A Gift and a Privilege in the Present Moment

How do we identify emptiness and use that insight about it to cultivate a new relationship with our laptop, our productivity dashboard, the Zoom conference screen and the next moment to come?

Travel with me to your workday. Visualize yourself in the office, at your desk, on the factory line or at the espresso machine. I’m going to explore a specific example, but you’re invited to translate it to your typical working environment.

Shame, embarrassment and fear

At the age of 44, I found myself standing at the food-prep station on the opening day of the alcohol-free bar I founded. Rather than feeling joyful and exhilarated by the packed house and line of customers streaming out the front door, relishing this dream that had become reality, I was trembling.

Facing a pile of order tickets, the staff and I were overwhelmed. The packaging of the various deli meats and cheeses we used to prepare a charcuterie board were greasy and difficult to open. The olive jar was spilling. The plates were blemished. A waiter came back begging for an overdue order. I overheard a customer’s frustration about our untrained and disorganized service.

I felt shame, embarrassment, fear. I’d fully invested myself into this passion project and exposed myself to the incessant judgment of Yelp reviews, online chat rooms and social media comment threads. I was afraid our failures that day would doom the business, lay to waste my investment of time and resources, and embarrass me and my family.

My stomach was tight, my jaw clenched, my voice oscillating between meekly timid and aggressively demanding. Everything and everyone around me was a threat. All I wanted was to make it through the next moment, and for the damn salami package to finally open.

Experiencing the moment differently

Close-up of kalamata olives in olive oil - Your Work: A Gift and a Privilege in the Present Moment

What if I had experienced that moment differently? We can start with any detail. It doesn’t matter if it seems foolishly mundane; it’s a perfect representation of the whole of our experience.

That’s the beauty of emptiness. It’s not a void that consumes our sense of meaning; it’s the essential element of every syllable of being, the thing that unites each and every thing that ever was and will be. Everything is exquisitely unique, poetically ephemeral and eternally unblemished. Sometimes we just need to open ourselves up to seeing a point of entry into this timeless home.

Back at the bar, I’m literally clinging to this ladle of kalamata olives that I’m trying to delicately pour into this one-inch-wide tin cup. I’m fixated on it in that moment, in all of its oily drips and fumbles, as the cause of my suffering, the tip of the iceberg of underlying emotions ensconced in my body and mind.

If I can take a single, fully embodied breath, however, this emblem of fear and anxiety offers me a portal to ease and equanimity. No longer the cause of my suffering, it’s my gateway to liberation.

Where did these olives come from? What fields produced beautiful trees bearing their fruit when the perfect season sprouted its bounty? Whose labour harvested them?

To answer its beckoning call, I might consider: Where did these olives come from? What fields produced beautiful trees bearing their fruit when the perfect season sprouted its bounty? Whose labour harvested them? How far did they travel from their home on the earthbound tree to their assemblage in an unctuous vat and onward to packaging? What about the kind food representative who helped create our menu and cheerfully delivered our below-the-minimum order each week?

And the olives themselves? Take that one that just splashed into its new home in the serving cup. It’s defined by its sleekness, its bruised purple hues, its penetrating smell. All these relative aspects arise together, right now, as “olive.” Empty as can be, the olive is just a temporary aggregate of infinite possibilities—all that its components have ever been and ever will become.

Arising anew in this moment, yes, it’s unique—exquisite, miraculous. But underneath it all is its elegant emptiness, the being that remains in the absence of all our sensation, perception and judgment. That’s the thing that unites this one slippery olive with it all. That’s what binds it and me and all time together.

The olive isn’t just the source of my fear and frustration. Beneath that is my ambition, my identification with the path that brought me to that stressful moment and has me anticipating its forthcoming fate. What’s that made of? It’s built on handwritten brainstormed legal pads and business plan software, Google reviews and receipts, inspiring team meetings and confrontational ones, inventory days and Facebook ads.

What is this ambition? What is this identity I’ve woven into this instant I have in the company of a kalamata olive? It’s completely empty, lacking any inherent nature of its own, arising in that particular way so briefly in that moment. Like everything else, the olive offered a mirror to view my notion of an ego self and allowed me to see there was nothing there.

If I’d had the wherewithal in that moment to realize this, how would things have changed? All the details would be the same, but my experience of them could have been radically different.

As I visualize myself submerging into the cleansing cold plunge of emptiness, a smile is already creeping onto my lips. The fragile ego that was facing an existential threat is replaced by the immutable presence of all being that can never be blemished. My trembling begins to ease, my stomach begins to relax into the ebb and flow of the breath.

Emptying the moment has taken with it the trivialities that conspired to deny me my right to be present in my life as it truly is, as I truly am.

A privilege to be there

What a privilege to be there, with that olive, making a board of tasty meats, cheeses and vegetables for some stranger to enjoy? Look at all these employees who trusted me enough to take a job in this weird startup, hustling around in their way, manifesting themselves with their truest intentions.

The music I’d carefully selected for this special event cracks back through my denying veneer—Thom Yorke’s voice soars over the clanking plates; the rhythm of my movement starts to align with Green Day’s power chords.

If I’d just paused in this moment of awareness, the weight of all those hours planning and preparing, and also the uncertainty ahead, could simply lift. They aren’t here anymore now. I’m not bound by them. I’m actually free to be here in this moment just as I am. What comes forth then is ease, gratitude, curiosity, maybe even some awe and a side of joy.

The elements of reality are still there for me to contend with: I need to get this order moving; I want our customers to have an enjoyable experience; I’d like to give this social enterprise my best effort. How much better to approach these tasks with this new mindset, this place of wholeness and inherent satisfaction? Nothing has changed, and everything has changed.

The plate is served. The next order arrives.

Reflection: Enter into your work

Woman calmly sitting at desk in home office

What emblem of your workday challenges can you imagine at this moment? It can be an object, a task, a thought, a preoccupation with some event, past or future. It doesn’t really matter what it is, as long as you can bring it to life now with texture.

Spend some time recognizing how your body reacts to your experience of it. As you bring it to mind, check in with your sensations: Are you relaxed or tense, is your breathing shallow or deep, is your mind calm or scrambled? Let the rhythm of your breath help connect you to this moment and a clearer view of the item you’ve chosen to focus on.

Consider: What are its material features, whether ink on a page, glowing pixels on a screen, or neurons firing in your brain? What are its origins? Everything is born out of innumerable causes. What preconditions contributed to the arising of this experience you’ve called to mind? Perhaps there was cultivation of natural resources, manufacturing, a series of conversations, evolutions of relationships, each contributing person’s history, mindset and actions. Go ahead and let your mind explore these many paths for a while.

Calling all these elements to the fore, what then is left of the original object or experience you’ve identified? Is it really just the label and judgments you’ve applied to it? What aspect of it makes it so and only so? Is your mind open to the possibility that this thing is in fact a temporary manifestation of infinite possibilities? Can you really trace the path that led to it being here or that it will follow into the future? Can you crack the veneer of your mind’s tendency to categorize such things so swiftly as beneficial or threatening, something to be accrued or avoided?

As we’ve been doing in our ongoing practice, see if you can pause before rushing in with answers to these questions. We want to expand our capacity to be with these uncertainties. Gradually, as you practice these pauses amid the tempest of your work, you may find that your attachment to what arises will soften and your freedom and ease with these moments will strengthen—and you may begin to find a fulfillment that you’ve never known before.

Billy Wynne is the author of The Empty Path: Finding Fulfillment through the Radical Art of Lessening. A student of Buddhism and mindfulness for 30 years, he received meditation teaching certification under Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach and lay Zen Buddhist ordination from the Zen Center of Denver, where he now teaches classes and serves on the board. He lives in Denver with his wife, children and shih-poos, Oscar and Archie. Visit him online at www.billywynne.com.