Living a deeper life. Part 2

Living a deeper life

Part 2: Joyful awareness in attention to what we’re doing

A key possibility arises from the fact that I am someone who looks up from my book often. What do I mean by this? For many years, while on holiday, one of my greatest treats is to have, say, a whole morning free to read my book; it is sheer pleasure. Yet I feel myself torn: reading my book is sheer pleasure, yet I also want to look up to appreciate the sheer pleasure that I am able to read my book. Of course, when I am looking up, I am not reading, but when I am reading I am not taking in the full awareness of the ability to spend this time reading. Is it possible to do both? Possibly not – but is this a clue to what I’m seeking in living a deeper life. Many wise people aim to be wonderfully aware of the presence of the present moment,  but there has been throughout my life an either-or element to it: I can either enjoy the existential moment of being here, but that moment has no content – other than the appreciation of the existential moment, or the moment has content – in this case, reading my book – but I lose that awareness of the wonder of the moment.

However, one fruitful step in response to the issue of distraction, is that before, I would look up, but just for a few moments, to become aware of the wonder of existence, but then I would feel drawn to move on: my time is short before my period of leisure is over and I am back to the burden of work that must be done. If I am now free not to have to move on, I can work (and I think this is something that really needs working on) on exploring precisely what it is that “calls to me”, which makes me look up from my book, but which has been too intangible for me to fully take in. I think it’s the resonance of the fact that life – being alive – is more important than any particular thing we do with our lives. What we do is always going to be so partial compared to all the things we might have done – that is why it is so vital that we perceive the absolute and ultimate in the particular. It is impossible for our experience to be anything other than minute, yet we can appreciate that the course we have chosen to follow expresses within it the absolute and ultimate. However, even beyond this truth, I think I am seeking after a deeper joy in the fact of living. It doesn’t really matter what you do with your life – provided you have exercised some sort of choice in what you do, and are free from unwarranted suffering and oppression – the important thing is to be aware of, and exult in, the wonder of being alive. Now that I am free from having to do things in the world of work, I really want to apply my attention to that joy in living. If I can then blend that wonder seamlessly into the activity or content of what I choose to do, then I think I will certainly be living a deeper life.