Happiness is only possible in the Now

For many years I struggled in my life to get a grip on why I always seemed to fall into unhappiness. It was one thing after another. I could go into detail, but I don't want to write another "poor ol' me" story. However, there are some things that I think I learned on the journey. They were hard lessons and still are. Sometimes I look at my life and I think, "this Zen stuff is the craziest thing in the world, why did I ever embrace it?" But then, just a quickly, I realize that it is the mindfulness that has helped me. I have decided that the secret to happiness is to be in the present, in the now. Worrying about the future or the past is crazy. My discursive mind loves to move from the past to the future with "what if this happens" or "what if that had happened?" I think, because I am applying this to myself, that I was a bit mentally ill when I let the past or the future dictate my happiness. I think it is mental illness, not having the mind under control. Now that I look back on my life I realize that all of the unhappiness I have experienced is because of worrying about the past or the future. Grasping at what could have been or what might be caused me a lot of pain and suffering. Living in the now is really the only way to experience true happiness. I can't do a thing to influence either the next second or the previous second. So, why let it ruin my life with stress? I have also had to take a look at the non-judgemental way that I tend to sometimes look at things. Simply observing and letting things pass by as they are was difficult for me and still is at times. Part of it, I think is because I had to shed old religious values that kept me in a judgmental mode for most of my daily life. If I had what I considered to be a bad thought, I would spend the entire day feeling sad that I had thought in such a way. Even if I did not act on the thought, I still let it stress me out. In mindfulness meditation, you simply observe the thoughts and let them go back, focusing once again on the breath. It is refreshing in itself when you don't have to worry about judging every thought. Watching the breath is fundamentally, for me, watching life. If I don't breath, I die. Period! So, breath is what keeps us alive. That is one of the reasons it is so important. As anyone who has meditated knows, mindfulness is not easy. There are plenty of influences that can cause our discursive mind to go wild. Anything can come up from what I am going to cook for dinner, to what I should say to that person at the office that keeps mouthing off at me. But, it does work and remaining diligent is a key. I have started the practice throughout my life and then slacked off because of being so busy. I found myself going back to meditation again and again, but the hard part was sticking with it. When I would take part in mediations that were guided by Thich Nhat Hanh I would hear him say that we should enjoy our breathing. A few times after the meditation I would think about what that means. In a dharma talk entitled "The Art of Healing Ourselves" Thay said:

"Please, when you breathe in, do not make an effort of breathing in. You just allow yourself to breathe in. Even if you don't breathe in it will breathe in by itself. So don't say, “My breath, come, so that I tell you how to do.” Don't try to force anything, don't try to intervene, just allow the breathing in to take place. What you have to do is be aware of the fact that the breathing in is taking place. And you have more chance to enjoy your in-breath. Don't struggle with your breath, that is what I recommend. Realize that your in breath is a wonder. When someone is dead, no matter what we do, the person will not breathe in again. So we are breathing in, that is a wonderful thing. Breathing in I know I'm alive, it's a miracle. We have to enjoy our in-breath. There are many ways to enjoy your in-breath. We want you to tell us how you enjoy your in-breath, whether in a sitting position or in a walking position. But if you don't enjoy breathing in, breathing out, you don't do it right."