Campaign: Looking from the Moment

And so, I sat down to supper listening to an audio talk, but found that I was extremely restless, too restless to think of the talk. Irritated, I decided to stop the audio, put my supper aside and investigate this state.

When I did, I found so much pain in my body. I was aching all over, in fact, to such a degree that I decided I needed to lie down for a minute. When I did that, however, all kinds of fear relating to and hatred of my situation came up, which led to my feeling quite depressed and discouraged.

Then I decided to get up and write down a description of all that I was experiencing. As I read it over the thought came to me that I had heard that that late Ajahn Chah, a renowned Thai Theravada Buddhist teacher had said something to the effect that if you can formulate the question, you know the answer. At that moment, it occurred to me that there was a question implied in my description, and I asked myself what it was and waited for the question to arise.

After a short while, the question that came up was: “How do I do this?” I surmised that this meant, how do I cope with or handle or go forward, considering the situation and what I am feeling about it. When I asked myself the question, my mind stopped, as if it was caught on the question, or did not know how to answer it. Then, without thinking, I got up and ate my supper. Soon after, it suddenly hit me that getting up and eating my supper was the answer to the question.

Later that night when I went for a walk, as it was a Saturday night there were a lot of people, and I dislike crowds; so, I got really tense. I asked “How do I do this?” and the next thing that came to mind was “What’s happening,” by which I think I meant, everywhere simultaneously in this moment. My mind stopped again. All boundaries between myself and everything else seemed to disappear, and I relaxed. Now it was just a beautiful evening for a walk, and everything was okay just the way it was, crowds and all.

Afterwards, upon reflection I felt that the questions and the answers had both come from the same place. The questions had given me points of reference or comparison against which I was able to see from whence the answers had arisen, that is, from the source, from everything, everywhere simultaneously in this moment.