The Practice of Loving Life

Life is simple, really. We’ve been given an assignment on this Earth — to love as much as you possibly can while learning the lessons that make you a better lover knowing the most devoted lover loves to pay close attention to the object of her affection. And so lovers of life love to take in the scenery that is their beloved. How fortunate to always be surrounded by the things you love— namely everything.

Of course, to truly appreciate life, you have to learn to enjoy the more embarrassing prickly ego-popping parts of it. When I find myself continually rehashing an exchange I’ve had with a friend that could have gone better and my self-absorbed side worries that I’ve been irrevocably misunderstood and frets about what it will do to my reputation (blah-blah-blah), I can continue in this cycle, siphoning off my energy toward ludicrous and wasteful mental habits, or I can interrupt the pattern with the amused laughter of recognition. “God luv ya, you’re doing it again. Forgetting that there is no “you” to defend or worry about." As Buddha pointed out, “I” is just a convention— a very, very arbitrary convention. It’s nothing but a collection of perceptions and impressions morphed into an ever-shifting semblance of an identity by a crazed combo of genetics and conditioning. What’s the real “you”? Getting to know you is getting to “no you”.

Every sit-com needs a running gag; Frasier has his boorish snobbery, Will and Grace, their fragile self-esteem. Occasionally trying to second guess what people might be thinking about me is one of my old patterns. Busted again. Smile. You’re on candid camera.” The best running gags generally grow out of a character’s more persistent peccadilloes.

Even the tragic-comic nature of the ego can give us something to enjoy in this life we love so well. When we realize the laughs are not really at our expense (since there’s no you) it’s easier to join in the merriment. We should feel happy when we become cognizant of our thought pattern’s machinations. Another feather in our Karma cap to tickle ourselves with when we need it. The first fruit of mindfulness is recognition. Practice is not changing the habit per se. It’s watching how it works. The watching itself will mutate the behavior more deeply than rigid abstinence from the pattern. If it’s done earnestly with commitment watching alone can change our lives. Like I said, life is simple. Love the watching and get over yourself and it’s a beautiful thing, worthy of wonder and worship as is anything beloved.

I love the image of the Beloved that is an ancient reference in Sufi and Hindu spiritual literature. The miraculous cosmos you exist in is your beloved. Your relationship is all-embracing cerebral, visceral, motherly, child-like, spousal, orgasmic — a symbiotic matrix of completely integrated circuitry culminating in The-Great-All-Everything.

Our job is to open to this realization by clearing a space between our incessant thoughts — the mental reactivity that creates the arbitrary divisions between whatever and whatever — always impeding our union with the now and forever. The Beloved, though often veiled, is always with us — waiting patiently, yet eagerly for us to rip the veils away and be dazzled by her full - on radiance. If that's my assignment while I'm here, I'm all over it.

Ah, Life… what’s not to love?