Small World
For several weeks, I lived in Downtime Abbey. Don't look for the adventure on PBS because the place is too tiny for a camera crew, let alone one rolling camera. It's 650 square feet and some of those feet belong to the storage closet, entry hall and bathroom.
My apartment's lack of that vital Buddhist component, spaciousness, has always irked me. In the beginning, I considered the skimpy place a come-down, a fall from grace because until then I had always lived in splendidly roomy and light surroundings. I was born into a ten-bedroom house, grew up in a four-bedroom one and even my former one-bedroom apartment had 1100 square feet. So these 650 square feet made me claustrophobic.
They also made me feel like an amputee. The place doesn't have much floorspace for guests, and no separate room to house them. I've always had people over to eat, people from away stay a few days. Sharing my place made the world cozy and I loved being a hostess. So this cramped place made me lonely.
I wanted out and was planning a jailbreak when circumstances, including emergency eye surgery, suddenly conspired to keep me in. Literally in for weeks. The retina surgeon told me my coping skills weren't as tested by the surprise operation as they were going to be by the post-op necessity of staying put in one position for seven days, then staying reasonably still for a few more. Major movement was a no no.
I like to think I didn't go to pieces hearing this news, even under the shock of the surgery, because it fitted my finances perfectly. But actually, years of Dharma practice kicked in and kickstarted my mind. I understood I didn't have a choice. Resisting confinement just because I didn't like it was going to make confronting it worse. As the late Trungpa Rinpoche used to say: resistance to not getting what you think you want/deserve just eats up your energy and focus and traps you in negativity. Just relax and go with whatever is happening; it will end well.
Certainly dozens of Maine winters of cabin fever didn't. Snows came and blocked me inside a big house, confining me to frustration and rage that I couldn't get out. At times there wasn't any pressing reason to go out, but I was hopping mad that blizzards prevented me from having the choice. That's all I could focus on: resistance. And it didn't end well. I had to leave the state.
Maybe that experience left me antibodies for supercharged immunity to cabin fever. Or maybe it really is the Dharma working like fast acting yeast. Because I, who nobody would call an optimist, sensed a challenge I wanted to conquer. With a gauntlet thrown down, the competitor in me welled up. I was going to explore, or perhaps exploit, my capacity for limitation because Trungpa Rinpoche also warned that boredom is a form of resistance. It's the most common weapon we use to fight being where we don't want to be, doing what we don't like. I had to avoid being bored if I was going to win this challenge of Survivor! or The Amazing Race, in this case best described by the title of a Sylvia Boorstein book: "Don't Just Do Something, Sit There!"
It helped of course that I could imagine myself in one of the retreat cabins I've frequented, one of those small shabby structures where I start out wondering why the hell I am masochistic enough to imprison myself, then end up not wanting to leave because I feel I have accomplished so much. I am deeply calm and happy. Why would I want to leave and let the world mess that up?
Remembering that inevitable reversal of mood, I kept trying to imagine I was in one of the cabins while I spent the first week lying on my right side tuned into the Me network. I tracked and spotted my thoughts and emotions with the dedication of a bird watcher hoping to embellish her life list. I tried to remember various short meditation exercises and try them to see if I had learned anything after all the years practicing.
I said a lot of mantras and prayers, especially to the Medicine Buddha who I was counting on to cure me. I rooted for myself to keep this devotional attitude and keep the faith because negativity changes your body chemistry and I didn't need dis-ease on top of this.
To keep my spirit up so my body didn't go down to that, I rejoiced in the news that being put on my right side was a blessing. Not just because most post-op retina patients have to stay on their stomach for a week, but also because when the Buddha himself was supine, he was always on his right side.
In that position, I talked on the phone to people all over the country, sometimes long juicy chats, and to a friend in Germany. Once a day I squinted at emails on my iPad from Mongolia, India, Nepal, France and Canada. These miracles of communication made me feel as though I were out and about in the world, not shut-in. And so did the friends who paid short visits and brought food. Sometimes I felt sorry they had to go back into the menacing world while I stayed peacefully cocooned in my retreat cabin.
Keeping myself clean took far more time than normal, much of it devoted to the challenges of how to wash my hair or body without getting my eyes wet. Trust me, taking long hot baths is not a hardship. Trying to contort your head sidewise over the sink to wash your hair with a pot of water becomes a game.
A little more movement let me back into the kitchen where I am always carried away on grand foreign adventures when I try a new recipe. I recommend this as trouble free travel. While making a Palestinian stew I could reheat for days, I mulled over the origin of the recipe: old women stuck in the Gaza Strip remembering the food of their childhood on farms in Palestine. While making a Macedonian bean soup, I challenged myself to figure out where and what exactly Macedonia was/is. I challenged myself to figure out how I could improve upon these dishes.
And then of course I cleaned up. The bedroom where I'd spent so much time sleeping, the kitchen and its appliances, the bathroom, my clothes... . I hate housework but I've learned to do it without damnation because I am a huge believer in people cleaning up their own mess. For one thing, it's cathartic in that you're actually cleaning up your mind while you do it. Especially cleaning your desk and closets. I took to tearing out of the drawers and closet any clothes I wasn't reaching for. That helped with spaciousness.
The other thing about cleaning up after yourself is that it makes you more conscious about the mess you make. That is huge. If people have to confront themselves with a dustbuster, mop and scrubbie, they often clean up their act. Their behavior stops being arrogant, cavalier and hurtful. Just imagine Jamie Dimond having to vacuum, Ted Cruz cleaning the toilet, Timothy Geithner making his own bed to lie (stet) in it.
Two weeks in a small world went faster than five weeks I have spent at some jobs. I can't say they were totally painless. My right shoulder took the brunt of my having to lay on my right side 22 hours a day, and my confinement unfortunately synchronized with the two weeks of San Francisco's Public Radio station incessantly pleading for money ten minutes of every half hour.
Meditating, chatting, cleaning, cooking, listening to the radio, once in a while trying my hand at solitaire and taking a stab at reading a few minutes at the end of the later days ... that was my small world. Yet surprisingly, limitation turned out to be freeing. Maybe because I followed Trungpa Rinpoche's advice and didn't resist, I learned up close and personal I don't need a lot to keep on keeping on, particularly a lot of room(s). I got on with myself quite well in this tiny abode. It seems if your mind is spacious, your surroundings turn out to be as well. You will notice I didn't start out saying I lived in Downtime Abyss.
~Sandy Garson "Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
http://www.sandygarson.com
http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/
Technorati Tags: Yours In The Dharma, Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist, Buddhism, Spirituality, Religion
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
Click here to request Sandy Garson for reprint permission.
Yours In The Dharma 2001-2010, Sandy Garson Copyright 2001-2010 Sandy Garson
My apartment's lack of that vital Buddhist component, spaciousness, has always irked me. In the beginning, I considered the skimpy place a come-down, a fall from grace because until then I had always lived in splendidly roomy and light surroundings. I was born into a ten-bedroom house, grew up in a four-bedroom one and even my former one-bedroom apartment had 1100 square feet. So these 650 square feet made me claustrophobic.
They also made me feel like an amputee. The place doesn't have much floorspace for guests, and no separate room to house them. I've always had people over to eat, people from away stay a few days. Sharing my place made the world cozy and I loved being a hostess. So this cramped place made me lonely.
I wanted out and was planning a jailbreak when circumstances, including emergency eye surgery, suddenly conspired to keep me in. Literally in for weeks. The retina surgeon told me my coping skills weren't as tested by the surprise operation as they were going to be by the post-op necessity of staying put in one position for seven days, then staying reasonably still for a few more. Major movement was a no no.
I like to think I didn't go to pieces hearing this news, even under the shock of the surgery, because it fitted my finances perfectly. But actually, years of Dharma practice kicked in and kickstarted my mind. I understood I didn't have a choice. Resisting confinement just because I didn't like it was going to make confronting it worse. As the late Trungpa Rinpoche used to say: resistance to not getting what you think you want/deserve just eats up your energy and focus and traps you in negativity. Just relax and go with whatever is happening; it will end well.
Certainly dozens of Maine winters of cabin fever didn't. Snows came and blocked me inside a big house, confining me to frustration and rage that I couldn't get out. At times there wasn't any pressing reason to go out, but I was hopping mad that blizzards prevented me from having the choice. That's all I could focus on: resistance. And it didn't end well. I had to leave the state.
Maybe that experience left me antibodies for supercharged immunity to cabin fever. Or maybe it really is the Dharma working like fast acting yeast. Because I, who nobody would call an optimist, sensed a challenge I wanted to conquer. With a gauntlet thrown down, the competitor in me welled up. I was going to explore, or perhaps exploit, my capacity for limitation because Trungpa Rinpoche also warned that boredom is a form of resistance. It's the most common weapon we use to fight being where we don't want to be, doing what we don't like. I had to avoid being bored if I was going to win this challenge of Survivor! or The Amazing Race, in this case best described by the title of a Sylvia Boorstein book: "Don't Just Do Something, Sit There!"
It helped of course that I could imagine myself in one of the retreat cabins I've frequented, one of those small shabby structures where I start out wondering why the hell I am masochistic enough to imprison myself, then end up not wanting to leave because I feel I have accomplished so much. I am deeply calm and happy. Why would I want to leave and let the world mess that up?
Remembering that inevitable reversal of mood, I kept trying to imagine I was in one of the cabins while I spent the first week lying on my right side tuned into the Me network. I tracked and spotted my thoughts and emotions with the dedication of a bird watcher hoping to embellish her life list. I tried to remember various short meditation exercises and try them to see if I had learned anything after all the years practicing.
I said a lot of mantras and prayers, especially to the Medicine Buddha who I was counting on to cure me. I rooted for myself to keep this devotional attitude and keep the faith because negativity changes your body chemistry and I didn't need dis-ease on top of this.
To keep my spirit up so my body didn't go down to that, I rejoiced in the news that being put on my right side was a blessing. Not just because most post-op retina patients have to stay on their stomach for a week, but also because when the Buddha himself was supine, he was always on his right side.
In that position, I talked on the phone to people all over the country, sometimes long juicy chats, and to a friend in Germany. Once a day I squinted at emails on my iPad from Mongolia, India, Nepal, France and Canada. These miracles of communication made me feel as though I were out and about in the world, not shut-in. And so did the friends who paid short visits and brought food. Sometimes I felt sorry they had to go back into the menacing world while I stayed peacefully cocooned in my retreat cabin.
Keeping myself clean took far more time than normal, much of it devoted to the challenges of how to wash my hair or body without getting my eyes wet. Trust me, taking long hot baths is not a hardship. Trying to contort your head sidewise over the sink to wash your hair with a pot of water becomes a game.
A little more movement let me back into the kitchen where I am always carried away on grand foreign adventures when I try a new recipe. I recommend this as trouble free travel. While making a Palestinian stew I could reheat for days, I mulled over the origin of the recipe: old women stuck in the Gaza Strip remembering the food of their childhood on farms in Palestine. While making a Macedonian bean soup, I challenged myself to figure out where and what exactly Macedonia was/is. I challenged myself to figure out how I could improve upon these dishes.
And then of course I cleaned up. The bedroom where I'd spent so much time sleeping, the kitchen and its appliances, the bathroom, my clothes... . I hate housework but I've learned to do it without damnation because I am a huge believer in people cleaning up their own mess. For one thing, it's cathartic in that you're actually cleaning up your mind while you do it. Especially cleaning your desk and closets. I took to tearing out of the drawers and closet any clothes I wasn't reaching for. That helped with spaciousness.
The other thing about cleaning up after yourself is that it makes you more conscious about the mess you make. That is huge. If people have to confront themselves with a dustbuster, mop and scrubbie, they often clean up their act. Their behavior stops being arrogant, cavalier and hurtful. Just imagine Jamie Dimond having to vacuum, Ted Cruz cleaning the toilet, Timothy Geithner making his own bed to lie (stet) in it.
Two weeks in a small world went faster than five weeks I have spent at some jobs. I can't say they were totally painless. My right shoulder took the brunt of my having to lay on my right side 22 hours a day, and my confinement unfortunately synchronized with the two weeks of San Francisco's Public Radio station incessantly pleading for money ten minutes of every half hour.
Meditating, chatting, cleaning, cooking, listening to the radio, once in a while trying my hand at solitaire and taking a stab at reading a few minutes at the end of the later days ... that was my small world. Yet surprisingly, limitation turned out to be freeing. Maybe because I followed Trungpa Rinpoche's advice and didn't resist, I learned up close and personal I don't need a lot to keep on keeping on, particularly a lot of room(s). I got on with myself quite well in this tiny abode. It seems if your mind is spacious, your surroundings turn out to be as well. You will notice I didn't start out saying I lived in Downtime Abyss.
~Sandy Garson "Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
http://www.sandygarson.com
http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/
Technorati Tags: Yours In The Dharma, Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist, Buddhism, Spirituality, Religion
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.Click here to request Sandy Garson for reprint permission.
posted by Sandy Garson @ 5:44 PM
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