"Once I asked Khenpo Tsultrum Gyamtso, How long is a good amount of time for doing sitting practice?
"He said, Just blink your eyes.
"Try it. When you blink your eyes, that moment is over. It's finished. You can't go back and redo anything that happened in that last moment. You exhale and the exhale's over. That moment is finished.
"I think a lot of us have only a philosophical understanding of letting go. We tend to pick and choose what we're willing to let go of: I'll let go of this, but I won't let go of that. It's like when you have a garage sale, but then as people start coming, you start putting some things back in the house.
"What does it mean to let go of something and not replace it with anything else? Can we accept that what actually needs to be renounced are not just things, but the way we make ourselves into a thing? Because that's what we're doing when we treat the past like a force that is making us do the things we do. Until we consider the past an illusion — or rather, a construct of the mind — it will shape us unconsciously. We need to turn our attention to meeting the present, reducing reactivity, then letting go.
"Mindfulness practice is a kind of mourning. It's a very profound process of letting go of what is already gone."
