Part of Paul’s homework for class last week was to think about one of the five faculties that were discussed in the article and try to put it into practice. On Thursday morning, I tried to put mindfulness into practice. As I was walking to school that morning, I thought to myself, “I’m tired.” And then I tried to put mindfulness into practice by stepping back and trying to just observe tired, not judge it as positive or negative. I observed it: eyes at half mast, muscles hanging, body heavy to carry.
“Wait,” I thought. “How can this be observed as anything but negative? I mean, c’mon, tired is tired is tired.” So then I thought, “Okay, at least be aware of tired. Acknowledge that you are tired and try to respond to it instead of reacting to it.” So I thought about how I might be shorter with the kids today and that I should be aware of that and try to be more patient. But then I thought, “Wait, now it sounds like I really am judging ‘tired.’ Who knows? Maybe being sleep deprived will mean that I’m more mellow with the kids, less worried. I should just see how the day goes instead of deciding what’s going to happen just because I’m tired.”
In class that night, I asked Paul about this: “How can I observe tired without judgment? It’s inherently negative.”
“Is it?” he asked (or suggested something to that effect). Then he asked me to describe what I was feeling, which I did. Then he suggested that “tired” was a mental construct that I had created. Then he said he had some koans.
“Koans?!” I thought. “I did your homework. I struggled with it and am asking for help and you are giving me koans? And you expect me to accept that tired is a mental construct? This is ridiculous. What kind of teacher are you? Why aren’t you helping me with this? You know the answer yet you’re giving me koans?”
In hindsight I realize that, pretty much, when you ask the ABBOT of the ZEN center for help, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get a koan. At the time, though, I was feeling kind of hurt and ignored by this response so I just sat back, and listened to the darn koans.
Forgive my paraphrasing…
The first koan was about hot and cold. A monk basically says, “Hot is so hot! Cold is so cold! How do we avoid these things?” The other monk says, “Go where there is no hot and no cold.” The first monk asks, “Where’s that?” The other monk says, “When cold, let it be so cold that it kills you; when hot, let it be so hot that it kills you.”
“Great,” I thought. “So I’m supposed to embrace my suffering again. I’m supposed to be so tired that it kills me.” Earlier that night, I had been feeling rejected and felt pretty alone and isolated so then I thought, “And I’m supposed to feel this too- really feel rejection and isolation. Thanks for the advice Paul.”
He went on the next koan: Every Day is a Good Day. This one is harder for me to paraphrase but if I remember correctly, it was about not focusing on what has happened before, but just to proceed forward, from this very point.
I wasn’t too happy about this one either. I’m supposed to just ignore all that’s brought me here? I’m just going to deny all the stuff that I’ve been given and learned to cope with, just let that all go? Just move right on forward, yeah right!
And then the third one took the cake. It was called Proceed On from the Top of the Pole. It was similar to the second one in that it asked you to go forward from where you are but it also was suggesting that it’s not enough to just be on the top of that pole, you had to get off that pole.
“Great,” I thought. “Now you want me to jump off a 150 foot pole into nothingness,” and I freaked out, like I had before with the whole fence post thing. I thought, “How can you ask me to give up everything that supports me? How can you ask me to give up stability and constancy and my self, the one thing that never leaves me, that, for good or for bad, I can at least rely on to be there.
And then Paul talked about climbing the stairs to an Emerald tower, only to realize when you got there that there was no emerald tower. And I thought, “Damn! There is no pole. Even these things that I’m afraid to let go of, that I think give me stability, even they aren’t real. I don’t have to jump off that pole, I’m not even on that pole.”
And that’s when I came undone. “Forget it,” I said. “I don’t need to do this. I only came here because I wanted to help my students. I’m only doing this so I don’t yell at them and so that I can learn about what goes on here that makes me feel good so that I can make them feel good. I didn’t come here to reconceptualize the universe. This is too much and I’m done.”
I gleefully imagined dropping out. I pictured myself shopping. I pictured myself daydreaming, fantasizing, walking down the street with absolutely no awareness of my breath, totally distracted by my thoughts and impulses. How lovely it would be to be part of the world again…
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