The only time is now

Something I've always had a problem with within myself is the ability to live in the now. I've sat and thought long and hard about my past actions. How these actions affect my life now and how they imprint themselves on my future. Of course, this would be Karma but today I want to talk about something that's a more pertinent: Living in the now.

I'm currently reading a book titled: City Dharma by Arthur Jeon. Its light and contemporary and of course as with anything, I'm taking it with a grain of salt. There was one paragraph that got me thinking:

Most thought is generated in an automatic, reflexive way, creating inner hell. In fact, most of this habitual thought is neurotic; 90 percent of if we thought yesterday and 90 percent we will think tomorrow. Our internal hell can be created with endless thoughts of I wish I were rich, all my problems would disappear or My life sucks or This friggin traffic .

For me, it was this inner dialogue that used to cause me the biggest problems. Coupled with the fact that I am very honest, sometimes too honest, it caused me allot of grief.

Buddhism has helped me with this in many ways. These thoughts that we think constantly are a problem when we begin to let them define who we are as people, or when we identify with them. I discovered recently that I am not my thoughts. My thoughts, like everything, comes and goes. But by identifying with them I allowed them to perpetuate and I begin to construct my own little stories around these thoughts.
After a while this became rather tiring and not very useful. Enter: Meditation. By taking a little time every day to sit within the mind and focus on your breathing you are creating space for your thoughts. Then, these thoughts can come and go without you clinging to them and using them to create your inner hell, as it is the attachment to the thoughts that is causing the hell. People often don't realise that that is what is happening and look outside for the cause of their anguish. This is where we blame other people, events and situations for our sadness/anger/frustration when in fact, we create it. All within our own mind.

When your thought is on your breath you are training your mind to do something new. You are training it to look away from the future, the past and look to what is happening right now. Right now? I am typing, breathing, thinking about my next letter to type. By keeping focused on what is happening right now I limit my chances of spelling mistakes, which makes for better reading! Hence: The karmic production of mindfulness here is good spelling.

I had a wonderful experience the other day: I had been thinking about the idea of placing your mind wholly on what you are doing, how it can create an internal happiness so I tried this whilst washing the dishes.
I focused my mind on my task: Washing dishes. As i picked up each dish I examined it, placed it in the water and cleaned what needed to be cleaned. As I was doing this my flatmate walked in and began to dry. We worked together, in silence, to finish the job. As the sink emptied I went out of the kitchen, feeling very calm and happy. I said to my flatmate that I was using awareness to clean the dishes and that he did enter my mind as I was washing but I didn't feel a need to talk with him. He said that he knew I would talk when I wished and the silence was helpful. It was at that moment that I understood: I had created a sense of happiness within myself through washing dishes! I sat on my chair and smiled.
Karmically, I had created washed dishes which would have affects later that right now I mostly have no idea about. But I shall leave Karma for another day!

As I sat, I watched the happiness come and go. Like all things: It was momentary but I felt all of it, to my core. When it left? I was content.