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Friday, November 12th, 2021

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Week Forty-Five: Christianity and Buddhism

Being Present to the Presence of God

One of the great gifts Buddhism offers to Christianity is an emphasis on being present to our experiences in the here and now. In one of his homilies, Father Richard speaks of the holiness of our present time and place, no matter where we are:

The presence of God is infinite, everywhere, always, and forever. You cannot not be in the presence of God. There’s no other place to be. The only change is always on our side—God is present, but we’re not present to Presence. We’ll make any excuse to be somewhere other than right here. Right here, right now never seem enough.

But here’s the problem—we’re almost always somewhere else. We are either reprocessing the past or worrying about the future. If we watch our mind, it doesn’t think many original thoughts. We just keep thinking in the same problematic ways that our minds love to operate.

We can say that all spiritual teaching—and I believe this is not an oversimplification—is teaching us how to be present to the moment. When we’re present, we will experience the Presence. [1]

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, a Buddhist monk and international teacher, left one of the three monasteries of which he was abbot to spend several years on a retreat journey. Following in the ancient tradition of wandering ascetics, he “wanted to explore the deepest depths of who [he] really was out in the world, anonymous and alone.” [2] Here is part of the letter he left for his students before his departure:

In parting, I would like to give you one small piece of advice to keep in your heart. You may have heard me say this before, but it is the key point of the entire path, so it bears repeating: All that we are looking for in life—all the happiness, contentment, and peace of mind—is right here in the present moment. Our very own awareness is itself fundamentally pure and good. The only problem is that we get so caught up in the ups and downs of life that we don’t take the time to pause and notice what we already have.

Don’t forget to make space in your life to recognize the richness of your basic nature, to see the purity of your being and let its innate qualities of love, compassion, and wisdom naturally emerge. Nurture this recognition as you would a small seedling. Allow it to grow and flourish. . . .

Keep this teaching at the heart of your practice. Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, pause from time to time and relax your mind. You don’t have to change anything about your experience. You can let thoughts and feelings come and go freely, and leave your senses wide open. Make friends with your experience and see if you can notice the spacious awareness that is with you all the time. Everything you ever wanted is right here in this present moment of awareness. [3]

[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, “First Sunday of Advent: To Be Awake Is to Be Now– Here,” homily, November 30, 2014 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2014).

[2] Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche with Helen Tworkov, In Love with the World: A Monk’s Journey through the Bardos of Living and Dying (Spiegel and Grau: 2019), 10.

[3] Mingyur Rinpoche, 252–253.

Image credit: Rose B. Simpson, Reclamation II (detail), 2018, sculpture.

We featured the artist of these sculptures, Rose B. Simpson, at our recent CONSPIRE conference—so many of us were impacted by her creations that we decided to share her work with our Daily Meditations community for the month of November.​

Image inspiration: This piece is of a series of reclamation and it's about finding our identities and our empowerment in our histories and stories and timelines and how do we apply that to our beings in order to become whole. —Rose B. Simpson, CONSPIRE Interview, 2021

Learn more about the Daily Meditations Editorial Team.

Prayer For Our Community

Loving God, you fill all things with a fullness and hope that we can never comprehend. Thank you for leading us into a time where more of reality is being unveiled for us all to see. We pray that you will take away our natural temptation for cynicism, denial, fear and despair. Help us have the courage to awaken to greater truth, greater humility, and greater care for one another. May we place our hope in what matters and what lasts, trusting in your eternal presence and love. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our suffering world. Please add your own intentions . . . Knowing, good God, you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God. Amen.
Listen to Father Richard pray this prayer aloud.

Story From Our Community

I have been searching for the God I loved as a young child. I found love and divine truth through the Dalai Lama and the teachings of the Buddha—but I still longed for my simple, obvious God. I've always talked to God, even when my doubt was its staunchest! Discovering Friar Richard Rohr has been a blessing to me. I still consider myself Buddhist. I still doubt—but now I feel like that's ok. I feel like it is part of a genuine passionate relationship with God.
—Jeremy R.
Share your own story with us.

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Explore Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations archive at cac.org.

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