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we can't stand to see change. That's what the Buddhists mean by the suffering we experience when we refuse to accept impermanence in our lives. |
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Watching our capital change from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, month to month is a minidrama representative of the other kinds of changes that take place in our lives. There is nothing quite like having made a healthy profit on paper, enjoying it, fantasizing how you will spend itand then watching it abruptly evaporate in a violent sell-offto bring home the notion of impermanence, is there? It can send us into a disorienting spin and tangle our stomachs into knots. So, the Zen master might ask, "Ah yes, how you find your Buddha nature in time of sell-off panic?" |
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Recall from our earlier discussion the concept of slouching toward the future. It is when we feel we must respond to the quotesthat is, we must use them to hurry and execute a tradethat they are going to be tinged with the anxiety of moving us forward in time. And, as we said, it is the perception of our leaning into the future that creates the tension that we feel. |
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When there is no demand to do anything and we can just sit back and calmly observe the quotes coming and going, it is then that we have the chance to use them as a way to melt into the present without the urgency to do anything. The quotes are what they arejust flickering numbersnothing more. They lose the quality of anxiety we attach to them when we take them to mean our changing financial condition. |
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So, our task is to learn how to sink so deeply into the present moment that we refuse to let the tendency to feel the tension between the now moment and the next, upcoming moment, be filled with leaning. If you are going to spend much time watching updating quotes, you might as well derive some benefit besides just the information of prices, volume, time, and sales. Play with the real-time process and see what you can learn about yourself from it. But be sure to try it when you feel absolutely no interest in or urgency to do any trading. It is at these times that it is most easy to let go of the tension of leaning. |
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Gaining Perspective on Money |
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If you hang around day traders at all, one of the things you hear them echo is that losing money in the market is a "good thing." When I went to the first international day trading conference, which happened to |
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