%20copy.png)
It’s not easy to achieve this dwelling place within ourselves,
this felt sense of presence when it feels like everything about our social fabric and the demands of our day-to-day experience conspire against it. How reactive we are, how preoccupied with the past and the future, how distracted and resistant to the here and now. At our worst we have no dwelling place – no home. Our simulated sense of peace is usually found in distraction.
(I have to acknowledge before I go on that there are those among us who don’t have the basic needs of adequate food and physical shelter, so the pursuit of an inner dwelling is, to some degree, a benefit of the privilege of being safe and secure in the basic needs of life.)
By the way, I’m speaking from personal experience when it comes to this mindlessness affliction.
People often send me lovely email reflections on their experience of reading UNBOXED. I’m really grateful for that, but it’s not unusual that I do the read-them,-resolve-to-respond-later,-then-allow-them-to-disappear-into-the-stream-of-my-inbox routine.
Then some time later I get a “did you get my email?” – most recently from my oldest friend. We’ve known each other since elementary school and in high school played together in a rock band. Anyway, in response to my words of apology he wrote back: “Don’t beat yourself up, just accept that you’re no good.” 🙂 Jeez. Other readers are much more polite but you get the point.
I notice my first go-to is to blame it on being busy. Then I do beat myself up a bit for my distraction and mindlessness and the need to slow down …
I could go on about the pressures we feel, as could you probably. But instead of dwelling on the challenges of life, I’ll touch today on a couple of practices that are important in the pursuit of a personal inner dwelling. I hope you’ll read on.
When meditation, yoga or the simply the pursuit of presence discussed, the breath is normally mentioned as an indispensable practice tool. It is an ideal object of attention to calm the mind. And if we learn to understand it more deeply, the simple act of breathing can be an experience of awe and wonder.
To explain what I mean, I’ll turn to two masters of the meditation. They say it much better than I ever could.
The first is Stephen Bachelor.
His most well-known book is Buddhism Without Beliefs. This excerpt is from one of his talks on inner dwelling:
The breath refers to something that is constitutive of our very existence on this earth. In that sense it is associated with the sacred or divine … the breath brings us into an awareness of no boundaries – the fact that our experience is without boundaries and the breath brings us into that awareness. We might start by thinking of the breath as a bellows action in the lungs, but the more we pay attention to it we come to realize that is is the primary relationship to the environment we inhabit. Breath is only possible because of photosynthesis – the plants that generate the oxygen we need to live. In breathing we are participating in the life of the biosphere in which we are totally and utterly embedded.
The Sinhalese monk Henepola Gunaratana writes the following in his book Mindfulness in Plain English
Breath is a phenomenon common to all living things. A true experiential understanding of the process moves you closer to other living beings. It shows you your inherent connectedness with all of life. Finally, breathing is a present time process. By that we mean it is always occurring in the here-and-now. We don’t normally live in the present, of course. We spend most of our time caught up in memories of the past or looking ahead to the future, full of worries and plans. The breath has none of that “other-timeness”. When we truly observe the breath, we are automatically placed in the present. We are pulled out of the morass of mental images and into a bare experience of the here-and-now. In this sense, breath is a living slice of reality. A mindful observation of such a miniature model of life itself leads to insights that are broadly applicable to the rest of your experience.
Connection with the breath can be accomplished simply by shifting your attention to it whenever you think of it – wherever you are, whatever you’re doing. Don’t change it, just observe. You’ll learn a lot about yourself that way. I’ll write more about that another time.
II. SELF-CARE: FINDING A BALANCE
Self-care is often described as what is really self-pampering. The bubble-bath or binge TV watching can be okay as far as it goes but self-care also means that the ordinary activities of our days can be accomplished with care, mindfulness and creativity.
If we can develop the skill of self-care deeply enough we make what appears (and sometimes feels) insignificant and mere drudgery much more far-reaching in their effects than we can imagine is possible.
Some wise words come to mind as I’m writing this:
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. (Annie Dillard)
Freedom is not doing what you want, freedom is wanting to do what you have to do … this kind of freedom is always rooted in practised habit. (Northrop Frye)
So, rather than regarding self-care as merely losing oneself in the pursuit of distraction through mindless mood-altering or socializing we might better care for our selves through practised habits of accomplishing those things that are sometimes challenging and have to be done.
Of course there needs to be a balance. Self-care is also about time well-wasted enjoying the company of people we love and the things we love to do.