In The Zeitgeist

In spiritual practice there is the concept of mindfulness, meaning awareness of the present moment and one’s thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations in that moment, as they are being experienced. A goal of mindfulness is to achieve a calm acceptance of one’s circumstances, so that one is not living in a state of continuous mental and emotional turmoil.

A state of inner turmoil is sort of a baseline mode of operation for human beings. It comes about because of negative conditioning, which causes regrets about the past and anxiety about the future. This manifests as troubling thoughts and feelings which preoccupy one’s attention and take away one’s focus from the matter at hand, which only further complicates one’s existence.

I’m sure you are familiar with the experience, as well as with many pithy sayings that address the problem. “Don’t worry about what you can’t control, don’t hold on to the past,” and so forth. Easier said than done! Keeping one’s focus in the moment requires intention, even discipline. It actually takes an effort!

One suggestion is to practice meditation, which can be done by simply sitting calmly and putting one’s attention on one’s breathing. If you try this, you will find that thoughts pop up in your mind uninvited. Your mind is like a bubbling spring from which thoughts are constantly erupting.

When this happens while meditating, just let the thoughts go. Pay them no heed. They are just objects of experience – subtle mental objects as opposed to gross physical objects, and thus even less permanent. They dissipate like mist. Let them pass, and keep your attention on your breathing.

As you keep your attention focused, you will become aware of the stillness of the present moment. You will become aware of the inner light of consciousness, which is the ground of being. All of the objects of experience, which include your roiling thoughts, manifest within the field of consciouness.

Even time itself! It is true what they say, that all we have is Now. There is no reality to the Past or the Future, so how can they trouble you so?

If you learn to stay in the present moment, and not be distracted by worries about the past and the future, you will lead a fuller life. And you will be able to accomplish more.

The point isn’t to forget the past – it still has lessons to teach. Nor is it to forsake the future, and live as if there is no tomorrow. It is to be in the present, which after all is where we are.

Think of it in this practical sense: in order to ensure the safety and prosperity of yourself and your loved ones, you need to perform well at your job, yes? But if, as you do your job, you are only worrying about paying bills and planning the evening’s activities, you will hurt your productivity, right? At worse, this could lead to you losing your job, and how will you pay those bills then?

So mindfulness, if it keeps you rooted in the present, can benefit your future. That is the whole of it.

Mindfulness can help you navigate the troubled waters of times, even in times as troubling as these.

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Behold!

The buddha bear is wise!

Did you know that when you go the store and pick an item off the shelf, choosing among the myriad options on display, you are performing a theatrical act? That you are putting on a little play?

Did you know that everything we do is a performance? Every choice we make and every action we take? It is just as the great bard wrote:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;

William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7

Let me explain.

In our ordinary state of consciousness, our actions are motivated by our personal agenda and our ego’s need to maintain its identity-image. Our identity-image is a persona that develops over the course of our lives. It is our self-image – “I’m a nice guy” or “I’m a tough guy” for example. It develops with conditioning as our experiences shape our habits of perception and behavior to form who we are as distinct individuals. In other words, we become a character.

Yes, like a character in a play. Do you see where I am going?

The conditioning that forms our character limits us, so that we think and act in specific ways, following a script. Just as a play has a script. The details of our script define who we are in society – our role. Just as each character in a play has a role. Our role determines how we dress, which is like our costume in the play, and what we own, which is like our stage props.

You know what I mean! People live according to their self-image. They dress a certain way and drive a certain car, and have particular beliefs and mannerisms. They fall into a pattern, and to come out of that pattern is difficult – it is very uncomfortable! To change these behavioral patterns would be like denying one’s own self-image.

We refer to these patterns of dressing and acting and so forth as culture, and in our diverse society we even have sub-cultures, groups within the larger population whose identity-image conforms to some model. This enriches our collective lives, and also complicates our politics.

Some people are ostentatious about their self-image, like they are showing it off to those around them, who are the audience of their play. But even if a person is not ostentatious, even if they only want to be left alone and don’t care much how they look to others, even then they are putting on a performance.

For whom, then, you might wonder? Who is the audience for this solitary person, acting alone?

Why they are their own audience, of course! The conditioned ego is performing for itself, making the choices necessary to maintain its self-image. It is always like this with every choice we make, and every action we take; they are affirmations to ourselves of who we are.

Let’s say you are at the store and you are buying your bottle of shampoo, and you have to decide if you will buy the inexpensive generic brand or the costlier designer brand. You make the choice in accord with your self-image. Maybe you are successful and deserve the finer things in life, and certainly you can afford the more expensive option. Or maybe you are sensible and you understand the value of money, and you know the cheaper option works just as well.

You make the choice of either the generic or designer bottle, and so you reinforce your identity-image. Your consumer choice is a little performative act by yourself for yourself: solipsistic theater, as it were. Marketers know this is how consumer behavior works, and they make sure to have different brands at different price points to capture greater market share, even though what is in each bottle is more or less the same.

So our everyday act is an act of theater. This is how we are in our ordinary state of ego-consciousness, and this is not a bad thing per se. We need to reinforce our identity-image and have a stable ego if we wish to function in society, and we should not be ashamed of our limiting conditioning.

I say that everything we do is a performance, because our actions are always witnessed, whether by others, or by ourselves. They always have an audience. And there is always an ultimate witness, which is the unitive consciousness that is the ground of reality.

It is within this unitive consciousness that all of manifestation occurs, the whole world that is the stage on which we perform. It is this unitive consciousness that ultimately is making the choice that we attribute to ourselves, bringing the world into manifestation as it does.

This unitive consciousness is unconditioned; it has complete freedom of choice. But it is very difficult for us to access this freedom of choice, because of the limitations of our conditioning – our fears and our inertias that hold us back.

In our daily lives, we can strive to keep an open mind and to overcome our conditioning, and so expand the possibilities available to us in the choices we make.

What is there to fear? We are merely players on a stage.

It is all just a performance!

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Behold the wisdom of the Buddha Bear!