Tricycle | Awake in the World

"BE MINDFUL." "Stay in the present." "Bare attention." We've all heard one of these phrases. And if you're more experienced in insight practice, these may be the watchwords that chime in the back of consciousness from morning till night, reminding you that everything genuine in the spiritual path is to be found in the now.

But then one day you're sitting in meditation, trying to observe the rise and fall of the abdomen, or a thought, or pain, and it all seems terribly dreary. Suddenly a question floats like a bubble to the surface of your mind: "What's so great about the present moment, anyway?"

Casting about for an answer, you think vaguely of seeing the beauty you've been missing (although nothing seems beautiful right now), or enlightenment (which is what, exactly?) or simply gaining more peace and happiness. You're not sure how those good things occur as a result of staying in the now—here you squirm a bit—and yet, imagining some golden light in the distance, you feel that if only your mind could stay in the present, things would get better. Better how? Well, just . . . better. Happier.

Alas. Although we may be thoroughly versed in the method of mindfulness practice, our clarity sometimes fails when it comes to stating why the now is worthwhile. Yet we needn't sweep the issue under the rug or be satisfied with a vague answer. It warrants serious thought because, unless we're clear about what the present is, it will be easy to abandon the practice of mindfulness when experience doesn't match expectation.

Fourteen years ago, during my first meditation retreat with Achan Sobin Namto, this question came up full force. I was a new student, in the first week of a three-and-a-half-month retreat. Achan Sobin, a Thai Buddhist teacher, had more than thirty years' experience teaching meditation.

"How do you feel?" he asked me. He'd just finished the evening chanting; the burning incense sticks made three glowing points in the otherwise dim room. Despite his kindness, desolation hung on me like a cape. "I'm having doubts," I said. He grasped the nature of the doubt instantly. It wasn't my ability that I questioned, or the teachings, or the practice method itself. It was the bleakness I experienced when staying in the now. Fundamentally, was the present even worth staying in? Somehow, Achan knew my thoughts. "There's nothing good in the present moment, right?" he asked, hooting with laughter until his eyes teared up. Apparently this cosmic joke struck him as hilarious, though I didn't find it particularly funny. He was glad I was on the right track. I was beginning to find out what all meditators were supposed to see: the First Noble Truth that every moment of samsara, every blip of mind (nama) and matter (rupa), was unsatisfactory (dukkha).

Yet Achan's response startled me. Hadn't I read that when you placed your full attention in the moment, you'd finally notice all the beauty you'd been missing? Wouldn't the plum taste sweeter? Wouldn't the bare winter branches (now that you weren't too distracted to actually see them) thrum with radiance against the no-longer-bleak gray sky? But he'd confirmed that the now wasn't all it was cracked up to be. I sighed. So the plum wasn't going to get sweeter. The present moment, it turned out, wasn't wonderful at all.

The current myth among some meditation circles is that the more mindful we are, the more beauty we'll perceive in mundane objects. To the mind with bare attention, even the suds in the dishpan—as their bubbles glint and wink in the light—are windows on a divine radiance. That's the myth. But the truth is almost the opposite: in fact, the more mindfulness we have, the less compelling sense-objects seem, until at last we lose all desire for them.