A Million Thoughts: Learn All About Meditation from a Himalayan Mystic

“Children, eating the tangerine in mindfulness means that while eating the tangerine you are truly in touch with it. Your mind is not chasing after thoughts of yesterday or tomorrow, but is dwelling fully in the present moment. The tangerine is truly present. Living in mindful awareness means to live in the present moment, your mind and body dwelling in the very here and now. “A person who practices mindfulness can see things in the tangerine that others are unable to see. An aware person can see the tangerine tree, the tangerine blossom in the spring, the sunlight and rain which nourished the tangerine. Looking deeply, one can see ten thousand things which have made the tangerine possible. Looking at a tangerine, a person who practices awareness can see all the wonders of the universe and how all things interact with one another. Children, our daily life is just like a tangerine. Just as a tangerine is comprised of sections, each day is comprised of twenty-four hours. One hour is like one section of tangerine. Living all twenty-four hours of a day is like eating all the sections of a tangerine. The path I have found is the path of living each hour of the day in awareness, mind and body always dwelling in the present moment. The opposite is to live in forgetfulness. If we live in forgetfulness, we do not know that we are alive. We do not fully experience life because our mind and body are not dwelling in the here and now.”30

Mindful meditation is a simple, effective and practical way to bring your attention to the present moment. It is the way to live in the moment.

A woman said to a monk, “I love living in the moment. I really want to master it.”

“Great,” the monk replied enthusiastically, “you’ll learn exactly how to do that with mindful meditation.”

“It’s just that I don’t want to live in this particular moment,” she said wistfully. “I would rather live in another moment, like being on a cruise with my boyfriend.”

This is the fundamental issue with our minds. It’s eternally living in another moment, a moment we crave for and desire. In doing so, we completely miss the beauty and bliss of the present moment. The current moment is called ‘present’ for a reason, it’s a gift. A restless mind, however, is either dwelling in the past or dreaming about the future. The practice of mindful meditation brings you to the present moment, the moment of truth.

A disciple who had been practicing mindfulness for seven years approached his master and complained, “It’s been seven years that I’ve been meditating but I’m yet to gain any experience or insight. I don’t feel any better than what I was seven years ago.” “I see that your feet are wet,” the master spoke softly, “but your robe isn’t. I presume it’s raining outside and you carried an

umbrella with you.” “Yes.”

“It’s not the first time you came here while it rained or that you carried an umbrella, right?”

“Right?”

“It must be outside, your umbrella, right?”

A little miffed at his master he said, “What’s an umbrella got to do with my meditation?”

“Can you tell me if you put it on the right side of my door or the left?”

The disciple tried hard to recall but he couldn’t. He went back to the moment when he’d just arrived. I remember taking my shoes off. I think I put my umbrella just behind the shoes on the right side. No, I think I put it on the left. The disciple unsure of his answer went outside to check, the umbrella was neither on the left nor the right, it lay face down on the floor.

“I wonder what you have been doing in your mindful meditation all these years,” the master chastized him gently. “If you can’t even recall where you put your umbrella less than two minutes ago. Practice mindfulness in every act of yours if you want the rewards of meditation.”

It isn’t far-fetched at all that a person would forget where he had put his umbrella in a matter of minutes. Countless times, you must have climbed steps at work or at home, or at a friend’s place or at your favorite shrine. Yet, if I were to ask you the number of steps in any given flight of stairs, you are unlikely to have any recollection of it.

Why would you bother with the number of steps? It’s junk information, you may think. It is. Now, here’s the important thing: emotions and desires are un-abandoned thoughts if you recall. Since our mind is full of thoughts, we all remember the times when we were hurt, when we didn’t get what we wanted, we remember the minutest details of undesirable incidents from years ago. When it comes to meditation, however, all those details, emotions and desires are merely thoughts. For some reason, we have given more importance to those thoughts over millions of others that have circled in our mind.