This month, in the Joy of Living program, the focus is on the body. We move from open meditation to object meditation, with the specific object being the bodily sensations. Mostly my meditation this week has been a body scan starting with the forehead and moving down to the feet. In Tergar, before we move on to more potentially distracting objects like thoughts and emotions, we spend a month with the body.
It's good for me to stay with a structured program for a while. Especially as I work on something as challenging as a book. I know I've felt stuck in this intermediate stage for a while, and sometimes the way out of that is to go back to beginner's mind.
One thing I became very conscious of this week is the effect of charged information on my mind. Last Sunday was the Boston Marathon, and this week has been a manhunt. I found myself, like many people, drawn into the spectacle of seeing this young younger brother, captured. Despite everything he'd done, I felt a tremendous empathy for him. It seemed from his story that he was a dependent younger brother caught in the web of a dominant brother, and a terrible ideology. I couldn't stop clicking the New York Times site. I got into stupid Facebook arguments about whether he should be read his rights in the interest of public safety.
I felt my whole body tense and manic.
Last week I read a very interesting opinion piece about the toxic effects of following the news. It seemed a little extreme at the time, but I'm starting to open my mind to the possibility that he's right. There's not much I can do for this young man, other than hope he escapes the death sentence, and that his story in some way gives us insight into how fanatics are formed. But following this constant flow of factoids make us feel powerless, jumpy, helpless and distracted. News is the information equivalent of sugar. I wonder how much of the depression I struggle with is related to it.
I would probably be just as well informed if I read good magazines and recently published books, and my mind would be clearer.
If I want to write high quality information, I need to consume high quality information. And I need to believe that there is purpose, meaning and wisdom in doing this. I'm not going to feel this way, or believe that this pursuit is meaningful if I spend the rest of my life hooked up to the news machine.
This week I lean into this and keep to a resolution to not to follow this case anymore. And while I'm at it, I'm going to give news a break. I'll read about it eventually in the New Yorker, once the facts and the details emerge. I don't need to be kept abreast of every detail.
And truth is I don't need to be kept abreast of every detail on anything. I can stay informed without being up to the minute. And in that way, I hope, I can stay more in touch with the present moment.
