Be Present

The French Benedictine monk, Henri le Saux, lived in India living the life of a sadhu but following a Christian path. He took the name Abhishiktananda. He wrote a short masterpiece on Christian prayer which demonstrates both the insights he gained from Indian spirituality and his profound Christian orthodoxy. Prayer is still in print nearly 50 years after it was written and is well worth reading slowly and repeatedly. One of the insights that caught my attention in that book is the description of all life as a communication of God's presence. Abhishiktananda writes about the way God is present to himself in the eternal trinity of love and the life of all that lives is an extension of this presence.

The work of prayer, then, is simply to become aware of this presence, which is always around us. Without it, there is no life. And the way one becomes aware is to be present to oneself. If all of life shares in that presence, then to be aware of it in ourselves is to be aware of it in all. To be present to oneself is to be mindful, attentive, silently waiting, gently detached from our preoccupation with objects and results. To be aware of the life that is as close to us as our every breath is to be aware of all life, of the origin of life, of Life itself.

So often, we are not even present to ourselves and, therefore, not at all present for others. Our mind is elsewhere, our attention is on the next thing or on a past thing that cannot be undone. Christian spiritual teachers from the Desert Fathers onwards have never underestimated the challenge and the hard work of maintaining the discipline of being present to ourselves. We can practice it quite simply by taking their advice to 'eat when we are hungry, drink when we are thirsty' - in other words, not be controlled by our appetites and unthinking reactions but do each simple thing with our full attention. If we are present to ourselves in these small ways, we develop the art of being present to others and present to life itself - it is all one.