Finding the Real in Reality

"This ain't it." - My good friend Anna Marie

Day 24. Still February. Still cloudy. Still cold. Still too wet to mountain bike. I'm missing my adrenaline rushes.

I can't count the number of times I have quoted Anna Marie and her famous line, "This ain't it." She said that about a year after losing the love of her life in a freak car accident. In between brave bouts of rebuilding her life, she would call me to bear audio witness to what we affectionately came to call "acoustically correct" crying jags (i.e. her keening sounded best when wailed in her kitchen with the vaulted ceiling.) Though heartbreaking, I know this ritual was healing for us both. Through her grief and confusion, Anna tried on many different life scenarios in the aftermath of her loss. I'll always remember, after a particularly painful foray, her anguished observation, "Julie, I don't know what my life is supposed to be now . . . but this ain't it."

I told Anna Marie at the time, and I still believe it now, that knowing what "ain't it" is a useful step in moving toward what "IS it." Perhaps distinguishing what is real, what is significant, and what matters is our purpose on earth. Last night I found myself meditating on what is real (getting to that "no-thought" point appeared to be a losing battle). I heard the sound of a far off train whistle that seemed real. I scanned the sensation of the contours of my body coming into contact with my cushion, and that felt real. The feeling of my hands, resting knuckle to knuckle, was real. The brush of the chill bedroom air on my shoulders and knees was tangible, as was the pressure on my ankles while trying to hold a full lotus position. However, as I sat with this awareness, the certainty of reality began to get wispy around the edges. I sat up straighter and breathed on . . .

As the moment shifted, so did my perspective. This is happening more frequently in meditation: I seem to be experiencing (for lack of a less Western adjective) greater efficiency at returning my focus to breath. With abrupt insight, everything outside my breath ceased to be real -- or at least ceased to matter. My whole being felt like it had been reduced to Breath. My breath contained past, present, and future, Life and Death, the be-all, end-all, Essence of Everything. And then, miraculously, the "my" part of the breath fell away - at least for a fraction of a moment. It was no longer "mine" because there was no "me." Just this: Breath. Next - and again, in the span of a heart beat - "Breath" blurred into Love. I thought of my partner, my son, my parents, and they were somehow within the moment, within the heart beat. All joined in Love. It was light, and bright - infinitely important, utterly True, and indescribably REAL. My new yardstick for what is Real and what is not.

This is a blog that sort of wrote itself as I attempted to recollect the experience of last night's time on the cushion. I never dreamed I would be writing such things, and I must confess that in a non-meditative state, it all sounds a little hokey - pretty out there. But that's my ego talking. And it's not even real.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc