Why mindfulness? And the precious precariousness of life

From my next book of meditations on mindfulness, happiness, and radical sanity...

Over the next month I’m sharing one or two pocket-sized essays from my book. If you enjoy please reply for an advance copy or read the introduction.

Why bother with mindfulness?

In my last week of high school my favorite teacher said that he didn’t have any advice for us: just that “you’re going to bend down to tie your shoes and when you stand back up you’ll be 50.”

I merely glanced down at my shoestrings and now I’m 27.

On some level this feeling is just a natural part of the human experience. But it’s also what happens when we don’t show up for our lives: when we forget to be here for our few precious, precarious trips around the sun.

Mindfulness is the art of not forgetting. It’s remembering to remember. It’s the skill of fully being here. It’s so easy to bend down to tie your shoes only to stand up and realize you’ve spent years remembering the past or thinking of the future.

Where were you for your life?

Death is not the tragedy of life.

Death is in fact the source of all meaning, beauty, and wonder because it gives life its finiteness. The tragedy of life is forgetting to live it. To let the smiles, sunsets, and song birds go unnoticed. To let God’s great theater play to an empty house. To let the patter and cool of rain drops fall on deaf ears and numb hands.

This is a tragedy.

All of the magic, love, and wonder of the universe are taking place right here, right now on this strange rock. Our duty is to be here for it with everything we have.

That is our practice.

The Cup is Already Broken...

A monk had a beautiful, delicate tea cup.

His student asked him about the cup. And much to the student's surprise he replied that the cup is already broken. “What do you mean?” – asked the student.

The monk said – “To me this glass is already broken.”

“I enjoy it. I drink from it. It holds my water admirably – sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put it on the shelf and the winds blows it over or I knock it off the table and it shatters on the ground then I say - of course.

When I understand the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”

This is the essence of a mindful life.

This is the way to view everything in the phenomenal world – our possessions, our loved ones, and, above all, our own lives. This is the difficult art of loving nonattachment. How can we love others and engage in our lives wholeheartedly without clinging and without fear?

By knowing that the cup is already broken. The end is certain. This life of mine is already over. Everyone, everything is here and gone in one breath.

And this is what makes life so dear: the precious precariousness of it all.

(I’ve seen this story attributed to several folks – this one is adapted from Mark Epstein in Thoughts without a Thinker. Most attribute it to teacher Ajahn Chah.)