Living In The Moment

The Buddhist way of life depends on several simple life principals. Karma or the belief that your actions come back to you. In Karma, everyone pays for what they've done. It may take several lifetimes, but Karma's gonna get you. There's also the principal of reincarnation. A principal in which I believe to a point. Yes, I know everyone's saying, "You're a freak!" Maybe so, but I believe that since we know energy never dies, it only changes forms, that it's possible that the electrical energy in us could survive death of our body. The point is, nobody has ever been able to be dead (and I mean really dead, like brain death) and come back to report on it. So really it's all a guess, isn't it?

Another principal of Buddhist teaching is the principal of "Living in the Moment". It is about tossing aside your worries, your thoughts of what is going to happen later, your plans, your schedule, your regrets and just thinking only of this very moment. A good example of this principal is the life of a child. Like the Namibian children in the picture, living in the moment is about being fully present with no thoughts of anything else. Children are very good at it. But like most things, as children grow, we adults beat any free spiritedness out of them. We teach them about bills and worry, school and worry, success and worry. We shackle their spirits in chains of responsibility and doubt. That's how we become adults.

If you want to know true joy and peace you must learn to live in the moment at least some of the time. You must learn to not wish this moment away in exchange for another. Our lives are lives of "We'll do it tomorrow/next month/two weeks/when I retire". Everyone should try for 10 minutes each day to live in the moment. When you're driving in to work, don't think about what you have to do that day. Take time and notice the trees, the new construction on the corner, your neighbor's new landscaping. This is the way the Buddhist have been de-stressing for millennia and it's proven to work.