When this moment pales by comparison

Recently we went on an outing to a narrow peninsula that juts out into the Pacific, cupping Drakes Bay, called Chimney Rock. A beautiful place any time by any standards, but there is a certain time in the Spring when this narrow stretch of land with its steep cliffs on either side is thick with fields of wildflowers, seals birth their young on the beach below, and migrating whales pass by on their way north.

How could we not go every year to such a spectacular place? Well it is a long drive, but the real reason we don't is that one visit many years ago was so special, so magical that for at least a few years after that I didn't want to go again, lest I dilute that perfect memory of that previous experience.

Have you ever had the fear of losing an experience by trying to repeat it? My students did. One said she feels like she can never go back to Venice, because it was so exquisite. I totally understand this. We don't want to mess with that perfect memory, diminish it by imposing new memories on the same place.

But are we then just collectors of memories? What does this say about who we believe ourselves to be?

Remember when we explored the Five Aggregates. One of the Aggregates was cognition, how our thinking brain perceives the world and the knowledge base we accumulate. We enjoy adding a new lovely memory, like a jewel to add to the crown of remembered experience we hold to be an important part of who we are. What a Deluxe Dukkha* Delivery System that is!

Even if we are able to retain memories our whole life, if we enshrine them, they lure us into the past, away from this moment. We pull them out and admire them when we don't want to face what is. But life is not enriched by living elsewhere in our minds, in other times or places. We cause suffering for ourselves and for those around us, who may feel they are not enough to hold our attention, or whose concerns cannot be met because we are in a state of avoidance. (This is not to diminish the richness of sharing stories with loved ones who ask to hear them. But if the need is strong to live in the past, then it becomes clear this is an escape from something in the present.)

Beyond the fear of polluting a perfect memory, there are other reasons a repeated experience pales by comparison with the first time. Any brand new experience tends to get our full attention, doesn't it? We are more likely to be present with whatever is going on, to notice the light, the texture and other sensory details of that moment.

The next time we go to the same place or eat the same meal, it’s just harder to pay the same level of attention. What was new before is no longer new, just a part of our ongoing experience of being in the world. Not memorable. Give us a daily dose, like a commute, and most of us will stop noticing large portions of our experience altogether. We might remember something noticeably different from usual, but the rest is just wallpaper to our day. To create that sense of aliveness, we feel we must keep traveling to different places we've never been, try new restaurants, new dishes, new forms of entertainment, new adventures, new outfits, or new decor.

The body of precious memory we carry -- That magical carpet of wildflowers! That gondola ride! -- acts as a powerful obscuring filter through which we see (or don't see!) the current moment. We cannot recreate the first time we encountered something new. It is gone. But we hold it tight and get caught up in comparing mind.

Between not paying attention to what is and looking through the filter of what was, how is it possible to engage in this second experience with the same rapt attention?

The other day when we got out to Chimney Rock, there was a perfectly horizontal stripe of light mist in Drake’s Bay that made it appear to be a modernist landscape. As we headed down the path toward the point we encountered a female tule elk that kept running around and squatting. Given her bulky middle section she might have been giving birth.

We saw a little mole peeking out of his hole -- exciting in the wild, less so in the garden. And then the wildflowers started revealing themselves, plenty of variety, lots of beauty. Okay, maybe it’s not a solid carpet of flowers like that one magical time, but this would not be a bust.

Then we saw our first whale. Phew! Comparing mind was beginning to relax. But then it became a comparing numbers game. How many whales would we see? That one magical time we saw a pod of whales, mothers and babies, and we followed them all around the point. It had been such a still day we could even hear their calls.

This time while out at the point having a picnic, we met two retired women from the East Bay who said they come every year to Chimney Rock. We enjoyed watching the whales with them, five all together, and there was a peregrine falcon sitting nearby on the cliff’s edge for an exhilarating few seconds before he flew off. Okay! This was it's very own quite spectacular day.

But what if this trip was a bust? If nothing had met our expectations? One time

we went on a hike up in the mountains around Carson Pass in the Sierra. The trail from Woods Lake up to Lake Winnemucca in an El Nino year had a wildflower display that was unbelievably gorgeous. Two years later we returned in hopes of replicating our first experience, but all we got was a muddy trail and an occasional flower here and there. We turned back and found another trail we hadn't tried before.

How much of this disappointment is the environment and how much is our minds? Being relieved that the environment supplied sufficient beauty and diversity is not the same as coming to 'beginner's mind' where whatever the experience, we are at home in our breath, present in the moment, alive.

When we meditate we might compare this meditation to one we did before. Perhaps we had experienced a state of bliss. Had we only known we would turn around and use this exquisite experience as an instrument of torture in every subsequent meditation, it would not have been so blissful!

So what can we do?

First we can notice our comparing mind and smile at its capacity to get itself caught up in a tangle, like a little kitten in a ball of yarn. “Oh sweetheart, look at you, caught up in the tangle again,” and then we can bring our attention back to the present.

When we are present there isn’t much room for comparing mind. And when it crops up we recognize it for what it is -- the desire to replicate joy. That’s not such a bad motivation, but as we see it in action we see that it causes us, and sometimes those around us, to suffer. Oh it’s not a terrible suffering, but it tends to suck the joy right out of our experience, and often out of the experience of those around us. It becomes a habit of mind, a chronic state that does a disservice to the moment we are in, the only moment that exists, the only moment we have to savor.

What makes a magical moment anyway?  if we are truly present, fully anchored in awareness of physical sensation, of the sights, sounds, aromas, tastes and texture of this moment, we discover our full capacity to be alive, and that is joyful, whatever is going on.

Exercise

Spend a few minutes right now, wherever you are, just noticing what’s going on in this moment. 
For example, as I write this: The last light is on the trees waving in the breeze (pleasant), which is also rustling some paper by the open window (mildly unpleasant). There are bird sounds (pleasant twittering and mildly unpleasant squawks) and a distant hum of commute traffic. The air, so hot all day, is cooling. My stomach is feeling the urge to get some dinner cooking. I notice both the desire to finish this writing and the urge to get up. (At odds, but not totally unpleasant while just observing it.) 
I could go on, but tell me, what is this precious moment like for you?

*Dukkha is the Sanskrit word for suffering.

The Comparing Mind

I just got back from a camping trip in an area we enjoy around Carson Pass on Highway 88 in the Sierra mountains. We set off for a hike we had taken before, up the trail to Lake Winnamucca. The previous hike had been so glorious that my husband, the artist Will Noble, had come home and commemorated it in paint. (See painting at right) That time there were thousands of species of wildflowers in bloom, literally every inch of hillside was gloriously festooned with color.

On this hike either spring was late or we were early. There were just a few tentative blossoms, mere hints of the wildflower explosion to come. “This will be really something in another month,” my husband said. We were both seeing this beautiful mountainside through the filter of our last experience. Much as we admired the beauty of the snow-capped peak before us, the rushing stream beside us, the rock outcroppings, the towering trees and the brilliant green of new shoots emerging now the snow had melted, we couldn’t seem to free ourselves from the heavy overlay of the vision of loveliness that had so captivated us on our last visit. We remembered how long it had taken us to walk back down the hill because I was stopping every few feet to take another photo of yet another spectacular flower. We remembered that there had been so many other hikers out enjoying the glory of it all that it had been festive and celebrational. Now we had the muddy trail pretty much to ourselves. We tried to enjoy the solitude, but finally decided perhaps with the limited time we had on this trip we might want to try a trail we hadn’t hiked before. And so we turned around half way up to the lake.

It is our nature to compare and contrast experience. It is part of the function of mind to notice similarities and differences. It is a skill set that is useful in decision making. It keeps us from getting stuck staring at a menu or paint chips for hours ad nauseum. But the mind often fails to distinguish when comparitive analysis is useful and when it is unskillful.

My memory of that hillside covered with wildflowers got in the way of my simple enjoyment of the beauty of the moment I was living. But at least I noticed my comparing mind. Years ago I would not have noticed it. I just would have whined and complained and made myself miserable.

Noticing is really all our practice asks of us, noticing with as much compassion as we can bring to ourselves when our minds get caught up in the tangle of preferences. To whatever degree we are able, we bring our attention gently back to the present moment. For in any present moment there are incredible riches to be noticed. You don’t have to be on a mountainside to feel the glory of just being. You can look up from your computer right now and notice the light and shadow, the colors, the textures, the feel of the air on your skin, the sensations in your body. Every single moment fully noticed is illuminated and beyond compare.

When we meditate we often find ourselves comparing this meditation to some other meditation we did before. Perhaps we had some glorious wordless wonder of a meditation where we were in a state of bliss. Lovely. Had we only known we would turn around and use this exquisite meditation as an instrument of torture in every subsequent meditation, it would not have been so blissful!

All we can do is notice our comparing mind and smile at its capacity to get itself caught up in a tangle, like a little kitten in a ball of yarn. “Oh sweetheart, look at you, caught up in the tangle again,” we might say to our mind as we bring ourselves back to the present.

(Yes, we can be that kind. It doesn’t matter if we feel we deserve kindness. It is just the practice. Nothing personal. Be kind! It’s good for you. You don’t have to earn it! It’s free!)

Over the past weeks we have been exploring creativity and the challenges to accessing the bountious flow. Comparing mind is certainly one of those challenges. We compare our creative abilities to others, not just in our immediate circle but artists throughout the ages. I remember in art school my friend saying, “What’s the point? It’s not possible to be original. It’s all been done.”

Sometimes we do feel as if there is no point in adding one more painting, poem or ceramic piece to a world already so full of art. But accessing the creative flow is a rich and glorious experience. Whatever comes out of it is simply by-product. Yes, the world is awash with the by-products of others of our species who have also accessed the creative flow. Imagine it! All that luscious creativity flowing through us all! What a rich festive generous world of wonder!

Is it possible to let go of needing our by-product to be unique, special, best in show? Is it possible to put away the ruler by which we measure our creative output? Is it possible to allow the process to be so nourishing and enriching that we have no need of admiration or comparison of any kind? Is it possible to simply rejoice in the celebration of life?

Of course it is possible. But the practice is not about striving to achieve this ideal where we have gone beyond any need for praise. The practice is simply noticing with great compassion the tangle of thoughts and emotions that pass through us as we go about creating, meditating or living our lives. We notice. We give gratitude for noticing, for noticing is the gateway to the present moment. With tenderness and understanding, we usher our minds and hearts back, even if very briefly, to the present moment. The present moment where we are able to relish the process rather than some end product, where we can tap into the infinite source of love and creativity, and where we see with new eyes and beginner’s mind the beauty of the world around us in this moment, a moment beyond compare.