The following is an adapted reprint from the book African Zen. The chapter/meditation is entitled “A Spiritual House.”
“You cannot build a house for last year’s summer.”- Ethiopian proverb
Our expectations about what we will experience can be so different from the reality of our present experience. Just as our perceived future can defy our expectations, the perceptions of our past can thwart the present and the perceived future.
If we choose to keep living in the past over and over again, we become oblivious to the changing of “the seasons” and build our “house” on the basis of illusions. Reliving the past in our mind (that’s the only place the past can “live”) is a way to ensure suffering, to punish ourselves for missteps, mistakes and missed opportunities.
The words, “if only,” are our constant refrain when we recount events of the past, rather than ” I chose to…”. Someone once told me that when a series of unfortunate events occur in my life, one person is present in every event – me. We can take responsibility for the choices we have made, but we must also be willing to accept what we have become, the influence of those choices on our present moment of experience and being. Since we see the past as unchangeable, we become frustrated with trying to change it, and then become obsessed with our powerlessness to redo the events. Our egoic minds commit us to constant repetition of these thoughts with the hope that something will change. Obscured in all our fantasizing and recounting is the possibility of a full appreciation of our present moment. Each moment marches by as we invest our precious energy in recriminations of the past.
In the present moment, we build a house that endures all seasons, because in our spiritual house the past, present and future converge into the oneness of the universe. In our spiritual house, time is eternal, there are no mistakes, and there are no regrets. We embrace each new moment like the joy of spring, the light of summer, the fragrances of fall and the coolness of winter. We move effortlessly through the series of “right nows.” The present moment is where we live, what we experience and where all of who we are rests.
Tag Archives: present moment
Clutter
Hoarders are often our extreme reminder of the dangers of clutter, but our lives are often not lived in extremes. My closets, closed to visitors and friends are often cluttered with too many clothes, supplies or unused and forgotten objects. I have forgotten the values or memories I have unwittingly attached to many of those objects, but I am reluctant to let the objects go.
Why then do we accumulate things, and then hold onto them, as if they are important to us? And if we release them what remains? Will their release create empty spaces — in our living space or in our hearts and minds? Each item is embedded with memories, some faint and some vivid. Somewhat like the “Velveteen Rabbit,” our even faded love of possessing these items makes them and us real. Perhaps without them we think we have no life signature, no definition, no uniqueness. That’s why they are “our things.” But in what way do these possessions reveal who we really are?
What remains when we let go of what does not support us emotional, physically and spiritually? Do we plan to refill the space with new trinkets or clothing? Do we see the removal of clutter as a loss or a gain? What remains of us when all else is gone, all that we believe defines us?.
What Remains?
When the laughter stops
What is it that remains?
Some memory of the bolt of rapture
Some glimpse of happiness now faded?
What remains when the glow of the trinket
Dulls us into habitual patterns of boredom?
What stirs us during cold nights, shivering arms,
Clinging to gossamer dreams?
What remains when the song ends, the music
Now a faded echo?
The even breath of spiritual energy remains,
Energy that fills the soul with peace,
And rests in quiet awareness,
Of infinite abundance.
But I had to experience the transient moments,
The folly of wanting.
The dissatisfaction with receiving
Some insufficient thing.
I had to. I wanted to. I thought I needed to…
I had to remember what, with clouded thoughts, I had forgotten.
The bold, relentless Now clears the false ideas I cling to,
And I appreciate the pregnant silence that remains,
Full of the love and joy I could not see beneath the clutter.
And who I am being is now liberated from thinking
That I could ever love what I am not.
nine principles for joy 