Living in the moment
Living in the moment
or, meditation in everyday life
I was working in a heavy-duty truck repair shop at the time. The smell of grease and the sound of air-powered tools saturated your senses. It was the kind of shop filled with big-handed, strong men and even stronger equipment. And when one of those guys shook your hand, his turn toward you was slow and deliberate. His grip was like placing your hand inside ancient, weathered leather wrapped around a warm, steel vise. That kind of place, those kind of men.
Shops like these are descended from family lines of blacksmiths, and in this case the old horse-drawn freight wagon shops. The kind of place where you’d hear the heavy blows of metal striking metal, or seeing the sparks flying off of heavy grinders or, eventually, welders.
One of the last places on earth you’d ever imagine hearing advice on meditation. Among the best advice I’ve ever received.
Oh, and in the last bay, way at the far end of the shop, next to the weight training equipment, sat a mat, and a fully equipped martial arts dojo.
But the advice that day wasn’t given back there on the the dojo mat. That’s because in our school practice never stopped. We practiced our lessons both on and off the mat. This time, advice came somewhat unexpectedly out on the shop floor, from the shop owner. He was also my sensei.
“Mark, if you want to really learn meditation, you need to learn how to meditate in everyday life.”
I was a bit taken aback by that statement, although I nodded my head as if I understood. Instead of nodding my head, I should have responded with, “What do you mean?”
But I didn’t ask my question. And in a sense, maybe it didn’t matter, maybe it was better that I didn’t. Because my boss’s statement wore on me. Not just for a few days or weeks. But for many years, it had its way with me.
For so many years, in fact, that I actually began to understand it.
“The reason why heaven and earth are able to endure and continue thus long is because they do not live of, or for, themselves.” — Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
It had quickly occurred to me that expanding the ‘practice’ of meditation to anywhere/anytime would be amazing. But what would that mean, I wondered? How would it look? How would it play out in everyday life circumstances?
What would be different about the way we approach life if we were meditating — in some form or another — pretty much all the time, or at least at any time we chose? And not in some dull-eyed space cadet way. Rather, in a completely normalized, functional manner.
Martial arts helped illuminate the path to get me there, and I eventually learned how to meditate in everyday life. I can actually describe how to do it, although not in this short essay. It’s a skill I practice everyday.
I guess it all went back to my earlier years, when I had first been intrigued by the phrase “martial arts can be a way of life.” I was hoping I would start to get a sense of that when I enrolled in Jiu Jitsu at the age of 39. But I had no sense of ‘a way of life’ until I changed schools. It was with my second teacher that I started to learn what I call ‘the other side of discernment.’ In the truck shop.
Discernment has levels, much like responsibility does. On a daily, functional level, discernment helps us make good or even safe decisions. Buts it’s not the same as experience. Discernment is a bit more in the direction of a martial arts rule: “Be aware of your surroundings.”
Discernment, as I’m using it, is more about our ‘inner truth barometer’. And being ‘inner’, it has a tendency to be submerged. Out of sight, out of mind.
If we drill down, however, we can find another level of discernment. The deeper we drill, the more sensitive and aware discernment itself becomes.
One day, my nephew let me ride his sport bike. I was proficient on motorcycles, having owned a cruiser for years. But a sport bike is a thrill like no other. On my cruiser, I would lean, and the bike would turn. But on a sport bike, I only had to barely move my hips and the bike would respond with amazing motion and control. Both bikes were fun, but the sport bike responded to even the slightest nuance of movement.
This is what describes deeper discernment: the slightest nuance of movement.
When we meditate, at least in my own experience, we have a tendency to not go all that deep, or to perhaps fall asleep, or maybe even startle ourselves back toward a more wakeful state. We also typically practice under controlled conditions: an area, an atmosphere, a time of day, or a circumstance.A sport bike ride, on the other hand, combines all those things at once, and it becomes a very engaging experience as well. Similarly, meditation in everyday life is about the ability to be fully engaged, while also engaging in simultaneous subtle practices. Just as the smallest of hip movements can lean a sport bike down flat in a turn, so the subtlest of meditative intention can bring better balance to any everyday life activity.
“When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the slightest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind.” — Hsin Hsin Ming
An acrobat who walks a tightrope wire is both strong and relaxed at the same time. With strength she is able to stay balanced in an impossible position. Yet by relaxing, she is sensitive to the most subtle of changes to her balance.
Meditation in everyday life is about being engaged in our surroundings while also being responsive to changes in the situation, and then about adjusting our self accordingly toward a calmer place of mind and body. It increasingly opens us up to what some refer to as the universal flow.