Since there is nothing but this moment, ‘for the time being’ is all the time there is.

That's a quote from 13th century Zen Master Dogen that I found in a great blog post yesterday, courtesy of my dad. It got me thinking about how I experience life -- spending so much time waiting for X to happen, and then it happens. Or it doesn't. Now what? Wash, rinse, repeat. The author made the point that life is unavoidably tough in some ways (death, financial loss, sickness, and all of the daily annoyances like traffic), and it is easy to forget who we are in the midst of all of that.

I don't experience living as it happens as much as I'd like to, which is what the author teaches through Zen Buddhist meditation. This article piqued my interest in meditation, and I'm going to go to a sitting this week before one of my best friends runs off to California for a couple of weeks and takes my access to her meditation center home with her ;) I too want to see the troubles and pressures of my life, and take them on. Usually when confronted by them, I go into some form of denial, either by ignoring what's going on, or claiming I have no say in the matter, so to switch out of that mode is a choice. A choice to be made every moment.

And that was the teaching of the retreat given by the Zen priest who authored the blog post -- time is nothing other than being. In other words, "to really live is to accept that that you live 'for the time being,' and to fully enter that moment of time." My mom and dad talk about it as "be here now," and in training I've gotten, it's described as "being present." For example, right now I'm writing this blog post, fully immersed in the process of writing, not thinking about the bathroom that will get cleaned or the phone calls I will make (I had to think of them just as an example). I got a lot out of the blog I read, and so I want to share it with you -- it hit home, which is to say it touched my heart. And I keep seeing that my greatest connection with others is when I share what hits home, and get what hits home for them. That's what I hope for from this blog.