Linger longer

On making peace with our restless human nature

“If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” Bruce Lee (Photo by Alessandro Sacchi on Unsplash)

Listen to me read this essay in the audio above. And then put it into practice by enjoying a few moments of lingering longer yourself, with the aid of the guided meditation I’ve recorded for you (at the bottom of this post).

I notice myself rushing a lot. In my mind if not in my body: “After this I must…I need to remember later to…how much longer to of this workout…at lunchtime I need to…once I’ve eaten this I will…when I get out of bed I want to…this is what I’ll say to…” Planning, anticipating, wondering, imagining. I notice how tiring and tedious this train of thought is when left to run on unchecked. And so I stop it, let it go, come back. This happens thousands of times a day to most of us, given that we have on average something like 65,000 thoughts a day.

Over time (and I’m talking years of diligent and sometimes frustrating practice), the agitation and self-flagellation that used to come with the awareness of this aspect of my mind has given way to a kindly attitude of accepting that this is part of my human experience. And it’s not a big deal unless I make it one.

It’s crazy track the mind leads us on. And it’s totally normal. And it’s only one track. The beauty of the mind is its infinite potential and its innate capacity to return to the vast expanse of spaciousness that is its natural state - beyond thought. It might not always feel that way, in fact most of the time it probably doesn’t, but in moments, in gaps, it’s there.

‘Linger longer’ is a phrase I’ve talked about before, and have re-adopted lately, as a short-hand mental intervention that reminds me to take back the reins of the mind’s thinking nature, and in doing so, slow my roll – as I watch my hands reach out to touch something and feel the air around me, as I pause when I’m out for a walk and listen to the sound of the stream nearby, as I feel the touch of my oil pastels glide across the page I make marks on, as I feel my lungs inflate when I breathe in, and as I sip my tea instead of mindlessly gulping it back.

My capacity for restlessness and what I used to decry as my impatience has a long history. I could wrap these habits up in a story about why I fall prey to these tendencies, where they come from, etc. And doing that has been useful for me to get to know myself. But holding on to such stories as explanations for why we do the things we do, or what we’ve been told is the reason for the way we are, just keeps us stuck in a pattern.

I’ve been realising how the stories I used to tell myself about my restlessness and the irritation I used to feel about them, coupled with the need I felt to fix it, are actually more indicative of an intense and fortunate desire I have to move on from ways that keep me stuck. In other words, it’s an eagerness for liberation. ‘Impatience’ just needed a re-frame, one I’ve come to understand from sitting with myself and watching my mind.

The practice of lingering longer is therefore my embodied way of taking more kindlier care of my habits and diverting the energy of haste towards paying attention to the things that give me satisfaction, pleasure and appreciation. In other words, waking up to the moment, and letting go of narratives that keep me tethered to limiting ideas (which crudely put, is all that enlightenment is - waking up to what’s really going on).

The resistance is real – but it doesn’t last if you release your grip

I was chatting to a friend recently who’s long been interested in Zen. He’ll ask me what I think about this writer or that, this teaching or that, which book to read. This friend openly confesses that he realises he’s been talking about this for a long time but not actually doing anything about it, researching books rather than reading them, wondering about rather than actually sitting down and trying it – something is stopping him, and he knows it. We all know it but we don’t always want to face it.

The attachment to thought is partly what it comes down to – the fixation on an identity associated with education and knowledge (to which I can hardcore relate; I’ve been there too, and gladly, let go of most of it). Ultimately, we can talk and read all we like, accumulate all the bookish wisdom we like, and sure there’s pleasure and satisfaction in that. But mostly, it simply feeds the desperate need of the ego’s self-importance and burdens the mind (again, compassionately saying so from personal experience).

But unless we sit down, shut up, and give ourselves a chance, we’re not going to get there – ‘there’ being the freedom and ease that we want and which opens up slowly but surely when we stop thinking about the thing, and do the thing.

We place too much importance on thought, not just on the kudos we give to the capacity to analyse and theorise, but also on the fear that the thoughts won’t stop. And, as came up in this conversation with my friend (as it so often does with others, and more generally in the way Zen/meditation is misunderstood and perhaps mis-marketed), the fear that we won’t be able to empty our mind of thought as we think we should. Added to that, we fear we’re being asked to give up on the brilliance of our own mind.

Part of the trouble is with the very linear/binary way in which we see words. It’s understandable that we in the Western world think this way, it’s how we’ve been raised, educated and taught to see the world (very narrowly, in short). But it’s not the only way, hence Zen is all about breaking down those binary concepts – the walls, you might say, that keep us penned into a constrictive perspective.

Yes, Bruce Lee, of whom I’m a huge fan, did say “empty your mind”; and while he may well have been able to do so with the extreme degree of precision, focus, devotion and concentration that characterised his whole skill set and which enabled him to create and perfect his own approach to martial arts, I believe he was using the word ‘empty’ to refer to the spaciousness that can be experienced when we stop attaching so much importance to our thoughts, and let them go.

He wasn’t saying (and nor do the Zen or any Buddhist teachings say) that thought is bad, that we need to let go everything completely forever – just for moments at a time that give our minds some respite from the noise and confusion that is created when we let our minds run and run, and carry us away on trains of restless thought. All of which contributes to the kind of mental suffering that shows up as inability to rest, sleeplessness, fear of self-worth not associated with productivity, inability to focus, lack of concentration, etc.

We waste more time than we have in the delusion that our urgency – to do the next thing, read another book, on and on we go – is of existential consequence. It’s often not. In fact, it’s the opposite – these habits of resistance and restlessness stop us from living life fully.

Easy to say, harder to do - all the more reason to persist

I vividly remember the American rock climber Alex Honnold saying, in his 2018 biographical documentary; "no-one ever achieved anything by being happy and cosy," when talking about his free solo ascents of big walls, and in particular, of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.

It’s apt really, given how the imagery of mountains features a lot in the Buddha Dharma – great masters sitting on high peaks in perfect equanimity, mountains as epitomes of the kind of unflappable composure that we’re encouraged to adopt when sitting to practice and resist reactivity, as symbols of the tough journey we embark on for spiritual ascent.

Honnold was making the point about the satisfaction that comes from persistence, from the joyful pursuit of an ideal and a vantage point worth our time and focus. He was determined to scale El Capitan and he practiced continually and consistently, navigating set backs and painful stumbles, until he did. He could have talked about, researched it, looked at images of the mountain, and stayed at the bottom, forever wondering, ‘what if’. But where would that have got him in his aspiration to ascend?

As Bruce Lee also said: “If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made of.”

All of which is to say - the time to practice, the time to live, the time to be, is now. There is no other moment. And, at the same time (because such is the non-dual nature of life and practice), there are infinite moments, infinite opportunities to stop, right now, and let go into the sweet relief of spaciousness beyond overthinking. So what are you waiting for?

Now: here’s a brief guided meditation for you to see/feel into your own experience. Enjoy!

*What’s your relationship with presence? What helps you to stay? In what small ways and during which activities might you linger longer? We can all learn so much from each other. So let’s get real and pool our struggles, insights and queries - help each other to be free! Please share in the comments…