How to Live

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Photo by Vanessa Paxton

“Okay, let’s say life is a blank canvas. Anything you want. What would you paint, babe?” I asked my husband.

There was a brief pause. He grabbed a few Almond Rocas off the kitchen counter, made his way to the couch, and then sat there … like a happy, modern Buddha.

He responded, “I don’t think about what to paint, I think about how to paint.”

Irritation quickly spread throughout my entire body. Regardless of the Zen reading and Vipassana training I had been doing, that was not the response I’d anticipated.

Tonight, for one moment, I wanted to set aside the rationale of “Journey is the way, happiness is not a destination”. Tonight, I really wanted to abandon abstractness and find practicality in our thought process.

Tonight, I’d hoped for grounded, definitive answers—a timeline, some known factors with some known possibilities that delivered a measurable “what to paint” outcome. I wanted to know how to live fulfilling days centered in peace and meaning.

Inspiration for How To Live

I’d just come home after a long day—a long month, at that. I’d spent most of the past two months fueled by perpetual, reactionary energy. A few weeks earlier I had lost a relative very dear to me. This loss, coupled with other personal transitions and an overcommitted workload, I was mentally and emotionally exhausted.

With a daily mindfulness practice, I’d become better at not seeking external diversions. I had learned to not search for outer validations for the inner challenges I was experiencing. I hard learned to take full responsibility for the choices I had made (to commit to extra work, to be busy, to be tired).

The past few years, I had become a student of breathing through anxious moments, sitting quietly when my mind was over stimulated, or writing when I needed detoxifying from emotional bombardment.

I was learning how to sit with discomfort without reaching for tools to distract, deny or escape.

Instead of plugging up to Pandora to inject a feel-good song to muffle unsettled feelings, I’d sit with raw emotions. Instead of reaching for my cell phone—a distraction—to check my Twitter feed, I’d examine feelings and attempt to process them.

I was learning. And had witnessed significant inner growth.

But, not tonight.

Tonight, although aware of my burnout-driven-desire for answers, my husband was the one I’d seek out for the external “quick fix”.

I wanted him to tell me, right now, at this very moment, “Where are we going? How will we live? What are we going to do with our lives? What greatness will we achieve? How will we save the world? And are we on the right path? Is this—the way we experience our days now—our purpose?

Or are we really half asleep, on a wheel?

I wanted to know what to paint. I wanted to know what my picture would look like.

My deepest belief is that our reality is a mental creation. Our internal story lines—our thoughts, mindset, affirmations—narrate a projection into our physical world. And vice versa, our physical world is a mirror of our inner being.

So I’d propositioned to him, with this stage-setting belief, my question again: “Life is a blank canvas, let’s paint, shall we?? How do you want to live?” Since I’d rephrased with a few ounces of maturity and philosophy, I expected him to reciprocate.

Yet, I still received no solid answer. No picture.

He repeated himself with the same simplicity as moments before. Something that went like this, “The way we intentionally choose to live each day. This is the how “the way” and “the what” naturally would follow suit.”

“Wow … What a really, really unfulfilling answer.”

This was my last thought that evening. I went to sleep—still stuck in a war zone of mental uncertainty—frustrated with the vagueness of a blank canvas. And I didn’t return to this thought until today.

~~~

A few months have passed, and my anxiousness for the unknown is beginning to dissipate. I now radically let my frustrations, fears and uncertainties be. Acknowledging them, blessing them, and reminding myself, during times when fears do take over, “this too shall pass”.

I let go of my obsession with future-oriented events. I found myself happier in each moment. And, in turn, the answers to my ‘what’ question has been generous in its return. With less force and resistance—and more allowing and surrendering—a picture began to organically form (a story for another post).

How to Live? The 3 Hows of Intentional Living

I’m becoming more and more aware, and accepting, that life is uncertain.

The same elements that make it exciting and beautiful can also bring us on an anxious pursuit for answers. Here are three mindset tools for how to live when we are in a time of transition, fresh with questions, faced with unknowns.

1. Choose Consciously

Living life as a reflex is the grass-root of stress. Reactionary living is working backwards and leads to energy depletion. Our stressors begin to strip away our soul, and we suffocate on an empty tank of unfulfilled needs.

We can reverse this way of living backwards by choosing to consciously create our lives. We can live by setting our intentions.

Contemplate this: “What do I want to intentionally represent?” For example, is it love, humility, compassion, creativity, intelligence?

Or, ask yourself this, “How can I honestly show up for myself and then for others?”

Or on a smaller scale, “When I have lunch with a good friend or a co-worker today, what will I stand for?”

We can choose consciously by affirming we are love, we are humble, we are compassionate, we are creative, and so on.

And when moments of distress do find their way into our space, it is noticeably apparent. There is a heightened awareness towards unconscious feelings.

Take this moment to ponder how your intentions—your mindset, your strategy—will create a conscious, fulfilling life. Choose wisely, and then carry them, center them, deeply within.

Our intentions guide everything. Know this.

2. Adopt a Zen Mind

In zazen—the Zen practice of meditation—our mind is calm and simple. Though, in ordinary life, outside of zazen, this isn’t usually the case.

Daily, we experience a flurry of busy and complicated thoughts—an influx of stimulating & annoying status updates, media noise, email-flood-gate-management, what to have for the next meal, the weekend errand list, a project deadline, keeping in touch with friends, taking care of a parent, going home to a sick child. Hardly Zen.

With many responsibilities that are constantly calling us, we may not easily be able to focus on what we are doing at this very moment.

According to Zen teachings, our cluttered thoughts are a result of thinking with a relative mind. The relative mind is exactly as it reads—the mind which sets itself in relation to other things. And this type of thinking leads to mental clutter.

For example, let’s explore traffic with a relative mind.

Instead of sitting in rush hour with a clear mind, we are impatient—even angry—as we’re running late for the 8am meeting. As we’re driving our shoulders stiffen, our grip on the steering wheel tightens. Our entire bodies react as we become tense. We are zooming into the future by envisioning the wrath of our boss as we stumble in late… guided by our reflection into the past—last week when we were also late.

Not to mention, we’re irritated with the car in front of us for leaving a larger gap than needed … driving slower than the 10 mph flow. Then, we look over to the next lane and find a woman putting on make-up, treating the driver’s seat as a vanity instead of as a vehicle.

We start to form judgment. Our temper has a growing aggression.

The mind is cluttered.

Compulsive thinking forms residual debris that further creates fuel for more compulsive thinking—a result of reaching into the past or zooming into the future. There is another way.

If we adopt a Zen Mind, if we embrace something quite simple with a clear mind, we have no shadows, no debris, no relative mind. Our present moment just is.

There is clarity and the moment is straightforward.

Zen teachings state to do one event, one conversation, one focus with our whole body and mind; to be concentrated. Be whole in each moment. In our conversations, when we are preparing a meal, when we are listening.

So, back to the example of traffic: when we are stuck, be there with your whole body and mind. Just sit there. Take three slow and deep breaths: inhale & exhale.

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist Monk, would also remedy irritation by recommending adding a half smile with this breathing exercise. Certainly, though conceptually simplistic, to master frustrations with present moment awareness and breathing is no small feat … and one that takes practice in a very demanding, modern world.

But it can be done. If this philosophy is intriguing to you and you’d like to explore further, I highly recommend “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”, a book that changed my life.

3. Show Up

You. This moment. Both are perfect.

This final “how to live” is a parallel to the second: to show-up, wholly, wherever you go. Understand that your attention is the most precious resource you have.

Today, we can recognize, we can allow what we are doing right now to be perfect, without judgment, without analyzing. We can allow ourselves to be fully here. And we can provide this most amazing gift—our attention—to our current action, to each of our conversations, to those we meet throughout the day.

Parting Words

To close on a Zen note, there is a precept, a saying, “Dana pajna paramita.”

Dana is to give.
Prajna is wisdom.
Paramaita means to cross over, to reach the other shore.

In other words, “To reach the other shore with each step of the crossing is the way of true living.”

That frustrating night months ago, and my husband’s response that I shunned at—I don’t think about what to paint, I think about how to paint—well, it’s true.

Our mind and heart are so powerful and deliberate: how we see becomes how we paint. Our canvas is then our intent, mindfulness, and presence.

And with this priming, our “what”—our unique work of art—is revealed to us moment-by-moment.