Creating Moments of Awareness

Episode 50 of the Secular Buddhism Podcast

Hello. You are listening to the Secular Buddhism podcast, and this is episode number 50. I'm your host, Noah Rasheta, and today I'm talking about creating moments of awareness.

A Milestone Moment

Today marks a fun milestone for the podcast. This happens to be episode number 50, and as of today, the podcast has officially been downloaded or listened to over one million times. That's incredible. The podcast now has listeners in over 50 countries. The top five countries are the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Germany, and it keeps going down the list. The 50th country is Kenya, with over 400 downloads. How cool is that?

I've been receiving countless emails of support and feedback from listeners all over the world, and I'm so grateful to each and every one of you for listening, for supporting, and for being a part of this journey and this milestone with me. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Living More Mindfully

Today I want to talk about the practice of creating moments of awareness. Here's the thing about mindfulness: these amazing moments of clarity, moments where you glimpse the awe-inspiring nature of reality as it is—they're always there. It's just a matter of us becoming aware of what this moment actually is. How can we shift our perspective? How can we see or experience more of these moments of awareness in our normal day-to-day lives?

Well, there's a technique that I've been using that I'd like to share with you. You pause and ask yourself three questions. The questions are: (1) Where am I? (2) What am I doing? And (3) What did it take for this moment to arise? In other words, what people or processes were involved in allowing this moment to exist just the way that it is?

Before I get into those questions, though, let me offer a couple of reminders. First, remember the Dalai Lama's quote: "Do not try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist. Use it to be a better whatever you already are." Regardless of which path you're on or how far along that path you may be, mindfulness can help you be a better whatever you already are.

Second, the mission of the Foundation for Mindful Living is to provide tools and content to help people live more mindfully. Let me address what that really means. Living more mindfully essentially means that we're learning to become more aware of our thoughts, feelings, actions, and emotions. It's not about changing them. It's not about changing the way you feel. It's about understanding the relationship you have with your feelings. It's about becoming a better observer of your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and actions—all of this in order to live more skillfully with them.

How We're Growing This Work

Part of the mission is accomplished through the podcast by posting regular episodes like this one, where certain topics help you understand Buddhist concepts or teachings—ultimately, again, to help you live more mindfully.

Another component has been traveling and doing workshops. In an all-day workshop, I can teach all the concepts of mindfulness in a comprehensive way. It's like a mindfulness one-on-one intensive. There are workshops coming up in Orlando, Florida on Saturday, October 21st, and another one in Phoenix on Saturday, November 4th. You can learn about those workshops by visiting secularbuddhism.com/workshops.

I'm also excited to announce that I'm working on an online version of the workshop that will be available to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Many people have indicated to me that learning this has helped change their lives in a positive way—helping people cope with difficult things they're going through, and helping people find more contentment and joy in day-to-day living. So I'll continue doing these podcast episodes and producing them in this format, where I'm teaching concepts or presenting ideas that ultimately promote mindfulness.

I did introduce a new format a while back with occasional interviews. I've done a couple of these—one with Robert Wright, an author, and another one with Noah Levine from Refuge Recovery to talk about addiction and recovery. I'll occasionally continue to do episodes in that interview format, discussing certain topics. I think that's helpful, but that format isn't replacing the original format. It's just in addition to it. Roughly once a month, you can expect an interview episode. And occasionally, I'll introduce a question and answer format, where podcast listeners can call in or email questions that I'll then answer through a podcast episode.

Both of those formats are occasional—they're not the regular. The regular format is like this episode and many of the past ones, where I present a concept, an idea, or a teaching to help foster the ability to live more mindfully. So between the podcasts and the workshops, I think a lot of people can benefit from these topics and teachings. If you have any feedback, ideas, or other things that the foundation can do or that I can do, feel free to reach out and let me know. I value everyone's feedback. I read every email that comes in, even if it may take me some time to get to it, because I do receive a lot of emails now.

Understanding Moments of Awareness

Now let's jump into this week's topic: moments of awareness. What are moments of awareness? For me, these are the moments when I suddenly have a bit more insight into the nature of reality of the moment I'm experiencing right then, in the present moment.

If you imagine a giant hourglass—an old-fashioned one made of glass with sand flowing through it—imagine it flowing backwards. The sand is flowing from the bottom toward the top. At the bottom, there are all these past moments, and they're being funneled into the present moment, which is that little bottleneck in the middle. After passing through the present moment, they expand into every possible outcome of what the future could be. But we are stuck right there at that bottleneck, where only a few grains of sand pass through at the moment. That's the present moment. This is the way I visualize it, and hopefully it helps you too. I experience this one present moment at a time, and every now and then, I feel like I see through this lens of impermanence and interdependence, and I feel like mindfulness arises. This process of the sand and the hourglass is always happening, but I'm not always aware of it.

I try to prime my mind to experience the present more mindfully from time to time.

I had one such instance this morning. Some of you know that I've recently taken on somewhat of a new career path. I wanted to dedicate more time to the podcast and to the foundation. After my business kind of collapsed, I haven't been able to do that full-time while doing this part-time. So I wanted to reverse those roles and find something I could do part-time while doing this full-time. That's been working out well with driving the school bus.

I started driving as a substitute teacher last year, then I took on a full-time route this year, with school that started last week. Let me insert a quick plug here for driving a school bus. If any of you are freelancers, entrepreneurs, or trying to build something on the side, driving a school bus is a really neat way to do it. You have this schedule where you get up early and drive a bus route, but you're done by around 9:00 AM. Then you've got the rest of the day to work on your own, and you don't have to be back until the afternoon to do another one or two hour bus route.

It's worked out really well for me to have this big block of time in the middle of the day to work on what I consider my full-time project—the podcast—but at the same time, I don't have to depend entirely on the podcast. I'm not an employee of it yet because I don't have to be. I have a part-time job. It's been a really neat thing, so if you're in a position like mine or you're trying to build something, driving a school bus is a fun way to do that.

When Everything Feels Like Too Much

Back to what I wanted to discuss. I've had several things on my mind lately. I'm still kind of dealing with tying up all the loose ends of everything that's happened with my business, and at times it feels like it can bog me down because there's just so much to think about.

Today was one of those instances. This morning, I was thinking of all the things I was going to have to do later today—the people I need to call, the emails, the messes I'm still trying to clean up. It's a lot.

As I sat there on the bus this morning, I was doing what you do before you start the route. You get the bus ready, and you do what's called a pre-trip inspection—checking all the air in the tires and all the various parts of the bus. By the time I'm done with that process, I have roughly 10 minutes or so before I need to start my route.

These are the moments where you can create moments of awareness, and I do this by asking myself the following three questions. These help me in any moment—any moment where you can pause and ask yourself these questions. You might have time if you're stuck at a red light, but you could do this in a lot of places. If you're stuck in line at the bank or if you find time in the day to do this, these questions help me become really mindful, become present to the intricate connections that allow that present moment to be exactly what it is.

The Three Questions

Here are the questions. First, I ask myself, "Where am I?" This helps me ease my mind with all the thoughts I have about all the other places. We're always somewhere and thinking of somewhere else. Rather than thinking about work or the email I'm going to have to get to once I'm done—like all these other places—I thought, where am I? I'm right here, sitting on a bus.

The second question: "What am I doing?" This helps me anchor myself in the present moment. To recognize that yes, I have a lot on my mind about this or that, but right now I'm doing this. What am I doing right now? It reminds me: sure, I can be doing things later, but right now I'm driving the bus. That's what I'm doing.

Once I allow myself to anchor in that present moment, then I ask the third question: "What did it take for this moment to arise?" In other words, what people or processes were involved in allowing this moment to exist just the way that it is?

For me, I paused and looked around, and I started looking at all the components on the bus. I looked at the radio that I use to communicate with the school and the other bus drivers. I looked at the mirror, thinking about all it took for that mirror to be created. I looked at the rivets in the ceiling of the bus and the different panels and how they connect. I started imagining the various factories where each of these metal pieces came from and the electronic components that allow me to open and close the doors. I started looking at the little LED lights around the stop sign that comes out when the doors open, thinking, where did that LED come from? Where was that created? The lettering on the bus.

This process goes on and on. There are so many things to look at, so many components. Just for this bus to exist the way it does in that present moment. And as if that's not enough to think about, then I thought, well, what are the processes that are taking place right now all across this valley where I'm about to go pick up kids? Kids are waking up. That required alarm clocks. It required smartphones. Maybe the coffee that they're drinking or that their parents are drinking to help them wake up—where did that come from? I was thinking about the farmers and about the watering and this complex process that's been taking place for a vast amount of time, so that in this moment, it's all going to culminate in the one moment where I interact with the culmination of every single one of those processes.

And yet, that's exactly what's happening right now as I'm sitting there on the bus. It's taking place everywhere, but the way I was thinking of it, it would culminate with the moment as I stop and I pick up someone standing on the side of the road. There are so many parts to this, right? I could continue to imagine the shoes I'm wearing, the shoes that they're wearing, the backpacks that they're using, the books they have in those backpacks, the pages and the paper and the trees that made the paper, the stitching that went into the backpacks, and on and on and on.

This process really doesn't end. By then, it was time for me to proceed to drive the route, and at that point, I'm on the route, but I'm so much more mindful now of how incredible this moment is. The moment of picking someone up and everything it took for each stop, each child to be standing there ready to get on the bus. And then to think this process goes on for the rest of the day—their classroom, their teachers, their desks, their books. Where does it stop? Suddenly, you're left with this realization that this is one incredible moment taking place, one after the other, after the other.

I was grateful to be able to be mindful of it, even if just for a moment. I'm sure I'll pause and do this again later in the day about other things, other places, other processes, because that's how it works. But this is a process—a series of questions that can allow you to at least glimpse for a moment the intricacies of what it took for this moment to be what it is.

The Beauty in the Ordinary

I thought about this as I reflected on the milestone of the podcast. I already had this in mind—that I wanted to talk about creating moments of awareness. When I came in and started preparing everything for the podcast, I was checking the episode numbers, and I realized, hey, today's the day I hit that milestone of 50 episodes.

Jenny, one of our podcast listeners (you might recognize some of her work—she's done a lot of those really cool sketching drawings that I've shared on the Facebook page, and she's in the UK), she sent me an email saying, "Hey, you're coming up on your 50th podcast episode. This is a time to celebrate." I thought, huh, I hadn't even thought about that. I was just going to record number 50 like it was no big deal.

I thought, how fun to just pause for a moment and apply those same three questions. To realize all the work, all the processes it's taken for this moment to be what it is. Suddenly, I'm left there feeling just humbled to be a part of this present moment. I can't help but feel gratitude—gratitude at the prospect that I get to share in other incredible moments in the future. I'm not thinking way out. I'm thinking 30 seconds from now, one minute from now, five minutes from now. Each one of these incredible moments arriving in such an ordinary way, and yet with just a little introspection, I realize there's nothing ordinary about any of these moments.

Every moment is the extraordinary culmination of everything that's ever taken place. To realize that, even to glimpse it for a moment—I'm grateful for this technique. This is a technique that I enjoy using as I try to live more mindfully of the beauty of the present moment, more mindfully of the fact that whatever the moment is (whether it's pleasant or unpleasant, whether it's a moment I enjoy or a moment I'm disliking), it's unique. It's a unique moment, and it's beautiful in and of itself, regardless of the perspective I have of it.

That's a fascinating thought for me because it allows me to go through the day with a greater sense of gratitude, a greater sense of awe at everything that's taking place. This is, to me, what it means to live more mindfully—to create the space for awareness, to allow there to be more contentment and joy in everything that's taking place because of my perspective. To look around and think: wow, it took everything.

An Invitation

I hope that you can all take a moment to pause sometime today and ask yourself these three questions. Then see how it makes you feel. Ask yourself: Where am I? What am I doing? What did it take for this moment to arise? And see how that changes how you see that one ordinary present moment. By asking these questions, you've created a moment of awareness by looking, by allowing yourself to try to see beyond the limitation that we sometimes have of just being here but not really being here. Being now but not really thinking of now. We're caught up in the future or caught up in the past, but to really be present for a moment and to realize what all it takes for this one moment to exist.

Then, that quickly, watch how that moment passes and is replaced by another moment, and then another moment, and another moment. This process goes on and on and on. That's the nature of our lives, and how our lives can slip away through our hands, moment after moment. We're always looking back, wishing we had been more mindful of something that took place, and yet there we are in the present with the opportunity to have that mindfulness. To have that anchoring right then and there. To start that process now in this present moment.

You can do that with those three questions: Where am I? What am I doing? What did it take for this moment to arise?

I hope you can each find time to ask yourself those three questions today. Notice how it makes you feel, and then enjoy that moment. Just enjoy that pause. Enjoy the feeling that you have as you increase your awareness, as you create your moment of awareness.

Thank You

Thank you. That's all I have for today. If you enjoyed this podcast episode, please share it with others, write a review, and give it a rating on iTunes. And if you would like to make a donation to support the work I'm doing with this podcast and the work I'm doing with the foundation, please visit secularbuddhism.com and click the donate button.

That's all I have for now, but I look forward to recording another podcast episode—episode number 51—soon. Thank you, and until next time.

For more about the Secular Buddhism podcast and Noah Rasheta's work, visit SecularBuddhism.com