Evan Renaerts

This is it

May 8, 2007

A soft morning with blue sky and clouds tinged by the first rays of sunlight; there is a light breeze.

This is it.
This is all there is.
There is nothing else.
This is it.

I came across those lines in a poem my mother-in-law has and laughed. What is being expressed is so obviously true – this moment that is right now, this is it. Nothing exists in the past, those memories both glad and sad are only thoughts they have no substance or reality. Nothing exists in the future, all those hopes expectations and plans are just more thoughts and if it were possible they would have even less substance than thoughts of the past.

When I first encountered this perspective in Buddhist teachings I couldn’t accept it, it seemed too sad and without hope. Without my cherished memories (even and perhaps especially the highly dramatic ones) who or what was I. Without my dreamed of future what point was there to being here. The one place where I didn’t exist was in the present and I realize now that I had no idea what it was like to be…. just to be.

What I have come to know is that being present is the good news and the salvation and the liberation. Living life like a dress rehearsal, always waiting for your ship to come in and wishing that things had been different; that people had been different, is hell. Never finding satisfaction where you are, thinking continuously about what needs to happen and how to get this or that outcome, is hell.

So many people I meet live their life as a resentment of past, present and even future wrongs certain that they know already what hardships and injustices will be visited upon them, just you wait and see. The other category I see all the time is what I think of as, “Life by distraction.” The operational reality here is to keep busy with cravings, obsessions, and entertainments; don’t be present, don’t be anywhere if you can help it.

The art of living, of being one with life, is to stay present and to know that everything you have been seeking, joy, fulfilment, peace and love, is already and always here. When I become the witness of my self, remaining aware of thought and circumstance, knowing that these are not self, just then in that present moment nothing is missing.

When I am fully present then I no longer think and act in ways that hurt me or others or this planet.