Slow Learner

“Unrest of spirit is a mark of life.”

           -- Karl Menninger

Recently one of my coworkers commented that I had been carrying around a book on Zen for too long not to have finished it by now. It made me realize how dense the content is. How I can read a page or two, and then spend weeks digesting the content. Almost like a cow chewing cud, I may have to process the same material several times before it becomes integrated into my life. It’s taken me over a year to make it through the first chapter on the importance of clean, open space -- on the importance of getting rid of unnecessary possessions and clutter. Sometimes friends will unknowingly tell me the same lesson and set me back on a course towards the forgotten goal. It’s a slow process. It’s like trying to run through mud.

Another area I have been focused on is how certain sensations can derail my mood for a day. I do not mean easily identifiable mental feelings like anger or jealously. I mean something nebulous and more physical. Drinking too much coffee is a way to generate something similar to what I am talking about – it creates a churning in the stomach, jitteriness and anxiety, and an overall sense of uneasiness. Often I will not know the origin of these sensations but they certainly effect my mood. In a desire to not ignore my feelings, I tend to think of what could have caused these things, using the sensation as signals that something may be awry and emotionally unaddressed.

Knowing that others have probably thought about this issue, I reached out to one of my Buddhist mentors who offered the simple advice that things just are, and that there isn’t a way that they should be. We had a short phone call that lasted less than 10 minutes. This would be another slowly digested nugget.  

 I often buy into the idea that if I am mindful, kind and meet all my basic biological needs (sleep, food, shelter, mental rest) that I will be content. This obviously isn’t the case. Sometimes I will have weird feelings and sensations. It’s no different than experiencing physical pain. It just is. Things will go wrong.

Accepting the reality of my situation, while obvious, wasn’t something I’d considered. My goal was to change it to something else. I WANTED to feel good. As with most lessons in Buddhism, problems tend to arise when attachments form – when I say that things “should” be a certain way. This was no exception.

The past week has been interesting as I notice these feelings and then my immediate desire to label them as bad. From there I see how I start plotting how I can change them. It will take a while to just accept them for what they are -- passing sensations.