There is no harmony possible in any arrangement of this dishware collection.There's "zoning-out" - allowing my brain to fall into an equilibrium of silence, like a pendulum seeking the lowest point. The mind sways, slows, then sways again even more slowly. Eventually a muddled silence descends, smothering thought in a cloud of damp cotton.
I'm not a fan of this; It clashes with my ideas about practice. A powerful concept from Buddhism is that "practice is what we do all the time". This means that while you might decide to practice violin two hours a day and get pretty good at it, you are spending the vast majority of your time practicing other things. And you're going to get very good at those things.
Well, I don't want to be particularly good and shutting-down my mind. Yes, this can be of value (see "meditation") but I want to decide when I'm going to practice it - not cultivate a habit of "zoning-out" under arbitrary conditions.
Bowls are my specialty; Begin with a circular massage of the scouring side, followed by a final confirming swipe of the sponge side.Another option is reflection: I certainly have no shortage of things that need to be thought about. Of course that has its own problems, even disregarding the question of "practice". There's the risk of being sucked-down into the quagmire of problems that can seem insurmountable. Before I open that door, I ask myself what can be accomplished.
Is there anything I can conclude through reflection while, scrubbing egg off a skillet?I heard a memorable story about someone with a 4-hour daily work commute. Asked how they managed this without going insane, they answered that when they began the drive they would tell themselves
"Well, we're doing this now..."Sometimes there's just "nothing to be done about it". You detach from the world and become an observer, watching an aging man wash dishes. How long does this scene go on? How long has it been going? The scene stretches an unknown distance into the future. The clock stops ticking.
What if it doesn't end, if I'm never again not washing the dishes? I remember thinking this when I was (once, very briefly) arrested. What if the rest of life, forever, was this? Small rooms crowded with dangerous strangers, never again free to roam the open landscape of people, art, and information that for me make life worth living. At such times, you become keenly aware that almost anything is precious when you can't have it.
And what if this was "it" - the very last chance I had to not be washing dishes? What would I do with it? What should anyone do with their "last chance"?
What is worthy, at the end of a human's contribution to the story of us all, of that last chance?
I guess I should finally write this damned book...
