Inner Work

For the week of March 14, 2005

The Peace of Being

Life is a river of time, with events, actions, reactions, thoughts, sensations, and emotions, like anxiety and impatience, passing through us at every moment. And our awareness, our being is the riverbed through which all this flows. We can just be, standing on the still bank of the river, peacefully watching it all happen. Whatever comes down that stream, however tempted we are to jump in to grab a piece of it or to prevent that piece from passing through us, we calmly abide in being, rooted in awareness, letting everything come and go, as it will anyhow. In the process we enter the natural peace of simply being.

This is not to say that we become spectators rather than participants in life. On the contrary, by stepping back from time to time, into the peace of just being, we refresh our energies and clear our vision. We become more able to act effectively, productively, and in accord with the highest potential of the situations life presents.

If we practice just being during a sitting meditation session, then the practice is to do nothing. This is more subtle than it sounds, because we always want to do something, to change something, to follow what attracts us, escape what repels us, or even to do not doing. To do nothing is just to sit and see.

For this week, practice just being, at least three times each day, during your normal life activities. Relaxing into being here in this moment, in this awareness, not holding onto or pushing away whatever we see, we begin to live in peace. Our heart and mind settle into the present, as we learn to savor its delicious and palpable simplicity. And the taste of that simplicity is unmistakable peace.

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