You Are Already Here

~~~~
Non-Striving
The Fifth Attitudinal Factor of Mindfulness
by Jon Kabat-Zinn
~~~~

Non-striving is related to dropping in on the present moment and the timeless quality of the present moment...

Non-striving isn't trivial - it's realizing that you are already here.  There is noplace to go because the only agenda is to be awake.  It isn't some ideal that after four years of sitting on top of Mount Everest or in a cave in the Himalayas or studying with a million Tibetan teachers or doing 10,000 prostrations or whatever it is, that you'll be any better than you are now.  It's impossible - you'll just be older.  What happens now is what matters.

If you don't pay attention now, said Kabir (the great Hindu Sufi poet of the 16th Century), if you don't pay attention now, you will only wind up with an apartment in the City of Death later.  T. S. Eliot said in his last poem, Four Quartets: Ridiculous the waste, sad time stretching before and after.

Non-striving - even the tiniest little bit of letting ourselves off the hook and just realizing we're already here.  The future that we want - this is it.  This is the future of all the previous thoughts you have ever had about the future.  You're in it - you're already in it. What's the purpose of all this living if it's only to get someplace else and then when you're there you're not happy anyway - you want to be someplace else...

This is it.  This is your life.  You only have moments.  This moment is as good as any other - in fact it's perfect.

The Doing comes out of the Being - to some degree that's an art form.  Are any of us good at it?  No.  But at least intending to live that way has a chance of greater balance - greater emotional balance, greater cognitive balance, greater clarity of mind and heart - and is a lot less toxic for other people who live with you or around you.

~~~~
nothing left to do when you know that you've been taken
nothing left to do when you're begging for a crumb
nothing left to do when you've got to go on waiting
waiting for the miracle to come
- Leonard Cohen
~~~~