Future Present Tense
Learning to live in the moment without neglecting your shit.
I came to Buddhism and mindfulness, like many people, from a stressful situation. In the midst of a divorce, with three young boys to care for, my therapist suggested that I practice breathing. What a novel fucking idea, breathing. This practice, filling up the mental balloon of my chest cavity and counting to one hundred, starting over if I lost count, probably saved my ass. It certainly increased my capacity to work and care for my children who, at that time, were toddlers and grade-school aged. They needed me present.
Fast forward a decade or so, and I started attending weekly meetings at various Buddhist meditations centers around town. I sat Zazen with the Soto Zen Buddhists, chanted mantras with others… It wasn’t necessarily Buddhism that engaged me, but the practices involved in investigating my mind and my thinking. I even spent a month living in a tent at a Sivananda yoga center in Northern California, to earn a yoga teaching credential, where we meditated and practiced yoga, both, at least, twice a day.
I was really into this shit, found real value in exploring single-pointed meditation, breathing techniques, dream practices, etc. It was enriching, in some ways, but most of all, was a way I could relax from the increasing pressures of my life. And here’s where the trouble began.
There was real trouble for me, every time I sat down on a cushion or attended a dharma talk. From what I knew of the Buddha and his story, it was something like what he went through to become the Buddha, trying all sorts of aesthetic practices to attain enlightenment and always coming back to himself, with some fundamental differences. Siddhartha was a prince. He really didn’t have to worry about shit. Billions are glad he did, of course, but the fundamental fact remains, he was born in abundance. He did not want for anything and, as such, had the luxury of pursuing enlightenment.
Not a Fucking Prince
Siddhartha also didn’t live on the twenty first century. Humans were abstract enough during his time but life was much, much simpler. There weren’t savings accounts, credit cards, mortgages, insurance payments, retirement plans or pensions. He didn’t have a phone bill and a car payment or a clogged sewer line and a failing air conditioner. Sure, there were problems of flooding, feast and famine, but there were days that I begged for a feast or a famine so I could make due and fucking survive. How much easier did it feel to sharpen my spear, go hunt a deer and forage for food than to figure out just how much I should invest in my retirement portfolio and which bills I needed to forestall in order to make my child support payments or keep the lights on. I wanted to survive! I wanted to be in the moment, be a hunter gatherer and kill what I eat.
So I sat an a cushion and I griped quietly to myself that this was all bullshit. You can’t stay in the moment any more because there is too much at stake in the future. The kids needed me to save for college, and I needed to prepare for retirement while balancing immediate demands. Like Siddhartha, I was able to be here now, only to find myself standing from a meditation to be confronted with the possibility of the future and my awkward, loping attempts to reconcile immediate needs and to prepare for my inevitable and pending old age and demise. And don’t even get me started on dating, male biology and physical needs.
Since my journey began, I have now become a certified Yoga Siromani (that’s “spiritual seeker” for some, and yoga teacher for others); a Certified Foresight Strategist (via the University of Houston); and a Certified Cultivating Emotional Balance teacher. It is through the last two that I think I’ve finally been able to reconcile my future self with my present self, staying in the moment while working towards a potentially favorable future.
Through my year-long training to become a teacher of Cultivating Emotional Balance, I further cultivated a meditation habit. Knowing the benefits, I threw myself into the practice, in earnest and with intent. I learned a bit more about myself through this and know, now, that to practice every day being in the moment is key. And, I learned that you can be in the moment and feel, in that moment, the sweet sense of just being. There’s still anxiety. There’s still depression, but what these are are me either projecting into the future or dwelling in the past.
How, you ask, do I manage to reconcile my future needs with staying in the moment? How do I stay in the moment and effect a blissfulness reserved for aging, retired hippies and monastics? It’s not a secret. Happiness is a low bar we can all aspire to, but the path to that low bar, the deceptively simple approach of just being happy in the moment is hard won.
It took me years of learning, synthesis and struggle to figure out how to be here now, but preparing for later. I don’t have it locked down just yet, in fact, if you were to look at my net worth and my investment portfolio, you might worry for me, but it causes me very little consternation any more. I have managed to be here now and I continue to find ways to prepare for my future self, the key to all of this being what brought me here in the first place, my thoughts.
Think About It
Thoughts create actions. Thoughts are the precursor to action and your thoughts color each and every interaction you have in your life. If you think negative thoughts, negativity is perceived. It’s the old parable about the farmer meeting the traveler on the road. “What sort of folks live in the next town?” says the traveler to the farmer. To which the farmer asks what sort of folks lived in the town he is coming from, and so on… at any rate, if you don’t know the story, look it up. It makes sense. If you think positively, you’ll see the positive. There had been a dark cloud over my entire life for years, even decades. This cloud colored everything I saw and every interaction I had. And, I’ve discovered ways to blow that cloud away, or at least force a little of that inherent sunshine to penetrate the density and darkness. Believe it or not, behind every dark cloud is that sunshine. It’s there for everyone, at a moments notice.
So here’s the deceptively simple part of all this, the means for living now and not neglecting our own shit. The way we can find immediate bliss without being spaced out. It is conation, the mental faculty of purpose, desire, intention and volition. Through all of my studies and certifications, I was able to devise a means of living a purposeful life with aligned the intentions of happiness and well being. I’ve been able to uncover a simple method for moving towards a desired future while living wholly and presently in the moment.
For now, I’m managing my shit pretty well, still moving towards a desired future and managing to be happier in the moment than at any other time in my past. There’s always work to be done, always challenges, and always a different future to address, but at least I’ve got something akin to a plan and a protocol, which is one hell of a lot better than I had before I started practicing. Now, I think it’s time to find a sunny spot in the yard and count some breaths for the benefit of all beings.
