Being Zen: Bringing Meditation to Life Read Online Free PDF

does it feel? What is its texture? Now become aware of the environment. Are there any sounds? How does the air feel on your skin? Notice how unfamiliar this experiencing of the physical reality of the present moment may be to you. Notice the sense of presence that comes upon leavingthe mental world and entering the physical experience of the moment. This experiencing is only possible when we are not caught in thinking.
    This two-part approach to practice—clarifying our beliefs and experiencing physical reality—allows us to widen our container of awareness to include even our most difficult emotional reactions to life. We can even learn to relate to our worst fears, our deepest shame, our most unwanted feelings—whatever “holes” we’re caught in—in a new way. As we clarify our believed thoughts, no longer taking them as truth, and as we reside in the bodily component of our experience, we begin to see that our experience of these little holes is actually nothing more than a combination of deeply believed thoughts and a complex of subtle and not-so-subtle uncomfortable bodily sensations. Seeing this—and I mean seeing it in the way that fosters real understanding—is a taste of freedom.
    As our container of awareness enlarges, we find that we can now be with these little holes while not believing in them quite so solidly. With awareness, our artificial, self-limiting view of who we are becomes more porous. We can then begin to connect with the reality of life as it is. It’s like taking off our colored glasses and seeing without the filter of our conditioning, desires, and judgments. It’s like taking our foot out of a tight shoe: the sense of restriction and boundary disappears.
    But of course, within no time at all, we reclaim our colored glasses and tight shoes. For though we sense the freedom of living with what is, we still prefer our familiar patterns, tight shoes and all! The process of settling into the willingness to just be is slow and halting. Resistance within the process returns again and again. As we practice, we continually struggle between the yes and the no, between residing in the struggle and spinning off toward our illusion of comfort and security.
    But somewhere along the way, the gradual shift from unwillingness to willingness may take place. It is this crucial shift, to the willingness to just be , that finally allows us to be with life as it is—holes and all. Again, the holes don’t necessarily go away; we simply see them for what they are, no longer investing them with solid belief. This transformative process is both the heart and the fruit of practice.

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    Experiencing and the Witness
     
    A S WE EXAMINE THE PRACTICE LIFE , a word that will keep coming up is experiencing . What exactly does it mean, to experience? Can we define it? Can we describe it?
    Unfortunately, “experiencing” can’t be adequately described, and it certainly can’t be defined. We have to learn what it means from the inside, as a living reality. At first we might equate it with bringing awareness to particular sensations, such as those of the breath. We focus on the coolness as the breath enters the nostrils or the feeling of the upper body as it rises and falls with our inhalations and exhalations. And bringing awareness to the breath in this focused way grounds us in physical reality. Entering the world of physical reality takes us out of our spinning mental world and provides a taste of experiencing.
    But experiencing cannot be reduced to just single sensations, although it is only by starting at this end of the awareness continuum that we can begin to approach the depth and breadth that the process of experiencing can be. Often, on this end of the continuum, we can experience the concentrated states called samadhi , in which we become fully absorbed in the object of concentration. By fully focusing on the breath or the light of a candle or sounds (such as chanting or music), we can sometimes even