I want to say a few words about the 5th paramita or transcendent action, which is called “meditation.”

Here, meditation means something other than our formal on-the-cushion practice. It means the effort to extend meditative awareness off the cushion, in all circumstances of course. And what is required to extend such awareness? Something kind of scary and cool and very deep and completely ordinary: letting go of our ideas, agendas, hopes, fears, and all manner of projections to instead attend to the present moment.

Attending to the present moment has become a bit of a cliche, something people may say to mean that you’re not conforming to their ideas about what a “spiritual” person should do. Well we can file that in the BS drawer, OK? Instead, I invite you to contemplate what it would be like to cease seeking trance states, equanimity, and so-called bliss to instead open, over and over, to exactly what you sense, feel, and know–now and now and now.

With cultivation of the first 4 paramitas: generosity, which means openness; discipline, which means coming back; patience, which means giving up expectations; and exertion, which means taking an interest–the ability to be present, paramita #5, spontaneously arises.

Which is pretty cool. As the awesome Flatlanders (Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock, and Joe Ely) say in their fantastic song, “Now it’s now again.” This is the view behind the paramita of mindfulness. Try making that your mantra today or this week or for your next 30 lifetimes and see how it goes.