On today’s episode, I’d like to share with you one lesson I learned while living like a monk. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before on this show, but this last winter I spent a few days at Zen Mountain Monastery in the Catskill mountains living like a monk. During that stay, time slowed down to a caterpillar crawl and days felt like years. In a good way. Why?

Because with the monk life, every second seems to be accounted for and everything seems to focus on the present, working to pull in the tangled ball of yarn that makes up our thoughts.

Who knew non-thinking could cause time to slow down?

I will be short and to the point like the espresso I’m sipping. On this episode, let’s cxplore a bit of zen philosophy to be more present in the moment.

We start with a glass of ice cubes.

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Imagine you’re on a plane and you ask a stewardess for a glass of water. A minute later she comes back with a cup of ice and hands it to you. You have had quite a long day, are tired, and just want some water to cool you down.  Frustrated with the ice cubes, you ask the stewardess:“What am I supposed to do with this!?”

The stewardess replies, “Just wait.”

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Okay…. So, what does all this Yoda talk mean? What’s the point of this story, which I first heard from a zen monk.

When we let the mind go on its own, we can easily go throughout an entire day thinking about the future and reflecting on the past all while ignoring the beauty in the present. So often, we can get carried away in the day-to-day that we lose sight of the now. When we want a glass of water and get ice cubes, the idea of waiting for that ice to melt into water can drive us mad. So we move on looking for water when water was right in front of us the whole time.

Consider watching some ice cubes melt into a glass of water. Many people, including myself, would go mad watching the small drips that melt into liquid.

I have so much to do…I can’t wait for THIS…

Unhappy with the ice cubes, we go off looking for water in other places and forget that we had what we asked for all along. We just needed to let go.

Zen philosophy calls this mindset “Muddy Water”. Like the ice cubes, our mind can be hardened to think a certain way so that we are full to the brim with muddy water or hardened like an ice cube. Our mind thrashes in the water, stirring up the mud from below, when all we need to do to reach clarity is let the mud settle to the bottom. Or let the ice cubes melt into amorphous water. When our mind is like water we are more open to go with the flow and make decisions with a clear open mind.

If we learn to let go of the ice cubes, we’ll always have as much water as we need. Remember, everything you need in this life is either with you now or well on its way.

Thank you so much for listening. I wish you a beautiful day, full of love, light, and adventure.