Returning

Returning to the present moment takes work.  Or perhaps it takes choice... and willingness.  After a weekend that I can only describe as emotionally intense, I drove to work today aware that I always have the present moment with me.  The feelings - bodily and emotional - the sensations - the awarenesses... each moment is a chance to either flee from the moment, resist it, or open to it.  I think one of the biggest hindrances to my opening to the present moment is a fear of not knowing what to "do with it."  But what is there to do with it?  If I'm trying to do something with the present moment - trying to fix some problem, etc., then I'm probably not actually in the moment.  The type of change that comes from grounded presence doesn't have the feeling of "fixing" anything.  It has the sense of centered response, rather than reactivity.  Too often the thoughts and sensations carry me.  Not often enough do I breathe in and through the thoughts and sensations to what the present moment really has to offer me.  Trying to "fix" myself, others, past mistakes, future worries, etc. doesn't let me return home.

And that is the most important thing to me today.  To come home to myself.  To have a self to come home to... notwithstanding the Buddhist notion of no-self.  Buddhist no-self just means the self I come home to is not independent and self-existent but interrelated, made of "non-self" elements, as Thay says.  The amazing thing is that, no matter what has happened, no matter the chaos or fear or overwhelm, the present moment is always there, beckoning us back.  As it did me, today, amidst all of my fatigue, gratitude, uncertainty, and upheaval, there it was - Jonathan in his breath, a home to return to.  A home not left.  A home inside myself, carried with me wherever I go, always a pause, a breath, a walking meditation away from my accessing - easier to tap into the more I cultivate the attitude and energy of mindfulness.  Readier at hand for my diligence and work.  I suppose mindfulness is like any muscle.  Use makes it stronger.  Thay says that we have only as much free will as the mindfulness we have cultivated.  This is something to think about today as I return, again an again, to this moment.  Here.  Now.