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Thoughts on Inhabiting Your Life - Maria Straatmann

The following talk was given by Maria Straatmann at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 18, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Thoughts on Inhabiting Your Life

Good morning to everyone. It's wonderful to see so many people here.

This morning, what I would like to talk about is inhabiting our lives. How do we inhabit our lives? How do you inhabit your life? Does that have any meaning for you?

I'm going to begin by reading a poem by Jane Hirshfield¹. This is from her new book called The Asking. This poem may sound a little abstract to begin with, so just sort of get the feeling of the poem; don't worry about it too much.

I would like my living to inhabit me
the way the rain, sun, and their wanting
inhabit a fig or an apple.

I would like to meet my life also in pieces, scattered:
a conversation sat down on a long hallway table,
a disappointment pocketed inside a jacket,
some long ago longing glimpsed, half recognized, in the corner of a thrift store painting.

To discover my happiness walking first toward me,
then away from me, down a stairwell on two strong legs all its own.

Also the uncountable wheat stalks,
how many times broken, beaten, sent between grindstones,
before entering the marriage of oven and bread.

Let me find my life in that, too.
In my moments of clumsiness, solitude.
In days of vertigo and hesitation.
In the many year-ends that found me standing on top of a stovetop to take down a track light.
In my night's asked, sometimes answered, questions.

I would like to add to my life, while we are still living,
a little salt and butter, one more slice of the edible apple,
a teaspoon of jam from the long-simmered fig.
To taste as if something tasted for the first time
what we will have become then.

The title of this is "I Would Like."

What this poem opened up for me was the idea that we sometimes get lost in practice and thinking it's something that we do that's separate from life. We think, "Well, I'm going to go practice now. I'm going to go meditate. I'm going to do mettā². I'm going to do equanimity practice now." And we make it separate from what's going on. When it is in life that practice really occurs, that it's not separate from life. The way to be free of suffering is to be free of suffering in life, not just when we're sitting on the cushion. Not that that's a bad idea, by the way—I'm happy to be free of suffering on the cushion, thank you very much! But it is in inhabiting our lives that we really live our lives, being present for what's happening.

We talk about, "Well, I lost myself in that. I lost my way. I lost track of time," as if we in fact lost something. And maybe we did. That piece of time occurred and will never occur again. That snippet of our lives, we just missed it; it's gone.

Sometimes we engage in a deliberate mindless activity. In my twenties, I wore out decks of cards playing solitaire because I just didn't want to look at what was going on in my life. Hours and hours spent playing solitaire. Now, you can do that electronically; you don't have to wear out decks of cards anymore. But sometimes we do that. We feel life is too much: "I'm just going to ignore it. I'm going to go do something that allows me not to think about it."

I want to make a clear distinction between inhabiting one's life and being controlled by thinking about one's life, which are two entirely different things. The suffering that arises from them is different. Sometimes it's just laziness, just "I can't be bothered. I can't be bothered with living. I think I'm just going to sleep this one off. I'm just going to go sleep through the day because I just don't have the energy for it. Thank you." And we forget how delightful is the taste of that fig jam. I still have the taste in my mouth, just barely, of what I had for breakfast. I'm going to tell you about what I had for breakfast later—it had chocolate in it.

Sometimes we're lost in anxiety, frustration, anger—the emotional storms of life. We're lost in them, where the emotions take over. That kind of loss is different; it's very intense, but we are lost. The part of us that's willing to be present for it is lost. Something takes over from us and we're not really registering it. It feels like, "I can't help it. It's beyond me."

Many are the ways that we abandon ourselves. We leave ourselves alone at the shopping center, you know, "Bye kid, I'll be back later." We abandon ourselves.

Bringing Mindfulness into Everyday Life

And yet, one of the most common questions I get from people is, "How do I bring mindfulness into my everyday life? I've been meditating for a while, how do I bring it into my life?" It is the most common question, maybe after, "What do I do about being angry?"

The answer is: you just pay attention. You just inhabit your life.

So what does that mean? It's a puzzling question. It reminded me when I was thinking about this of another poem. Eventually, I remembered that it was a Jane Hirshfield poem once again. A very short poem called "Why Bodhidharma³ Went to Motel 6." Here it is:

"Where is your home?" the interviewer asked him.
"Here."
"No, no," the interviewer said, thinking it a problem of translation. "When you are where you actually live."
Now it was his turn to think "translation problem."

I read that a few times and then I said, "Oh! The monk was saying, 'I live here. Wherever I am, I live here.'" And the interviewer was saying, "Where do you live?" as if living was where your home was, your physical domicile. But in fact, where you live is here. Where you live is right here, right now, in this moment. You live right here. This is the only place you can live. You can't live anywhere else, because here is where you are alive.

That is the secret of bringing mindfulness into your everyday life: being aware of the fact that right here, right now, is the only place where you are alive. It's the only place who you are exists. Everything else is a concept.

The problem is not so much about being mindful as it is just being aware. I want to remind you that mindfulness starts with an object. Here's the object, we know the object. And then there's the knowing that we know part, and that's the awareness; it's the registering of it.

We all know that we're sitting here or walking. We know this. But it isn't until I feel myself on this cushion, this nice soft cushion, that I am aware of sitting. It's the knowing, the registering, the keeping track of, "Oh yeah, that happened." Getting into the habit of actually registering what's going on with you is becoming aware of being alive in this moment. It's that part that you want to cultivate.

That's what we're not used to doing. We're just sort of floating through life: "I know this is happening, I'm driving," but it's the noticing something. It's understanding that practice is not distinct from our lives; it is our lives.

When I first started meditating—maybe I'd been meditating for a few months—I went to Gil⁴ and I said, "You know, what I'm noticing is I'm inhabiting more of my life." But even then, I did not know the extent to which that could be true. After many years, I don't think so much about being mindful. I just am mindful. It's not so much a practice of mindfulness; it's just being aware: "Oh, this is what's happening. This is what's happening." It doesn't take thinking about it. That's the point. It doesn't take thinking about it as a practice; it becomes a habit of being. Like my noticing as I was talking that chocolate was in my mouth still.

Another way of talking about it is being present for what is true. So often when we're talking about it, we'll say, "Get into your body," and notice that the information is coming to you through your senses: eyes, taste, hearing, feeling, smelling. This is how we're getting the information about what's going on in this moment. And all of that is true. But if we think about it in a way that doesn't require us to think about it, but just feel our way into the moment—perhaps using "presence" not as a noun, but as a dynamic, flowing sense of "I'm here in this moment"—then we might notice something we aren't otherwise aware of.

Because we're not consciously thinking, "Okay, now I'm going to listen so I know what I hear in this moment," or "I'm going to look and really see what I'm seeing." We're just open. It's a way of doing open awareness. Just consider presence in this moment. What does it mean to be present in this moment? What do I understand by presence? Keep it an open question, because the idea is to be open to what you are taking in that you're not thinking about taking in.

The conditions of this moment you are not in control of. You decided what you were going to wear today, you decided to come here today. You transported yourself here, you chose your place in the room. You didn't choose an infinite number of other things. Last night I chose what I was going to wear this morning; I wore something entirely different because last night it was all black, and this morning I said, "No, I don't want to wear all black today." Conditions changed. Conditions are changing all the time, so we can't predict. How can we decide ahead of time, "Here's what I'm going to be aware of"? It's just wasted energy, more things to think about.

So what am I aware of when I'm not thinking about what I'm aware of? What do I just feel in the air? I like to consider what the energy field is that I feel. When I first asked myself that question, I said, "Energy field? What the hell am I talking about?" I sat and decided how much space it felt like my body was occupying. One of the things that's true when you sit and meditate with people is there is a different feeling when you meditate alone and when you meditate in a group. I'm sure most of you have felt that.

In September, I went on a three-week retreat. As it happens, because of conditions that were not planned, I was sitting in the front row, right in front of the teacher's dais. Gil was sitting there, and I could tell when Gil was in the room and when he was not. He had such a great ability to just sink into concentration. It was delightful to sit with him, because I could feel that energy. Not because I was looking for it. That came to mind this morning as I was sitting here in the room with all of you. There was like a pressure coming toward me. I went, "Wow!" [Laughter] It was almost like I was basking in the energy coming from the room. It wasn't that I was looking for that, it was just as I left myself open to the energy while concentrating on my breath. I said, "So if I don't stop at the skin, what do I feel?" It was like a blast furnace. Well, that's delightful! That was there all along, but I was not aware of it.

There are many things that you can be aware of if you are open to being aware of them. That's why I say it becomes just a habit of presence. Just being here and not off in your head. That becomes more prevalent as you allow it to be.

The Intention of Presence

Tied up with the presence of inhabiting your life is intention. Somebody said to me the other day that they had something they enjoyed doing, and they would become so absorbed in it they would lose themselves in it for hours. They didn't even know what had transpired. They had a product at the end, and that was delightful. But they felt that to develop their spiritual life, they had to give that up. They had to give that practice up.

That may be true, but what struck me is that it would be very sad to develop a spiritual practice independent of what made your heart sing. The idea that losing yourself in something means it is detrimental to your spiritual practice somehow just set me off thinking. How do we inhabit our lives doing what we're doing, being who we are, and not becoming something else? "In order to be a spiritual person, I have to not be me." That just doesn't work.

The other part of awareness is that the only person you can be in this moment is you. You can't be someone else. The only person who can be alive for you is you. You can't be the ideal you; you can only be you. So give that up. Meet this moment with you, the you that is here.

You might say, "Well, I want to be more mindful in life. I want to be more spiritual in life." Be very careful about that intention. Being more mindful is not the final intention. Being more mindful is on its way to something else that you really want. So ask yourself, as soon as you come up with an intention: Where is this leading? What is it that I'm truly yearning toward?

For years, my intention in life was to be openhearted, because when I began this practice I was pretty much a steel trap, closed off. Then I got to the point where I realized to be openhearted, I had to just be open. That was pretty scary. That felt very vulnerable. Eventually, I got to the point where I dropped the "hearted" part. "My intention is to be... what? Wow." That was much more freeing in the end.

Sometimes just listening to your own intentions opens up for you what it is you're truly wanting, what it is you're truly leaning toward. See clearly what the intention of your life is. "Why am I doing this practice? I'm doing this practice so I can be at peace." Now, every time I sit down and have a meditation session where I'm restless, I might think, "It's not working." But that's not actually true. Because somewhere in that "I want to be at peace" is "How can I introduce ease into my life?" Being able to sit with irritation and restlessness and say, "Ah, restlessness is here," is how to come to a place of ease, whether you are agitated, restful, peaceful, concerned, or anxious. "Ah, anxious is here. Look at that." So that you can see things rising and passing and not get hooked by them.

The Chocolate Babka

So now I'm going to tell you about the chocolate.

About a week ago, on a whim, I was going through a cookbook. We were planning our family gift exchange celebration because our close family—our daughter and grandchildren—are leaving town for three weeks to go to New Zealand. As I was going through the cookbook, I found a recipe for chocolate babka. This is a really wonderful bread in the Jewish tradition. It's a challah that has chocolate in it. You make the dough, roll it out, put a layer of chocolate (or cinnamon) in it, roll it up, slice it down the middle so the filling shows on the outside, braid it, and bake it. Very elaborate. Lots of steps. I had some of this last summer that I bought at a Jewish bakery and I loved it, and I've been looking for it.

Somebody who's never made bread decided she was going to make this. So I did.

In the process of doing this, I learned all kinds of things about what you should and should not do. I looked on the internet, watched people make it, and said, "Oh yeah, I could do this." Well, I'm going to skip all the beginning stuff and get to the part where I was rolling out the cold dough. All the recipes give you two loaves. The reason they do that is it's a lot of work; if you're going to do it, make at least two. Now it turns out this is fortuitous because I learned on the first one and then I could do the second one.

As I was rolling out this cold dough—it has eggs in it, so it's a very rich dough, and it's very elastic. You don't think about rolling out bread dough. So there I was rolling it on my piece of parchment paper. (The second one I did not use parchment paper; it was twisting.) I was aware of, "Oh, this is never going to work. I don't know what I'm doing. Why is that happening that way?" I was thinking about, "Am I going to get this done in time?" I was trying to get this stage done so it was rising because I had a practice discussion group an hour later. I had a hard deadline; I had to get on Zoom. Just to add a little tension.

I was watching all of these thoughts coming and going, but I didn't grab onto any of them. I didn't spend the rest of my time thinking about all the things I tried to do that were ill-advised. I watched the thoughts coming and going, and I watched little pieces of satisfaction. I got the first one done, and it kind of looked like what it was supposed to look like. The second one, I whipped through. That took about a third of the time, and it looked beautiful because I'd learned so much the first time.

It isn't about not learning from the past. You can learn from what you do, but you don't need to drag any of the extra stuff with you. "I did this wrong before and I know what to expect and this is going to be a failure because this happened before." Every moment is fresh. There was a moment when I looked at the piece that I'd rolled out and said, "Wow, that actually looks like the picture." There's just a moment of, "Huh!" But only a moment, because you don't spend a lot of time gloating because the moment has changed already. Now it's time to find out what happens in the next step.

There's a lot of freshness to just being here for what's happening. Just here. And uncertainty. I remember thinking, "I'm doing this because it's supposed to be fun. Am I having fun?" I asked myself, "Am I having fun?" And I could say, "Yeah, I'm having fun." Even in the frustrating times, when it looked like I had to cut the dough over here and patch it over there (which is usually a mistake). It was fun to be doing something new that I wasn't particularly good at. I didn't have to be a master baker; I didn't have to be anything but somebody playing with the dough, being aware of the smell of the chocolate, the feel of the rolling pin. Just this. All the ingredients were luscious things I don't normally grant myself, so it was going to be good no matter what. Unless I burnt it, it was going to be good. So I didn't worry about the outcomes.

It wasn't always pleasing. I wasn't always happy. The fun part was in being there, being very alive. Really there. One moment after the next.

You may have often heard a teacher talk about keeping your mindfulness continuous. It isn't continually finding an object to be mindful of. The continuous part is to never give up being present. Don't give up being present. When you find you've lost it, at the very moment that you noticed you've been lost is when you are here. Be really happy about that. That's the very moment when you're for sure here.

You can notice judging. "I'm judging. Okay, judging." You don't have to hold on to the judgment. You don't have to create more levels of anxiety for yourself by judging yourself: "How can I be angry? I should have been over being angry by now."

I found myself for two days last week wanting a sweater that was on a flash sale. I wanted that sweater. "I don't have a blue sweater. I really want that." I just watched the wanting for two days. I put it in the cart, I had it all ready to go, but I thought, "No, I'm not going to do it." I argued with myself. I carried that sweater around with me for two days and just watched that wanting, and then I let the time expire. I couldn't quite tell myself to make the decision, I just wasn't going to do it. So I didn't quite renounce it, but I had a lot of experience watching myself want. This is what wanting is. Seeing how it felt.

You might argue, "I see wanting, I cut out wanting, it's all over." That's one way to look at it. Another way is to see wanting and to know that I can survive wanting, and that I can be at ease with wanting without condemning myself and adding more layers of suffering. I can just want and let it go. And now, as I have more times in the past, I know what it's like to want and let it go. I can open the refrigerator and see the ice cream and let it go. I don't have to be the person who cannot resist wanting. Sometimes I don't resist, sometimes I do, but I understand more about how my mind works around wanting because I was present for wanting.

Being Present for What is Outside Us

Another aspect of being present is to be present not only for what's going on inside us, but for what's going on outside of us that is impacting us. Those other conditions that we certainly don't have any control over. One of those might be the people in our lives. We notice, "That person is particularly irritable today, so I'm going to avoid that person," or "I'm going to make space for that person," or "I am going to be particularly forgiving of that person's irritability today." If I don't think I can do that, "I'm going to not be there today." We might manage our relationships with someone by being aware of how they are, not blaming, but accommodating. My way of being present in this moment is to be aware that you have a way that you are in this moment. Not blaming, not judging. Just as I allow myself to be a certain way in this moment, however it is, I need to allow you to be as you are in this moment also. How difficult that can be.

Even further afield: there is a person who is the Minister of Culture for the Palestinian Authority. He lives in Ramallah, and on day two of the recent war, he happened to be in Gaza. He wrote a diary entry that was published in The Washington Post, and I read it. He talked about what it was like to be there. He was visiting his father and his mother-in-law with his family. His wife left immediately, but his 15-year-old son decided to stay with him, and the minister decided to stay with his father. It was a very moving account of what was going on. They were staying in a particular camp, which was in subsequent days heavily bombed.

My feeling about that was I kept thinking about this person and his son, saying, "Oh my God, that's being bombed, what's happened to them?" They belonged somewhere else, and it was interesting to me that I had somehow made a personal connection with this person because I knew something about them having read this account.

One day last week, when they were doing the prisoner exchange, there was another account written. He wrote about his trip with his son as they decided to leave. As I read that account about their leaving, I realized I was crying in relief. Because I had been so tense hoping that he made his way home. This person I didn't even know. That condition existed in my life for those two or three weeks. That condition was impacting me all of that time, but I was not particularly aware of it until I read the second account. I knew that it was impacting me at some point, but it was only in reading the second account that I realized how deeply affected I was by that, and how relieved and grateful I was to know that this person was alive. A specific person that I don't even know.

We are impacted by so many things. It is really useful to our understanding of what it means to inhabit our lives to sometimes inquire, "How am I being impacted by what I don't even know, by who I don't even know?" And just occasionally say, "Huh." Sometimes it's in a joyful way that we're being impacted, and we don't know, because we're not used to looking for that. The person on the corner that is always smiling—how much we miss them when they're suddenly, one day, not there. So be aware of someone who smiles. Don't let it not be noticed.

One morning last week, I got up and was making my coffee. I looked out, and there was a blue sky, puffy clouds, the sea, and fresh green grass. It looked to me like the pictures you draw in first grade of a sunny scene. I started to go on to make my coffee, and I thought, "No. Look at it. Register it. Go ahead and register it." Because that's the awareness part: register it. So I looked at it. "Yeah, it is pretty." And then I made my coffee.

It isn't that it becomes something else. It's not like adopting another practice. It's just allowing yourself to register what's going on in front of you. Register the color that attracts your attention. Register the sound that you hear. Inhabit your life. It gives you freedom from having to be who you have been. It gives you the freedom to be just who you are right now. To taste as if something tasted for the first time what we will have become then.

This is what I hope for you in your lives. Thank you very much.