“The Paradox of Presence and Release” with Benjamin this Sunday at Minneapolis Insight

Dear Community,

Sunday 10am Community Practice & Discussion

This Sunday, Benjamin will lead an exploration of two seemingly paradoxical, yet complementary, aspects of practice: 1) the importance of cultivating being present, while 2) letting go of the present.

To ground our reflection on being present, we’ll draw on the following passage from Phillip Moffitt’s Dancing With Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering (pp. 21–24):

“Another major benefit of mindfulness meditation practice is that it brings you into what is sometimes called the “sacred now.” This is a state of being fully present such that you are both “in time” and “not in time.” Mystics in most contemplative traditions throughout the ages have extolled this as an exalted state, but have seldom given instructions for how to achieve it. What most people discover once they start meditating is that they ordinarily spend much of their time not in the present, but lost in thoughts about the past and the future, whether planning, daydreaming, anticipating, remembering, or just spacing out. Your life isn’t in the past or the future because at this moment you are not there to live it; both are just mental constructs based on the mind’s ability to remember, conceptualize, and imagine. When you are stuck in either past or future thinking, you create suffering for yourself and miss much of the actual experience of the gift of having embodied consciousness…

As shocking as it may be to realize, you spend most of your time some distance removed from what is actually happening in the present moment. You are lost in past associations, future planning, or caught in judging yourself or another. Or you’ve split from the experience and distanced yourself by conceptualizing it, constantly moving your attention, or daydreaming…

… Mindfulness meditation establishes this capacity for being present. It retrains the mind and breaks it of its old, unskillful habit of tuning out.”

For the second dimension of our exploration (the release of the present itself), we’ll reflect on the Buddha’s words in Dhammapada verse 348 as translated by Acharya Buddharakkhita:

“Let go of the past, let go of the future, let go of the present, and cross over to the farther shore of existence. With mind wholly liberated, you shall come no more to birth and death.”

All are welcome to join this exploration on Sunday! Registration and Zoom information available here.

With mettā,
Minneapolis Insight

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