nowness, availability, moving 2/22/08

Thursday, February 21st was the first evening I wandered over to the Shambhala Center for some meditation instruction and a dharma book talk. I had a few things I would have liked to say in the book talk in response to two of the questions that were being considered but I was too shy and felt that as a newbie, I should just keep quiet and get a feel for things before jumping in. But I e-mailed my thoughts to my old buddy Larry anyway:

So here's what I was thinking last night, with the benefit of a night's sleep and a morning's scattered and intermittent musings. Please feel free to eviscerate as needed.

Is there a difference between nowness and mindfulness?

Yes. Nowness is availability. It is submission, being ready for whatever the moment presents. When one rests in nowness, one is able to look backward with a sense of peace and forward without the ego's investment in what the future brings. All of the sensations of that moment are allowed to enter without judgment and once registered, they may provoke us to act but they don't incite any sense of need.

Mindfulness is presence. While nowness receives, mindfulness acts. Mindfulness imprints itself on the moment. It is the force that presses our foot into the dirt, that dunks our hand beneath the dishwater. It takes possession of the moment and in staking its claim, loses itself to the moment. And in losing itself becomes all the more powerful and more present.

Is it helpful to think of them as separate? Only because it forces us to recognize that they are mutually dependent states of consciousness - mindfulness is a conquence of nowness, and vice versa.

Is it okay if I engage in a routine physical task while I listen to Dharma teachings?

Yes. Moving the body digs furrows through the mind.

We perceive the body as a gateway between our selves and the All, but physical movement forces us to the edge of our boundaries by demanding that we inhabit our flesh to its farthest reaches. Once we are fully engaged in movement - and yes, you can be fully engaged and listening, you just can't listen hungrily - once we are deep in our bodies, only a tiny step separates us from seeing the porous nature of flesh, how the self is a pulse of awareness that flows in and out like tidewater. As we inhabit that knowledge, our self mingles with All, slowly merging into the indistinguishable.

But the self doesn't only flow out into the All. The All floods in. Memory and knowledge do in fact mark themselves on our bodies physically. They brand themselves into our tissues. That's why I can touch a client in a certain way and she remembers something that happened in her body years ago. That's why great ideas come as we lather a thigh in the shower. There is something about the churning driving momentum of repetetive motion that opens the mind and prepares it for seeding.

Shouldn't these realizations be spontaneously generated? Shouldn't we move and simply allow the understanding to come, not allow ourselves to be muddied by someone else's voice?

It is impossible to move, or to be, without stimulation. No realization springs from nothing - the buzz of a fly, the play between darkness and light across tree bark, the heat of your hand on your knee will all direct you to your new awareness. Nothing is born of nothing, so the voice of the dharma teacher is no more or less valid a stimulus than any other.

At least as I understand it right now.