Stillness in the Roar of Experience

Are our lives as real and substantive as we think? Or are they like a dream that will soon end in a puff of smoke? Can we progress from a feeling of hopelessness to equanimity? Informed by his long-standing illness, William W. Chan provides a series of reflections on consciousness’s role in our lives and how, when faced with difficulties, we may realize that nothing can confine us.

“Can you sit still and hear what an old tree ‘heard’ three hundred years ago?” he wrote. “After being quiet for a long time, do you experience false memories or memories not yours? Rather than satisfying your appetites, do you sometimes wish you could dissolve yourself because there was something beyond calling you?”

But Chan is never far from the practical. He says awareness is the fuel that propels us forward. He suggests our memories make our lives spacious in that our experience isn’t limited to the present moment. He describes how breathing can erase deeply ingrained mental boundaries.