicate a need to control.

        One reason we create problems is because they give us a sense of identity. We replay past mistakes, allowing feelings of regret to shape our actions in the present. We worry about the future, as if the act of fixation somehow gives us power. We hold stress in our minds and bodies and accept tension as the standard.

However, there will never be a time when life is simple.

As Mark Twain said, "I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened."

Every moment is a chance to let go. Pausing the mind allows the self to be here and now rather than some other place or time. To be awake is to be aware.

Some Buddhist schools call living in the moment mindfulness. It’s a state of open attention on the present. When you become mindful, you realize you are not your thoughts, but you are aware of them.

The term "mindfulness" is a translation of a Pali term that is utilized to develop self-knowledge and wisdom. Mindfulness is the process of bringing one's attention to experiences occurring in the present moment.

Life goes on in the present. But so often, we let the present slip away because we are busy doing something.

Mindfulness is common to Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, and many Native-American traditions. It's why Thoreau went to Walden Pond; it's what Emerson and Whitman wrote about in their essays and poems.

If we see the world with mindful eyes, we realize almost everything is different each time—the pattern of light on the buildings, the faces of the people, even sensations.

Two monks were meditating side by side. The younger one gave the older one a questioning look.

The older monk said, "Nothing happens next. This is it."

Beside the stairway,

A white chrysanthemum blooms.

There is nothing else.

                                --Anonymous