Thursday, January 25, 2007

Now

Here's an excerpt from an article entitled "Living the moment, regardless of religious stripe":

[A] component [of the meditative tradition] that has gelled with me... [is] the concept of now.

Think about it for a moment. We always hear people telling us to "live in the now" or some other worn out knee-jerk comment. But, how many of us really do? When you're driving to work, are you really paying attention to the road or letting your instincts turn your wheels? Late at night, as I drive on the dark, wooded street leading to my house, I find myself jerking back into the present, scared to death that I was mentally a million miles away. If a deer happened to scurry across my path while my head was out to lunch, he wouldn't stand a chance.

Meditation has, for me, begun to teach me the simple, yet amazingly difficult concept of being in the present moment. It focuses on breathing, on this breath, the one you're breathing as you read this sentence, not the one you might have breathed a minute or an hour ago. Those breaths are over — why give them a second thought?
Living in the now is, without a doubt, the way to peace and happiness. Meditation will teach you how.

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