Things are As They Are

My meditation practice is rather simple. I sit in the morning and I sit in the evening. If I’m too busy to sit twice, I sit three times. Every time I meditate, I close my eyes, ground myself and start focusing on my breath. When I get distracted, I label the distraction and go back to my breath.

I teach many different techniques and I love to learn and practice different styles of meditation, but what I described above is something that I always come back to, because more than anything, I like clarity and simplicity. Letting go of complicated procedures, visualizations, rules and just easing into the ever-changing rhythm of my breathing is my equivalent of a safe space. No matter how hectic or exhausting my days get, once I close my eyes and take a deep breath, I instantly let go of all of it.

The last 5 or 10 minutes of each sitting I repeat a phrase, either to cultivate loving-kindness, compassion joy or equanimity. Just like my meditation technique, I like my phrases short and simple. I like to repeat them slowly, to pause in between and observe how they sink into my mind and body, and how my mind and body react to them. There are times when my body is full of warmth and joy and indeed repeating some of these phrases can be intoxicating in its joyous intensity.

Then there are phrases that are never easy to repeat, phrases that are short and simple, yet create turbulence over and over again. One of them is: “Things are as they are.” I can’t say I invented it because it’s a simple phrase uttered and written millions of times by other people, but I can say I consciously decided to use it as the most condensed phrase I could come up with to cultivate acceptance in meditation.

Before I came across this phrase I tried out about a dozen before, but I wouldn’t feel much of a connection with them. What I’m looking for in a phrase for meditation is its effect. I need it to pack a punch. Like a magical invocation, I need to feel the result immediately. Here are some that I tried:

May I learn to accept things as they are.

May I see things as they are.

May I embrace everything that arises.

May I find kindness for everything I encounter exactly as I encounter it.

Etc.

There would always be something that would separate me from what I needed to cultivate. “May I” seemed too wishy washy and indirect for acceptance, because reality never says “may you accept me”, it just appears. I didn’t like mentioning the word acceptance because it would push me towards my intellect, rather than my body. And so on. My objections were endless.

I needed a phrase that would be stronger and more direct.

What is it that I was trying to cultivate?

Acceptance.

What is so hard about acceptance?

That reality is not what I want it to be.

What’s the problem?

The problem is that things are as they are and not as I wanted them to be.

And there it was: things are as they are.

I slowly repeated the phrase a few times and I felt some resistance rising in my stomach, pushing back against this simple phrase, as if it had a problem with it. There was a part of me that didn’t want things as they are. When I tried the phrase in meditation for the first time, it caused quite a storm. I could immediately feel all kinds of sensations escaping my body as the phrase was entering it, thoughts alarming me to the dangers of this simple combination of words.

Outside of meditation we can easily gloss over the importance of simple words, but when your mind is clear and focused, the storm they cause is very difficult to ignore. I remember a sentence from my high school Latin class: mala lingua interdum plura vulnera quam gladius inflixit. Bad words sometimes hurt more than swords. And those words are never truer than in meditation where you are carefully attuned to every sensation that arises. Even the smallest cuts hurt like deadly injuries.

And I genuinely love these moments and I do my best to embrace them, especially when they hurt. It’s not because I’m a masochist (I am not, I assure you). It’s because that’s what acceptance is all about – honestly seeing where you need to reject reality to preserve a fantasy. For me, at least, this simple sentence “things are as they are” brings out that fundamental resistance to the coldness and harshness of the universe that doesn’t care if we need something or like the way things are going. It brings me back to the very beginning, to our obligation in the process of living, which is to assimilate and accommodate, to continuously give meaning and reconstrue.

Try it out, it’s very simple but not easy: things are as they are. And see what your body responds to that.