It’s one thing to feel clear and present when conditions support it. It’s another when you’re working, making decisions, talking with people, solving problems, moving quickly, and using thought continuously.
So what happens to practice in the middle of all that?
The question of how to stay present in daily life can easily turn practice itself into another thing to manage. You start wondering whether you should be focusing harder, letting go more completely, remembering awareness, watching thought, or trying not to lose some particular state.
There is another kind of orientation, however. It doesn’t require withdrawing from ordinary life, and it doesn’t require pretending there is nothing to practice. It is simpler and, in some ways, more intimate than either of those positions.
How to Stay Present in Daily Life When Everything Is Moving
A common question I get is: How do you stay present? What do you focus on or emphasize in your practice when you’re busy, when you’re at work, when you’re in dynamic situations, or when you’re in complicated situations that require thought and a lot of interaction with people?
I just came back from a long day at the hospital, over twelve hours, and it was a reasonably busy day.
Reflecting on it afterward, I found myself wondering: What is it that keeps the orientation toward realization, truth, Dharma, or practice intact through all the dynamics of a day like that?
In part, that’s a little hard to answer because there’s nothing actually continuous.
That’s what’s so strange about this. It’s almost as if events are simply appearing and disappearing, ongoing, all the time.
At the same time, I can look back and summarize how the day felt, and the immersion is complete. The immersion is very thorough.
So why is that?
For me, the answer is something simple. Sometimes it is just a simple re-attunement or readjustment.
The Two Common Approaches to Practice
You might think about this in terms of doing nothing.
There is a way of speaking in contemporary online non-duality that says there is nothing to do and no one to do it. From there, the implication can become: Forget about it. What does it matter? There’s no need to emphasize anything, practice anything, or do anything.
On the other side, there is a more traditional Dharma view that says you should always be practicing. You should have a practice, focus in a certain way, and understand that it takes work, focus, and effort to undo the habits of mind, thought, behavior, distraction, rumination, and so forth.
Both of those views have truth to them.
Neither one is completely right, and neither one is completely wrong in my experience.
So then what do you do?
Do you focus all day long and try to always have a practice you’re doing?
Not necessarily.
On the other hand, do you simply forget about any kind of practice, Dharma, or realization and just do whatever?
Not necessarily.
If you do that, you’re probably going to end up lost in thought and unnecessarily distracted, at least until realization becomes clear.
How to Stay Present in Daily Life Without Making Practice Into Control
The orientation I want to point to works in essentially any environment.
It works in a retreat environment, but it also works in a busy, dynamic environment where you don’t have much time to consciously target practices toward this or that, evaluate which practice you should be doing, or sit in deep meditative samadhi.
There can simply be a lot of dynamism in what’s happening, as there is during a busy workday or in other busy parts of life.
This particular orientation is very simple. And what I find is that it works regardless of what else is going on.
In my own experience, this is probably what has become clearer and more obvious over the years. It may be the most accurate way I can describe my own attunement to realization and to the Dharma.
I understand that this is dualistic language in some sense.
And yet reality doesn’t exclude these kinds of personal statements. It doesn’t exclude the conventional world. It doesn’t exclude some form of reflection.
So the simple attunement is this.
A Heart-Level Commitment to Truth
What keeps you in alignment with Dharma?
If you don’t like the word Dharma, what keeps you in alignment with truth?
If you don’t like the word truth, what keeps you in alignment with realization?
Or, if you want to describe it through a particular insight, what keeps you in alignment with non-duality? What keeps you in alignment with anatta?
To me, it is actually a heart-level commitment.
It is a commitment, but it isn’t a commitment laden with thought, analysis, doubt, and judgment.
That is a completely different kind of commitment. That kind of commitment leads you into thought, analysis, and judgment through thoughts. It becomes something heady.
What I’m pointing to is a different kind of attunement.
It’s an attunement at the level of the heart.
And there is a trust within it.
I know when to apply effort. I know when to surrender to effortlessness. And I know that they’re not always two things.
Sometimes, however, one is emphasized more than the other depending on conditions.
Effortlessness versus effort.
Both of those can express themselves in the relative world. Both of those can express themselves in the conventional world.
So what aligns us with whichever one is most appropriate to express right now?
That’s the heart-level commitment.
It’s the love of truth. The love of Dharma.
And, in my opinion, that is also the thing that gets you onto the path in the first place.
This Does Not Always Feel Spiritual
This isn’t always going to feel like a romanticized spiritual path.
You may feel discord.
You may feel pain.
You may feel confusion.
You may feel emotional turmoil or have shadow material coming up.
Whatever space you find yourself in, you can still find this heart-level attunement.
It is simply a willingness to go along with where this process is taking you, where this moment is taking you, or how this moment actually feels.
How is this moment appearing?
How is sound appearing right now?
How is the felt sense appearing right now?
How is consciousness moving right now?
There is a trust here that you don’t have to figure everything out.
But there is also the recognition that, to whatever degree you have a sense that you can emphasize something, it behooves you to put some emphasis on practice, some emphasis on presence, and some emphasis on not fooling yourself or simply going unconscious.
I’m saying several different things here, but to me all of them come together in this heart-level commitment.
Learning the Movement Between Effort and Effortlessness
How does that look for you?
How does that come about for you?
How does that refine itself for you?
It’s going to be a little different for everyone.
I can think of many examples among people I know. There is something about how it looks and how it feels to be around someone who has this orientation.
It has a feel to it.
And it is something you develop.
It’s a muscle you build by flexing it.
All practice contributes to this. But so do all those moments of surrender when you begin recognizing that practice is becoming too much like control and it’s simply time to let go.
Then there are other times when letting go starts becoming its own thing.
It becomes hesitation.
It becomes avoidance.
And you realize: Okay, it’s time to apply some effort.
So there is a continual sensitivity to this movement between effort and effortlessness.
The commonality, and what allows us to find our way through it, is that heart-level commitment. That heart-level orientation toward truth.
When the Teaching Itself Becomes Something to Analyze
I’m curious how this lands.
Some people may think this sounds too vague, perhaps, or somehow too universal.
But I think it’s pretty accurate to my experience, and it is something you attune to more and more over time.
If what I’m saying puts you into your head, and you find yourself overanalyzing it, just put it aside.
Maybe come back to it at some point and see whether it resonates a little more.
Because this isn’t intended to become another complicated mental structure you have to maintain.
Non-Duality in Ordinary Life
This is something I can feel as being here throughout the day.
It’s here even when I’m doing what most people would consider nothing spiritual at all.
I’m working.
I’m at a hospital.
I’m in a busy environment.
I’m talking to patients.
I’m making medical decisions.
I’m joking around with coworkers.
Whatever is happening, it doesn’t look like the life I live on retreat.
And yet the immersion is very similar.
The clarity is very similar.
The non-dual experience is intact.