Attending to What is Happening Right Now

These words of wisdom from Cheri Huber teach us about attending to what is happening right now. They encourage us to be present for our experience and thereby, we can “enjoy the wonders of life,” as Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh says.

According to Cheri, the wonders of life include what is actually happening right now – breathing, feeling sensations in the body, the earth, the sky, the trees, the birdsong, and taste of food that we eat mindfully. Somehow, we prefer our imaginary life. I wonder why this is.

Egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate can only appear to exist by comparing an imaginary past/future with “this.” It cannot exist in the present because it’s not real. It’s an imaginary “thought.” It gets you to focus attention on an imaginary past, then an imaginary future, and that imaginary world becomes what you believe is true, reality, your world. It’s just like being in a movie theatre and believing the film you’re watching is “real life.” That’s why we practice turning attention to the breath, the sensations in the body, to the sky, trees, bird song. Those things are actually HAPPENING. When we attend to what’s actually happening, the imaginary world of egocentric karmic conditioning/ self-hate disappears—there’s nothing maintaining it.
– Cheri Huber

Living in the present moment is a ubiquitous teaching for all spiritual disciplines. Yet, it seem like it is very difficult for us lay practitioners. We have so many things that divert our attention that it becomes almost impossible to be present in “real life.”

What do you do to be present? What are your major distractions? Why do you enjoy your imaginary life so much?

Books by Cheri Huber

I Don’t Want To, I Don’t Feel Like It: How Resistance Controls Your Life and What to Do About It by Cheri Huber Ashwini Narayanan Employing the tenets of Zen Buddhist awareness practice, the book provides numerous exercises and self-help tools for working through problems with resistance, revealing how resistance operates in everyday life and guiding readers to consider how they c… [Read More…]