3 Steps to Starting a Zazen Meditation Practice – an Elephant Journal Piece
We always want to believe that somewhere there’s a perfect situation, if only we weren’t barred from it. But that’s not the reality—It’s as if we’re afraid to really commit to this moment because a better one might come along later—You will discover upon reaching it that, whatever it is, it’s not what you expected and nothing is any more perfect than it ever was.
~ Brad Warner, Hardcore Zen: punk rock, monster movies, and the truth about reality.
Meditation, mindfulness, and yoga (Spoiler Alert: meditation is yoga) all have some very important common themes—which is why you probably hear them together a lot.
Arguably, the most important of these is the notion of the here and now. We spend so much of our lives in a constant state of disconnect. Often, no matter what we’re doing, our minds are somewhere else until we look back–or maybe we don’t—and realize that our lives are just a constant stream of going from one motion to the next.
In the midst of every here-and-now, we are usually waiting for the next big thing or rehashing the details of some moment that’s already
happened.
You know what I mean. You’re out to dinner with your girlfriend and she’s telling you about a fight she had with her mother, but you’re thinking about that huge meeting you have with a potential new client tomorrow morning, which reminds you that Jim from sales will be there and before you even know what hit you, you’re paying the check and walking to your car. You have no idea what you just ate, let alone what your girlfriend talked about for the last hour and a half, but now you can’t stop thinking about the time that Jim screwed you out of that big commission check and you know you’ll finally be happy when you land this big account tomorrow so you can wipe that smug ass grin off ol’ Jim’s face…
The problem with this is that there’s no such thing as tomorrow….
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