This Precious Human Moment
Last month, I attended a traditional Chinese Qigong intensive with Qigong master Eva Wong. As Eva demonstrated a movement for the class, I found myself trivializing part of the movement and not giving it my full attention; I had practiced this particular movement many, many times.
But as I watched her gestures flow into one another, I realized how mistaken I was—there was nothing insignificant about it. 
Opening my mind, I saw how each aspect of the movement was sacred, how each movement was interdependent upon the other.
How often is it in life that we drop out of the present moment, skipping forward, attempting to experience pleasure and avoid pain? Hollywood captured it well in Adam Sandler’s movie Click. And how often do we recognize these habitual impulses, let them be, and choose instead to remain in the freshness of the here and now, not be seduced by the dream of hope and fear?
The Shambhala teachings remind us that when we abandon our hopes and fears—our concepts of the world—we experience basic goodness, and see the world exactly as it is. As Pema Chödrön puts it:
We can stop and take three conscious breaths, and the world has a chance to open up to us in that gap. We can allow space into our state of mind.
This takes discipline and practice. But what better time to engage in this practice than right now, as winter approaches? Opening to the seemingly cold and dead phenomenal world, we find that, in reality, the present moment is totally alive—each moment has a gift to offer us.
We invite you to schedule some time at Shambhala Mountain Center to deepen your practice of returning to the present moment, whether your flavor of practice be meditation, yoga, an ancient wisdom tradition, or simply being in nature through self-directed retreat.
How precious this time is.
Brian