Life is Funny.

So after everything I wrote yesterday, I went over to the meditation center for a beginner's drop-in class. If you're in the Cambridge area, and want to get into meditation, I highly recommend it--you can check it out at the center's website at www.cimc.info .

Anyway, the usual teacher wasn't there--but the one who was gave a dharma talk the spoke to everything that was roiling around inside me. And suddenly I was just like "Oh, right. That's just the way the mind is. OK. I can deal with that."

And all that stress, all that knotted up fear and anxiety...just poof.

So I'm sure you want to know what he said. It wasn't anything new. It wasn't anything I hadn't heard (or even written about here) many times before.

It was just this: dukkha --often translated as "suffering", although it can also mean "stress" or "unsatisfied" is part of the human condition. When we hold onto anything--or push anything away--we lose our ability to be fully present, to be fully here in the moment.

And that's our normal state. The mind creates worries, fears, attachments, aversions. It runs in circles, bouncing from state to state and from thought to thought and from feeling to feeling, creating a bubbling stew of fear, desire and delusion. And that's pretty much what we all live off of. Not always, but a lot of the time.

The only time we're free from the monkey-mind is when we are totally present in this moment.

But what does that mean? It doesn't sound that interesting, does it? Aren't we present just by being here?

Well, no. and yes. It's very hard to "be here now". We plan, we worry, we create stories about the past and what it means. We project into the future and create scenarios about how if we had that perfect relationship, that great job, that bit of extra money, that dream vacation...that we would be happy.

Or we worry about what may happen to us--that those happy scenarios will not work out, that we don't deserve that happiness, that we won't get the brass ring. That it will all fall apart. And what will we do then?

Well, sometimes that does happen. Sometimes things DO fall apart. In fact, one of the best dharma books I've ever read is Pema Chodron's "When Things Fall Apart". If you're having a hard time, if things seem dark and hopeless, go buy this book and read it carefully.

It's not going to tell you to wish away your problems. Instead, Chodron takes a typicall Buddhist approach: witness your suffering, allow it to be as it is, and use it as part of your practice. Deny nothing, and accept everything. Even if it feels too big, too terrible, too scary to allow into your heart, into your awareness.

Narayan, one of the teachers at CIMC, answered a question of mine with a similar answer. She had mentioned that dealing with difficult and unpleasant emotions are part of the practice. I asked her HOW we do that.

Her answer was beautifully simple: "Just ask yourself if you can allow that feeling to be here, just in this moment. See if you can create enough space for it in the present. You don't have to do anything else."

It sounds so simple. And it is. But to open ourselves to the moment--really open ourselves--means we have to accept everything that arises as part of our experience.

Of course, day to day life is usually not so dramatic. And that's what I've been struggling with.

Last year--a year of death and loss and grief--taught me a lot about being present, about not running from my emotions. About accepting everything that I'm experiencing, and not judging any of it.

And I had some really dramatic meditation experiences. Deep states of awareness, physical releases, openings of both body and mind. Sometimes I lost all sense of myself as a seperate being--which is an incredibly blissful state. When I first read about rapture and bliss in meditation, I thought "oh, ok. I guess that's some Hindu/Buddhist theology thing, that probably doesn't really happen."

But it does. There were times when it was utterly terrifying--when waves of energy would make my body shake, causing totally involuntary vocalizations and deep releases of physical tension and emotional stress.

There is something to be said for those spiritual highs. And there is something to be said for the lows, too--the times when I touch some deep place of sadness and grief that shakes me to my core.

The truth is the neither of those states--the ultimate highs of spiritual bliss or the deepest lows of very, very human grief and pain--mean anything. They're just states. They're just passing through. Attachment or aversion from either is a sure recipe for suffering.

And yet, I find that many meditators only want the good stuff. Which is natural I guess. And that's what many "teachers" sell--promises of bliss, constant happiness, and endless sunny days.

But we all know that's not possible. Pain, as the Buddha pointed out, will always be part of our experience. Suffering, however, is optional. We can't run from our full experience. Doing so will ALWAYS bring suffering, sooner or later. Attachment or aversion--it doesn't matter. Either will tie us up in knots, and get us running in circles trying to fix whatever we think the problem is.

But in reality, the only thing that is required is to come into the present moment. To experience it fully, without judgement, clinging to anything, or pushing anything away. To see everything with fresh eyes, an open heart and open mind.