I offered something in classes this past week that I’ve never done before and not only have I enjoyed exploring this, but based on student feedback they have as well. At the beginning of the practice, I set the Insight Timer to randomly ring a bell throughout the practice. The instruction is to go into a resting pose whenever you hear the bell, take three breaths, and simply notice where you were when the bell rang. One aim of the practice is to do so without judging how you were doing when the bell rang.
The inspiration for this came from the Vietnamese Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh. As a peace activist, he was exiled from Vietnam during the war and ended up establishing a monastic community in the south of France, at a place called Plum Village. In the movie, Walk With Me, based on Plum Village, we are granted a window into the daily lives of the resident monks and nuns. Every 15-minutes, a bell rings throughout the community and as people hear it, they stop whatever they are doing and take three deep breaths…then they resume whatever task was at hand.
Plum Village allows visitors at various times throughout the year and one of these times some visitors were enjoying the surrounds and listening to a string quartet of monks and nuns playing. Mid-song, the bell rang so the musicians put down their instruments, focused on their three breaths, then resumed playing. At the conclusion of the film, a friend of mine said, “I need a bell in my life…” and I thought to myself, “Yes! So do I”. Hence the inspiration for trying it on in classes this past week.
What I noticed as we did this “pausing practice” was that many students were already quite present in their experience. One of the places where we allow ourselves to be present and release our connection to the daily grind is during our time on the mat. Where this practice is truly useful is “out there” in the real world. Imagine pausing when you’re stuck in traffic, rushing to get something completed or meeting a deadline, having an argument, or embarking on a trip to someplace new. Wouldn’t it be helpful to have a mindfulness guardian angel sitting on our shoulder, at the ready to ring the bell when things start to draw us away from our center?
The beauty of this practice is that it brings us back to the present moment, the one and only place where life is really happening. The more frequently it’s repeated the stronger we connect to our spiritual muscle. Can you envision a life lived that never hears the bell of the present moment? It would be as though we are missing the sweetness of all the experiences that constitute what it means to have a fully awakened human experience.
When we pause, we notice whatever may be happening. This includes pleasant, agitating, loving, or prickly experiences. We see it all with the same openness and as Thich Nhat Hanh says, “In mindfulness, compassion, irritation, mustard green plant, and teapot are all sacred.” It allows us to open the pathway and view the entirety of our lives as a sacred experience, rather than one we miss through our distraction or busyness to be elsewhere. I feel excited by this awakening to my own life and the chance that despite what might be difficult or beautiful, it’s all a part of me. I don’t wish to get to the end of my time without knowing that all along it has all been a sacred journey.
Set a timer to remind yourself to be radically present and savor every moment of this one, human, precious existence.
