practice mindfulness

Lots and lots of fear.

My favorite meditation author, Charlotte Joko Beck, talks about two choices when it comes to fear:

(1) Remaining in the “bottleneck of fear,” where we will be slowly strangled to death.

(2) Slowly (and often with difficulty and discouragement) gaining comprehension by experiencing the “bottleneck of fear” and going through it.

She writes that, in the end, when we choose option #2, we discover that the false fear (and most of it is false) is composed of our illusory thoughts and the accompanying bodily tension.

::Deep breath.::

Time to avoid avoidance, resist resistance, and start to work on the very goals that I don’t feel like working on this afternoon (i.e., the ones I fear the most).

Like my challenge goal of filing my taxes.

When I finally climbed into bed late last night (or early this morning), I picked up this book from my bedside table, and it fell open to the chapter titled “Running in Place.” It’s a short chapter, but full of things that seemed very relevant last night, and still do today.

The author writes that “Running in Place” means experiencing our lives directly, being present as we are, right here and right now, instead of dreaming about how our lives might be if we did this, or had that. She asks:

What is there in our life right now that we don’t want to run in place with? Whatever is repetitive or dull or painful or miserable: we don’t want to run in place with that. No indeed!...It is frightening to run in place. A major component of practice is to realize how this fear and unwillingness dominates us.

According to the author, moving beyond that fear and unwillingness requires staying in place, until through patient and persistent practice, we learn to observe and become conscious of “the ego barriers of our life: the thoughts, the emotions, the evasions, the manipulations”, and then learn to return our attention, again and again, to “the direct experience of whatever the scenery of our life is at any moment as we run in place. Is it simple? Yes. Is it easy? No.”

So, back to running in place with my daily goals, continuing to practice, right here, right now.

When I was getting ready yesterday for my big challenge goal of having more people over, I was thinking of the phrase “This is it.” I remembered a cartoon about this phrase, and found it yesterday here. In this cartoon, two monks are sitting side by side, and the older one says to the younger one, “Nothing happens next. This is it.”

It’s sort of like the Buddhist saying that “everything is perfect as it is.” When I’m anxious about getting ready for guests to come, “This is it.” When I’m nervous/excited that the guests are arriving, “This is it.” When I’m happy that everyone is sitting together eating and talking in my living room, “This is it.” When I’m worrying that the chair that one of my guests is sitting in will fall apart, or that there aren’t enough places for people to set down their plates and glasses, “This is it.” When I am gratified that my guests are complimenting me, “This is it.” When I’m exhausted after they’ve all left, “This is it.” When I’m relaxing this morning and playing on the internet, “This is it.” When I’m uncertain about what to do with the rest of the today, “This is it.” It is being the anxious Buddha, the nervous/excited Buddha, the happy Buddha, the worrying Buddha, the gratified Buddha, the exhausted Buddha, the relaxing Buddha, the uncertain Buddha. Charlotte Joko Beck writes that “Real spirituality is just being with all that. If we can really be with Buddha, who we are, then it transforms”. (“Everyday Zen, page 13.)

As I was searching for the cartoon, I came across an essay called “This is it” by Alan Watts. I’ve only read the beginning, where he writes:

The central core of the experience seems to be the conviction, or insight, that the immediate now, whatever its nature, is the goal and fulfillment of all living…the immediate now is complete even when it is not ecstatic. For ecstasy is a necessarily impermanent contrast in the constant fluctuation of our feelings. But insight, when clear enough, persists; having once understood a particular skill, the facility tends to remain.

^{—Alan Watts, This is it.}

...to something I heard about this morning on the radio. Jon Kabat-Zinn, an author who was instrumental in teaching me about mindfulness, is being interviewed on one of my favorite shows, Krista Tippett’s Speaking of Faith. The program will be aired twice tomorrow on the Georgia public radio channel, and I can also listen and read more here.

A student said to Master Ichu, “Please write for me something of great wisdom.”

Master Ichu picked up his brush and wrote one word: “Attention.”

The student said, “Is that all?”

The master wrote, “Attention. Attention.”

The student became irritable. “That doesn’t seem profound or subtle to me.”

In response, Master Ichu wrote simply, “Attention, attention, attention.”

In frustration, the student demanded, “What does this word attention mean?”

Master Ichu replied, “Attention means attention.”

^{quoted in Nothing Special, Living Zen by Charlotte Joko Beck}

...that has helped me in the past. It’s called a “constructive living journal”, and I first read about it in Thirsty Swimming in the Lake by David K. Reynolds. It’s a journal with two columns. The left-hand column records my thoughts and feelings, and the right-hand column records my actions. It seemed to help me be more mindful as I was attempting to clean my house today.

...from a random 43-T goal screen this morning:

“You can observe a lot by watching.”
- Yogi Berra (Yankee Hall of Famer)

I’ve been having anxiety dreams lately. Sunday morning it was TWO dreams about some college class that I was going to have to drop because I was so far behind. This morning it was some kind of database query that needed to be made but I didn’t understand how to make it.

I used to have these kinds of dreams all the time while I was working full-time and feeling stressed. Haven’t been aware of my dreaming much for a long time, but I had noticed that I’m feeling more stressed lately, even before I dreamed these last few dreams.

Last time I wrote an entry under this goal, practicing mindfulness sounded inspiring. It promised to offer bliss of growth, splendor of action, and glory of power.

But today, cleaning off my messy desk or sorting through my Christmas stuff seems about as far from growth, splendor, or glory as I could possibly imagine.

And yet, this is my life today, my very life of life. A messy desk, filled with undone and unfiled and un-needed papers, and a couple of half-unpacked cartons of old Christmas stuff filled with memories of the past and fantasies of chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Attention to be paid, decisions to be made, actions to be taken, right here, right now.

Can I look well to this day today, right here, right now?

This inspiring meditation on mindfulness:

Look to this day,
For it is life,
The very life of life.
In its brief course lie all
The realities and verities of existence,
The bliss of growth,
The splendor of action,
The glory of power—

For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today, well lived,
Makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day.

Sanskrit proverb by Kalidasa, Indian poet and playwright, Fourth century AD