Letting Go

It is a strange time, living during this pandemic.  I, along with so many others, feel the stress of so much uncertainty.  The questions weigh on me heavily.  Have I already been exposed to this virus?  Will I get sick from this virus?  Will I die from this virus?  Will I have a job if I do not die from this virus?  Will my family members or friends get this virus?   Will I have enough money to pay my bills, feed my family?  Will there by any hand sanitizer (or toilet paper, or bread, or any of a thousand items in short supply) at the grocery store?   

What's going to happen next? 

As a human being, I'm prone to want things to be certain.  So when I find myself in a situation where almost nothing feels certain, it can be very frightening.   But it can also be a time to realize that the present moment is really all I ever have.  Instead of just saying that, or thinking that, it seems I'm much more aware of that now.

Having practiced meditation for several years, I know all too well how my "monkey mind" wanders off.  I sit for about 30 minutes most mornings, and I try to focus on my breath.  The next thing I know, I realize I've been replaying a plot from an old episode of Gray's Anatomy in my head.  Back to the breath.  A few minutes later it's wondering if there will be any baseball this summer.  Back to the breath.  Breath.  Breath.  I need to look at my checking account balance...no... put down the phone....breath.  And so on. 

Each time my mind wanders, I gently try to guide it back to awareness of my breath.  The readings I've done about meditation, mostly writings by Buddhist teachers, say that doing that "gently" is important.  This is a good time to be gentle with ourselves, for me to be gentle with myself.  To forgive myself.   It's normal to worry, but then I want to keep coming back to the present moment.  This moment, when I'm sitting in a comfy chair typing on my laptop, in my warm house, with my people and pets around me.  When I'm not hungry or cold.  When there is nothing I need that I don't have, not in this present moment. 



I've been rereading Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders.  The term bardo refers to a Tibetan term for the period after death, before a reincarnation into the next life.  But in an article entitled "The Four Essential Points of Letting Go in the Bardo" from Lion's Roar in 2017, the author, Pema Khandro Rinpoche states:

The Tibetan term bardo, or “intermediate state,” is not just a reference to the afterlife. It also refers more generally to these moments when gaps appear, interrupting the continuity that we otherwise project onto our lives. In American culture, we sometimes refer to this as having the rug pulled out from under us, or feeling ungrounded. These interruptions in our normal sense of certainty are what is being referred to by the term bardo. But to be precise, bardo refers to that state in which we have lost our old reality and it is no longer available to us.

That sounds painfully familiar!

I can see that my mental health will be exquisitely intertwined to my ability to let go of my ideas of what the rest of the month, the year, maybe even the rest of my life will look like.  With the ability to focus on what is real and present today.  To be joyful that today we have toilet paper!  And that today no one in the house has a fever!  While this seems simple, it's not easy.  That's why I continue, every morning, to practice.