Monday, October 02, 2006

Aftermath, Part Five: First Thought, Best Thought

First Thought

By Jeremy Hayward

~ from the Spring 1995 issue of Tricycle.

In order to communicate very openly with the world, you need to develop fundamental trust. This kind of trust is not trusting in something, but simply trusting. It is very much like your breath. You do not consciously hold on to your breath, or trust in your breath, yet breathing is your very nature. In the same way, to be trusting is your very nature. To be trusting means you are fundamentally free from doubt about your goodness and about the goodness of others.

When we trust with our open heart, whatever occurs, at that very moment that it occurs, can be perceived as fresh and unstained by the clouds of hope and fear. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche used the phrase “first thought, best thought” to refer to that first moment of fresh perception, before the colorful and coloring clouds of judgment and personal interpretation take over. “First thought” is “best thought” because it has not yet got covered over by all our opinions and interpretations, our hopes and fears, our likes and dislikes. It is direct perception of the world as it is.

Sometimes we discover “first thought, best thought” by relaxing into the present moment in a very simple way. Perhaps you are sitting in an airport looking down from a balcony onto the crowds milling around below. Suddenly your inner chatter stops. You are right there for a moment and actually see and hear. You see the pattern of motion; you hear the hubbub of voices and machines; you have a sense of timelessness and completeness.

You may also come into this open state of mind when you are suddenly shocked.
You may also come into this state of mind when your life takes a sudden 180 degree turn from where you thought you were going. Emotional shocks, such as a death, or a job loss, or a break up, can thrust us -- if we are willing -- into the present moment in an almost violent way.

Suddenly everything is laid bare. All the assumptions we held about our lives, our selves, our understanding of life can be called into question. We are ripped open, exposed, vulnerable. And being vulnerable is the first step to being open, to living in the moment.

There is nothing more vulnerable than to be present to our feelings, our experience, our lives. Being vulnerable is something we seldom do in our lives, and certainly something I seldom do in MY life. And it something I did not do enough in my last relationship.

I was trained as a young boy never to be vulnerable, but always to be tough. Most men were raised this way, at least in my generation. Imagine how hard it is to be vulnerable in relationship, then, the one place where being vulnerable is required above all else.

I failed deeply in this area. I have spent so many years of my life constructing the hard shell that I live within that being vulnerable is an incredible challenge. It's not impossible, but as a wrote yesterday about coming from a heart-centered place (which is really a very similar thing), it is not first instinct.

In the same article I quoted from above, Jeremy Hayward makes the connection of being fully present to the creative moment of an artist:

When you take photographs, just before you click the shutter, your mind is empty and open, just seeing without words. When you stand in front of a blank sheet of paper, about to make a painting or a calligraphy, you have no idea what you will do. Maybe you have some plan for a painting, or you know what symbol you want to calligraph, but you don’t actually know what will appear when you put brush to paper. What you do out of trust in open mind will be fresh and spontaneous. Opening to first thought is the way to begin any action properly.

The same process happens, very fast, at every moment of our lives. Whether we are artists or not, any moment could be experienced as first thought. We have to touch first thought again and again. There is no promise of any ultimate point where you don’t have to pay attention anymore. At the moment you are about to make any gesture, before you actually do it, you can trust and open to “first thought, best thought.” When we are about to drink a glass of water, do we just reach for it and grab it and swallow it down? Or can there be a moment of first thought, clear perception, as we reach for the glass; and again as we touch it; and again as we lift it; and again as we move it towards our lips; and again as we taste the water on our tongue? When someone speaks sharply to us, do we immediately fire back, or can there be a moment of first thought before we respond?

For those of us who create in any way, practicing this presence as a part of our art can help us be better at it in the rest of our lives. From this point of view, art can work like meditation.

When I write, I often start with only a phrase or a line, then I let whatever wants to come after to come. I never know where a poem is going to end up, what it is going to be about. It's always a surprise to me. Sometimes, it takes me weeks or months to understand a poem, much in the same way that it takes time to understand a dream.

Creating in this way is good practice, alongside meditation and mindfulness, for learning to be open to the moment, for learning to be more vulnerable. It's what I am working on right now in my life. I'm trying to take advantage of being ripped open by the Kosmos.


No comments: