This past summer while I was visiting friends in Boston, I practiced being present. I was present with friends, present with myself, and tried to be present to everything around me. One afternoon I was on the T, traveling back to my friend’s house after seeing a movie in downtown Boston. I noticed all the people, the diversity, the little kids, and then we went through a tunnel. I tried to be present for the tunnel. I looked out the window, it was totally dark, there was no graffiti, no change in light, just concrete. I thought, “Wait, am I really supposed to be present for this? Is this helping me to wake up, to be enlightened?” It made me wonder about the point of being present when there isn’t that much to see.
This past weekend I was cooking. I had the radio on and was somewhat occupied in following the recipe but thoughts kept popping up. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m exceptionally adept at delusions. Delusions have been getting me in to trouble lately and so I’ve been trying really hard to refuse their invitation to dance but man were they persistent. And then I remembered what the people do in the kitchen at the zen center: they’re present. They’re present when they chop carrots, when they do dishes, they don’t chat, they just pay attention to what’s in front of them. So I started looking at the water as it washed over my thumb and the spoon and then a delusion flashed its pretty dress at me. “Focus!” I thought, and brought my thoughts back to the spoon and the water. And I did, for a little while, then drifted away again and the delusion popped up again. “Oh,” I thought. “When my mind is present to the things in front of me, there’s kind of less room for delusion to squeeze in.” I really have no idea if that’s why we’re supposed to be present for mundane things like chopping carrots and going through tunnels but for now, it's working.
No comments:
Post a Comment