#1. I think that we often regard the present moment as the mere glue between the past and the future. It's the boring part between the interesting things that happened before and the interesting things yet to come. But that's quite incorrect. The past and future don't exist, nor have they ever existed. The present is the only reality.
#2. I remember, when I was struggling very deeply with depression, I felt like I couldn't see the sky, I couldn't see nature. I could go outside, and I could look at all the trees and such, and I could see that they were lovely, but I couldn't feel it; I couldn't
see it. I think that in a sense, when we truly see beauty, we reflect it. It conjures up the beauty within us. (The same goes for anything around us.) When we see a beautiful blue sky, the thing that we enjoy is not necessarily the sky itself, but the feeling that it inspires within us.
Indeed, I still feel that way sometimes. But I feel like I've learned, to a great degree, how to see it. I remember I always used to think, "I'm outside right now, but I'm still carrying the inside with me." I was outside -- I was free -- but I was still trapped with that same feeling that I thought came from being stuck indoors.
There's a story in Zen Buddhism about one of the masters in the tradition. The leader of the monastery, looking to elect the next leader, asked his disciples to compose a poem revealing their wisdom. One of them wrote a poem along the lines of, "Our body is the place of awakening, And our mind is a clear mirror. We must continually polish the mirror, Never letting dust gather." He pointed toward this notion: that perfection is reflecting the beautiful reality in this world*. Keeping one's mind free and open, we are free and open.
Gracious. I've been so antsy lately. I didn't take very good care of myself during the semester. When I look outside, I long for the feeling of freedom that the air and the sunshine seem to possess. But when I go out there, I am still lost in my torrent of thoughts and feelings. The failure is not on the part of nature; it's my failure to escape the torrent! And the only way for the torrent to slow is for me to go right into it; to feel what I am avoiding feeling, and to let arise the thoughts that I am avoiding. I guess I'm avoiding them because I know they'll be painful. Better to be in clear pain for a moment, though, than to be divorced and generally unsettled. Pain always passes, but only when I let it go.
*An illiterate laborer at the monastery had a monk read the poems to him, and he had that monk write one for him and put it up there: "Awakening has no tree, the heart is no mirror; there's nothing at all: Where can dust gather?" He became the successor: there's no need to make oneself free and open; we already are!
