The art of eating a tangerine

Thich Nhat Hanh illustrated mindful living by describing the act of eating a tangerine. You eat it one section at a time. If you can't first eat just the piece of the tangerine that is in your mouth, you won't be able to eat the whole tangerine. In the same way, he wrote:

"If you cannot find joy in peace in these very moments of sitting...you will be incapable of living the future when it has become the present. Joy and peace are the joy and peace present in this very hour of sitting. If you cannot find it here, you won't find it anywhere. Don't chase after your thoughts as a shadow runs after its object....Find joy and peace in this very moment."

That is the real art to living that I want to know, being able to take whatever you are given and recognize it as beautiful. Not because it's whatever you perceive it to be, but as a realization that there is sufficient goodness in what you have and are right now, in the present moment and in what you can make happen in it. I want to carry that ability with me.

So I have to remind myself, If you can't find beauty on this street where you are walking right now, if you can't find fulfillment in washing the dishes, if you can't find calm in this traffic jam, then you won't be able to find these things anywhere else in any meaningful way. So find it. It's there; there is something and it's enough.

And why do I rename this blog in honor of that way of thinking? Because a lot of what I write now comes from the process of learning how to think and live that way, present and receptive to the moment. You can imagine me typing with fingers that are maybe still a little sticky with tangerine juice.