What is this? In some Zen traditions, it is the most profound of koans, begging the practitioner to contemplate not on a rational level but a quieter, intuitive level the nature of each moment as it is.

I can’t really answer this question in a satisfying way because language is inherently limiting when explaining reality ... Nonetheless I’m going to give it the good old college try for a second.

What is this? Is not trying to explain a moment with words. If I did that, it might sound like “I’m sitting in the living room, writing and listening to the piano, while my wife and dog sleep in the other room. That’s what this is.” Sure, that’s an answer, but it misses the point.

What is this? This is silence. It is the unfolding of the universe. It is change. It is chaos. It is structure. It is the movement of life and death, growth and decay, that has gone forever and will continue to go on long after humans leave the earth.

It tells me my little human life, this “I” doesn’t mean a whole lot in the end, at least in the Western way of conceiving identity. My legacy is hogwash. Even if I somehow end up extremely rich and famous, almost no one will know I existed in 200 years.

The temptation from a rational, Western point of view is to go nihilistic, believing that my life is meaningless so I might as well extract as much pleasure as I can from it.

However, at least the way I see the world, that belief would be wrong. Life is meaningful because we are here. Every moment is sacred, even the mundane moment right now, as I type on my cracked iPad and write this inane post that no one is going to read.

When you learn to let go and log off— which admittedly is increasingly impossible in a world that steals your attention left and right— you can actually be here. Most of us are in doing mode, thinking and managing our lives through the prism of productivity and getting things done. So few of us are just being.

In the end, the most profound spiritual wisdom I know of is this: there is nothing to do. The world is enough as it is. You are enough as you are. Let go. Be here. It’s all so much more lovely than you realize.

Or to quote one of our great poets, Mary Oliver:

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?