I'm back from four days travelling through Newfoundland, a bucket list experience. Such a beautiful, friendly, magic experience. One day I will go back.
I was there teaching computational thinking and again I am struck with how much of it is there in meditation. We decompose this massive, overwhelming mind into its tiny component actions, breathing, noticing, feeling. We see and look for and create patterns. We develop routines. We apply logic and conditions. Mingyur Rinpoche has said that compassion is like the technology with which we use the energy released by calming the mind. In six weeks, I head off to 10 days of Vipassana. S.N. Goenka also believed that meditation was a technology, a tool, for optimizing the mind.
This week in my course on the paramitas, I am looking at joyful effort. My practice is, of course, cleaning.
MR says that the essence of joyful effort is motivation, inspiration and meaning. But I have tried so often in my life to motivate myself to maintain a tidy, clean home. What I've been trying in recent months is compassion, not just for myself, or Ben, but for anyone who is struggling to motivate themselves to do the routine work. I think of how trapped they feel in their shame, and faint hearedtness. I think of how overwhelmed they are and I dedicate a short period of cleaning to them. I don't know these people, but of course I know what they feel, because I feel it myself. I know how hard it is for them to stay dedicated to this.
Once I've done some practice, I want to take the time to sit with it and assimilate it. Be so happy that I am connected with basic goodness, know how precious this ability to motivate myself is.
Sunday, July 29, 2018
Sunday, July 8, 2018
Clean bot
Here is something that I wrote a few weeks ago, but didn't publish:
Don't meditate. Don't get lost.
These are the words that now ring through every practice. Whenever I find myself getting caught up in obsession, or even pleasure, the feeling of purification, and all the cool and new sensations that a renewed commitment to practice brings, I hear these words. I want to surf, not get caught up in a wave.
I need to meditate on the desire for purification. Wanting purification isn't enough. I need to be committed to it, and I'm not. I look around at the chaos and dirt in my house, and I know that whatever I've achieved after a decade of meditation, I'm not pure. Or I certainly don't feel pure.
And yet I want it so much. I really want to feel the joy that others feel in putting effort into their environment. I want to feel that basic goodness that we connect to every time we wash a dish, or pick up clothes, put out the garbage, fold laundry.
This is meditation too.
Perhaps the place to start is compassion for anyone who is in the same situation, and to be ready to receive wisdom from anyone who has ever been there. To look at my fellow slobs and fellow ex-slobs as my spiritual companions. To appreciate anyone who has ever helped to be clean or inspired me to be clean.
This week I am working with patience. Mingyur Rinpoche says that the essence of patience is openesse, flexibility and resilience. I have to learn to be patience with my impatience, with my poor habits, with the consequences of my poor habits. These will not be unlearned in a day, maybe even my lifetime.
I'm going to meditate for 30 minutes on whatever energy it is I'm struggling with right now when I think of my environment. I will sit with the question, what can I do to really change this situation that creates so much suffering in my life? I will return with the best answer I can come up with.
30 minutes later.
I think the single most impactful habit I can cultivate is my bot vaccuming every evening at 8 p.m.
First because I can automate the decision. If I leave it up to myself to trigger. it's a little harder. But today I can commit to cleaning the kitchen floor so that at 8 p.m. everything is ready for the robo cleaning. Then I'm likely to keep this going for the next few weeks. I can add 15 minutes of joyful effort to it. The sound of the bot can be the thing that gets me started in the evening, and before long, the place will be cleaner. I'll experience the consequences of clean and want to maintain them.
I will treat my cleaning bot like a meditation gong.
Let's see what happens.
Don't meditate. Don't get lost.
These are the words that now ring through every practice. Whenever I find myself getting caught up in obsession, or even pleasure, the feeling of purification, and all the cool and new sensations that a renewed commitment to practice brings, I hear these words. I want to surf, not get caught up in a wave.
I need to meditate on the desire for purification. Wanting purification isn't enough. I need to be committed to it, and I'm not. I look around at the chaos and dirt in my house, and I know that whatever I've achieved after a decade of meditation, I'm not pure. Or I certainly don't feel pure.
And yet I want it so much. I really want to feel the joy that others feel in putting effort into their environment. I want to feel that basic goodness that we connect to every time we wash a dish, or pick up clothes, put out the garbage, fold laundry.
This is meditation too.
Perhaps the place to start is compassion for anyone who is in the same situation, and to be ready to receive wisdom from anyone who has ever been there. To look at my fellow slobs and fellow ex-slobs as my spiritual companions. To appreciate anyone who has ever helped to be clean or inspired me to be clean.
This week I am working with patience. Mingyur Rinpoche says that the essence of patience is openesse, flexibility and resilience. I have to learn to be patience with my impatience, with my poor habits, with the consequences of my poor habits. These will not be unlearned in a day, maybe even my lifetime.
I'm going to meditate for 30 minutes on whatever energy it is I'm struggling with right now when I think of my environment. I will sit with the question, what can I do to really change this situation that creates so much suffering in my life? I will return with the best answer I can come up with.
30 minutes later.
I think the single most impactful habit I can cultivate is my bot vaccuming every evening at 8 p.m.
First because I can automate the decision. If I leave it up to myself to trigger. it's a little harder. But today I can commit to cleaning the kitchen floor so that at 8 p.m. everything is ready for the robo cleaning. Then I'm likely to keep this going for the next few weeks. I can add 15 minutes of joyful effort to it. The sound of the bot can be the thing that gets me started in the evening, and before long, the place will be cleaner. I'll experience the consequences of clean and want to maintain them.
I will treat my cleaning bot like a meditation gong.
Let's see what happens.
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