Sometimes my teapot’s spout gets clogged with leaves, causing the tea to pour out slowly. Without fail, I find myself tipping it further in an attempt to increase the speed, but instead, tea just starts seeping out of the top, spilling onto my desk. I try to take that as a reminder to slow down… like, “Dude, slow down. 15 seconds longer for your tea ain’t gonna’ kill you.”

There’s a great piece titled “In Praise of Melancholy” (from a book that comes out tomorrow titled Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy) in The Chronicle Review.  It’s a well-reasoned piece arguing that in all the new agey search for eternal happiness and contentment, our souls are being sucked from us.  The author says that melancholy feelings are often mistaken for depression and that if that’s the case, the feelings should be embraced.  Feelings of sadness, being overwhelmed, and just being “down” are healthy and can often drive the creative urge.  This paragraph sums it up best, I think:

Melancholia pushes against the easy “either/or” of the status quo. It thrives in unexplored middle ground between oppositions, in the “both/and.” It fosters fresh insights into relationships between oppositions, especially that great polarity life and death. It encourages new ways of conceiving and naming the mysterious connections between antinomies. It returns us to innocence, to the ability to play in the potential without being constrained to the actual. Such respites from causality refresh our relationship to the world, grant us beautiful vistas, energize our hearts and our minds

What I like most about Zen is that it doesn’t try to hide melancholy feelings.  It doesn’t encourage you to distance yourself from them.  It makes you see them for what they are and accept them as they come.  No doubt, it’s challenging to do this, as I’m finding to be the case an awful lot recently, but it’s essential in maintaining a life that’s not devoid of feeling but isn’t wallowing in constant sorrow, either.

The world exists as it is all across the spectrum, from extreme sadness to extreme happiness, and we’re doing ourselves a disservice if we run because we’re afraid to be sad.

Sometimes it takes walking into a door to remind yourself to slow down.

Shikanataza means “just sitting.”

I find myself often thinking of that phrase more as, “Ah, I’m not doing much… just sitting… how about you?” when the real intention of the phrase is to show that you’re sitting and only sitting, not doing anything else. So when I think “just sitting” I now emphasize the “just”. Just sitting. Nothing else.

Something I’m often guilty of (as are most people, I suspect) is pushing aside feelings or gut responses to things that we feel aren’t “right” or productive in some way.  If we get angry at somebody or something, we’ll see that and compound the anger by getting angry at the fact we’re letting something stupid get to us.  I find myself pushing anger aside, telling myself, “That’s not worth getting angry over.”

But, you know what?  That doesn’t usually help matters.  Instead, the anger just sits there, not actively being used, but bubbling and morphing into tight muscles, stomach discomfort, and headaches.

What seems to be more beneficial is to acknowledge my feelings or my response to an event, recognizing it for what it is: a thought in my head that causes a physical response in my body which may, in turn, cause me to say or do something that I’ll later regret.  It’s kind of a weird thing the first few times it happens.

When I feel myself starting to get worked up, I stop for just a moment and just let it be.  I don’t push it aside… it’s almost like hitting the pause button on a video.  Everything just kind of sits there, waiting to be examined.  And when you do that, it’s like seeing that emotion in the third person.  “Hey, that guy’s angry.”  And just by stating it, recognizing, ”I’m getting worked up,” the feeling then tends to drop away.  I’ve acknowledged it, it’s not fighting for attention, and I’m able to proceed a bit more reasonably.

Of course, this is sometimes hard to put into practice and may not even be what you want to do in particularly intense situations where your gut responses and emotions may be guiding you towards self-defense, but I’ve found that the majority of my own stress-inducing feelings (anger, fear, guilt) are imagined and based on something I expect is or will be true, when generally it’s just my interpretation of that truth that’s provoking those feelings.

Did that make any sense?  This stuff is hard to write about in a way that doesn’t come across as self-helpy or dripping with new agey-ness.

On the way into work this morning, I was listening to the 43rd episode of the Dharma Podcast and was struck by Beate Stolte-Overtheil’s mention of graffiti near a busy road that read, “This is not traffic.  You are the traffic.”  Coincidentally, I was sitting in traffic at the time (er, I was being traffic at the time).

This simple statement really sums up the idea of taking responsibility for the moment, accepting the role that you play in shaping the way the world is.  We might want to blame the traffic on all those other drivers, but that traffic wouldn’t exist without each individual driver being there, just like a world of violence wouldn’t exist if not for the collaboration of those perpetrating the violence, those remaining silent about the violence, and those benefiting from the violence.

Of course, maybe this graffiti was just making a statement about the environmental impact of cars, but hey, we have us to thank for that, too.

Brad Warner directs us to this interview with David Chadwick (Crooked Cucumber):

Brad points out a section that snapped me to attention (emphasis mine):

And in the interview Chadwick answers a question I always hear, which is how do you get motivated to do Zazen practice. The answer, which Chadwick poses a bit more politely than I’m about to, is fuck motivation, just practice. He compares it to writing, which I can relate to. Any writer knows that if you only write when you’re specifically motivated to do so you won’t produce anything worthwhile. You just gotta sit down and do it. Same with Zazen. You set a time each day for Zazen and you do it then, whether you want to do it or not, whether it feels like you think it should or not. You just get down and do it.

See, I’ve been dealing with this exact thing recently. I’m been looking for motivation not only to sit zazen but to work on the book that I’m writing. Looking for this internal motivation to do whatever needs to be done really has nothing to do with motivation, it’s all about finding an excuse not to do something. The weird thing is, that something can be something you really want to do, but may be avoiding for any number of reasons (”I don’t deserve to spend time doing that,” “I have to deal with _____ first,” fear of failure, etc.).

So, there you go. Just practice. Just write. Just avoid quoting Nike slogans (”Just (get underpaid children in Vietnam to) Do It (for you)”).

(One question about the video, though: what’s with the cheesy set?)

When I was in high school, one of my favorite teachers told us during a poetry class that, “There’s only one reality: this one.”  He went on to explain that there is no such thing as an “alternate reality,” just different perceptions of what actually is.  (Isn’t it funny how every Buddhist discourse seems to use the italicized-”is”?)

This statement struck me at the time and stayed with me.  Here I am, almost 15 years after he said it, still thinking about it.

We exert a lot of energy trying to figure out what we’re missing about reality.  We search different spiritual traditions, a variety  of meditation techniques, a library’s worth of books, trying to figure out what we’re not seeing.  But isn’t this it?  What else is there besides where we are right now?  If we just look at things as they are at the moment, wouldn’t that give us a whole lot more insight into the nature of things?  Of course, it’s usually more difficult to quiet the mind and just observe things as they are than it is to constantly be looking for a new angle at which to observe them.  It’s easy to search, it’s hard to accept.

My penchant for worrying too much about the future is something I’ve come to accept in my life. It’s part of who I am and the best thing I can do is recognize it and try to minimize the effect I let it have on me. As far back as I can remember, I spent entirely too many cycles thinking about some potential future event or conflict to the point where I’ve worried myself into a corner, questioning my own ability to deal with whatever comes up. Maybe that’s why I often avoid change and try to stick with what’s familiar.

I knew that becoming a father would increase my anxiety even more. And, really, it’s what’s been the single hardest thing about parenthood for me so far. It’s not easy wrestling with the constant thoughts swirling around about the huge responsibility I have to make sure that the girl grows up safely in a healthy environment where she’s encouraged to learn, explore, and be herself.

And, oh yeah, it would be nice if she didn’t hate me when she’s a teenager.

I’m sure this is something every parent goes through to some degree. But do these sometimes overwhelming feelings of anxiety ever really dissipate? Is it something you can get past after realizing that, no, you just don’t have control over everything?

A friend of mine told me that new parents spend the first six months worrying about their parenting skills and whether they’re even fit enough to keep the baby alive. But after those first six months pass and you realize, “Wait a second, the baby’s fine…” that it makes it easier to relax and enjoy everything.

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to keep up with my practice. Haven’t done a very good job, but at the very least, I’ve been sitting occasionally and listening to some dharma talks. I particularly found Gil Fronsdal’s talk on fear to be quite helpful in taking a look at anxiety from a different angle. It only makes sense that Buddhism provides some insight on the matter since restlessness/worry/anxiety is one of the Five Hindrances.

Thank goodness my wife’s well grounded. Only one of us can afford to be neurotic (well, one of us plus the dog… she’s developed a fear of her food bowl… but that’s a whole ‘nother story).

(It just struck me how disjointed this entry is… probably because it was written over the course of a week and I just couldn’t decide what to do with it. So, here it is, out of my mind… now, on to the next one.)

Sometimes forgetting about a cup of hot tea until it’s completely cooled off is a good thing.