' Presence '...

Presence is eating potato chips,

Presence just means eating potato chips, walking your dog, sitting on the couch, shuffling papers at work, talking on the phone with a friend, listening to your favorite music, or driving down the road thinking. Presence is your everyday existence without the need for something more to happen.

Seeking could be described as eating potato chips while desiring to reach a state of enlightenment or to be an awakened person eating chips or to have some experience other than the simple fact of eating chips right now. Presence is simply eating chips without that desire for some future moment.

Presence is so simple that it is overlooked by the mind seeking something other than what is happening now. In presence, life is simple. There is only the crunch, crunch of the chip, the sensation of it going down your throat, and then biting into the next chip. It’s that simple. Just that—the reality of eating chips. It’s not about the story of a person eating chips. It’s much simpler. It’s just eating chips.

The desire for something more than what is happening is the problem, not the road to the solution.



-Scott Kiloby, Reflections of the One Life: Daily Pointers to Enlightenment