..續本文上一頁 us, not knowing. What will be the result of our decisions

　　 Have I made the right choice

　　Saying “like this”

　　is just a way of

　　reminding oneself

　　to see this

　　moment as it is.

　　The only thing that”s certain about the future—the death of the body—is something we try to ignore. Just thinking about the word death stops the mind, doesn”t it

　　 It does for me. It”s not particularly polite or politically correct to speak of death in casual conversation. What is death

　　 What will happen when I die

　　 Not knowing upsets us. But it is unknown, isn”t it

　　 We don”t know what will happen when the body dies.We have various theories—like reincarnation or being rewarded by a better rebirth or being punished by a worse birth. Some people speculate that once you”ve attained human birth, you may still be reborn as a lower creature. And then there”s the school that says no, once you”ve taken birth in the human form, then you cannot be reborn as a lower creature. Or the belief in oblivion—once you”re dead, you”re dead. That”s it. Nothing left. Finito. The truth of the matter is that nobody really knows. So we often just ignore it or suppress it.

　　But this is all happening in the now. We”re thinking of the concept of death in the present. The way the word death affects consciousness is like this. This is knowing not knowing in the now. It”s not trying to prove any theory. It”s knowing: the breath is like this; the body like this; the moods and mental states are like this. This is developing the path. Saying “like this” is just a way of reminding oneself to see this moment as it is rather than to be caught in some idea that we”ve got to do something or find something or control something or get rid of something.

　　Developing the path, cultivating bhavana is not only formal meditation that we can only do at a certain place, under certain conditions, with certain teachers. That”s just another view we”re creating in the present. Observe how you practice in daily life—at home, with your family, on the job. The word bhavana means being aware of the mind wherever you are in the present moment. I can give you advice about developing sitting meditation—so many minutes every morning and every evening—which is certainly to be considered. It”s useful to develop discipline, to take some time in your daily life to stop your activities, the momentum of duties, the responsibilities and habits. But what I”ve found to really help me the most has been to reflect and pay attention to the here and now.

　　Even going to

　　marvelous places

　　is not all that

　　different. It”s just

　　the hype we give it.

　　It”s so easy to be planning the future or remembering the past especially when nothing really important is happening right now: “I”m going to be teaching a meditation retreat in the future,” or “My trip to Bhutan was a really special visit to an exotic country in the Himalayas.” But so much of life is not special; it”s like this. And even going to marvelous places in the Himalayas is what it is—trees, sky, consciousness; it”s not all that different. It”s just the hype we give it. I also hear people suffering a lot about things they”ve done or things they shouldn”t have done—mistakes, crimes, terrible things they said in the past. They can become obsessed because once they start remembering the mistakes of the past it creates a whole mood. All the guilty moments of the past can come flooding back in and destroy one”s life in the present. Many people end up stuck in a very miserable hell realm that they”ve created for themselves.

　　But this is all happening in the present, which is why this present moment is the door to liberation. It”s the gate to the Deathless. Awakening to this is not suppressing, denying, dismissing, defending, justifying, or blaming; it is what it is, attending to a …

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