On Being Awake

Sometimes I contemplate just what Gautama Siddhartha meant when he talked of being awake.  The very title Buddha means the one who is awake.  A number of people I've known have thought being awake was a poetic way of describing the far more profound experience of enlightenment.  The term nirvana describes being in a state of enlightenment.

In movies and books, enlightenment seems very ethereal.  Sometimes it even comes with superpowers.  And when you die you just evaporate and ascend into a higher state like Star Wars' Obi Wan Kenobi. Enlightenment seems really different than my life of work, family, blogging, meditation, and going grocery shopping.

The thread I see in Gautama Siddhartha's teachings, however, emphasizes a very pragmatic focus on living in the Now and obtaining skills which anyone can learn.  So, the other day when meditating I think I may have awakened for a bit.  It seems somewhat grandiose to claim I have reached enlightenment, but perhaps I just have in a way.

For most of my day and even in my dreams, my mind plays out an endless series of movies in my mind. Some involve the past where I rehash old memories and often in the process reconstruct them based on my current understanding of the situation then.  More often than not, however, these mental films focus on what I should be doing in the future or little scenarios of what may happen.  I endlessly ponder what all is on my To Do list, what needs to be done next, and how to do it.  Sometimes I imagine scenarios that turn out badly with people shouting, rejecting or disapproving of me.  Perhaps I'm late with a project or I'm not attractive to them when I ask them out or I somehow am just not good enough.  These negative projections in my head create a huge amount of fear and anxiety.

On the flip side, I sometimes daydream of things going just as I hoped.  I win the lottery.  My current favorite restaurant is going to have the yummy broccoli casserole on the menu today when I go there for lunch.  My blog becomes immensely popular.  Aliens land and hail me as their God-Emperor. ha

For the years I have been meditating, the work comes in trying to still these movies.  It is hard work trying not to think.  Then the other day I just paid attention to the Now.  I made a breakthrough in mindfulness to get all technical.  I heard the garbage truck outside picking up the weekly trash.  I could hear my cat lightly snoring.  I could smell the comforting aroma of last night's dinner and my partner's scent.  I felt the parts of my skin that felt warm and my ice cold feet.  I could taste the tea I drank with breakfast.

When I looked inward at my body I could feel the tension and anxiety drawing my shoulders together.  I was balled up in a slight way as if expecting someone was about to hit me.  And I could mentally trace these fears to the mental movies that had been playing in my head earlier.

When I tried to survey my emotions just in that second, I felt this kind of splashing ocean of feelings going in every direction.  I could identify an emotion only when I asked about an object or situation.  Otherwise, emotions were like asking What's the color of now?  Well, that plant is green.  The lamp is brown.  Yesterday's underwear in the hamper is red.  Emotions and characteristics attach to objects and situations.

So then I went deeper and asked who I was observing this.  What did I feel.  And I felt nothing.  I didn't have a color or an emotion or even an identity.  I simply was the calm Observer.  It was peaceful.  I didn't have superpowers.  I couldn't move things with my mind (I've tried!).  I simply was awake to the Now.  The mental movies of memories, expectations, and fears were stopped while I observed what was happening in me and around me now.

I've pondered this state a lot.  I've tried and got better at entering it when I'm not meditating by being mindful of this exact moment and what is going on with it.  Strangely, there is this kind of miniature shock like when you are concentrating and someone suddenly turns off the radio that has been playing in the background or knocks on your door.  My attention shifts from a mental place to an awareness place.  I awake.

I am new to this path.  I'm sure there are many more experiences down the Middle Way from which I will learn.  Perhaps I will find enlightenment is something more, but I increasingly think the Buddha was teaching us to awaken to the Now and learn to turn off the mental movies.  To be awake in this way opens a whole new perspective to life which I will examine in another post later.