All Stressed Up and Nowhere to Go

". . . I come awake all at once with a start, as if my sleep has been one long falling and I've just landed, smashing, onto the pavement of reality. My insides feel like jelly, wobbly and fragile." - Nancy Thayer in "Between Husbands & Friends."

Day 45. The party is over. The mountains are gone. Ugly, flat Oklahoma surrounds me. I want to go back.

My meditation last night was a parody of "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind." I felt like a zazen newborn, a rookie, a novice. I can meditate in a Nissan, for Buddha's sake! It is so much easier to remain unattached to the status of my meditation when it is gratifying and progressive. New insight, peak experiences, and cosmic oneness lend themselves to much more stimulating blog material. Restless, frustrating, disappointing twenty-minute eternities on a sofa cushion are infinitely harder to write about.

But write about it I will. My sitting last night was cluttered with a have-to list constructed by my ego. Reinforced by job security and my credit rating. After the bliss of my toughest daily decision consisting of which pair of long underwear to don under my ski pants, activities of daily living feel particularly stymieing.

I pride myself in how dedicated I am to simplifying my life. Even if, in all honesty, my original motive was to feel smugly superior to my frenetic, stressed out peers. Of course, this was before my ego had been captured and bound by meditation. I think if I literally needed to chop wood and carry water, I might be okay. Those are concrete, tangible tasks that have some basis in reality. It stuns me at how revved up I can get over hypothetical circumstances. Over tasks that I conjure and police myself. As though I risk receiving a citation issued by myself for negligence or procrastination. It is absurd.

It appears that we all do it though. Experience anxiety, paralysis and self-loathing dished out by some tyrannical inner critic who has internalized a bizarre set of standards and expectations. For women: I must be thin with disproportionately large breasts (regardless of how many babies I have borne), my purse must match my shoes, my nails polished, my children happy and moral (an oftentimes difficult combination), my crown molding dusted, my bathroom fragrant, my social calendar full, my roots match the rest of my hair. A man's list is no less ridiculous: I must be tall, my ______ (car, truck, boat, bike, motorcycle, penis) must be large and powerful, I must always pick up the tab, and somehow I must balance Marlboro Man toughness with the manners of a southern gentleman. For both genders: Large house, landscaped yard, new car, fast laptop, IPhones resplendent with applications, designer clothes, exotic vacations, popular children, empathic therapists, thorough maids, and reliable dry cleaners. Conceal your depression. Hide your despair. Uphold the facade of effortless perfection. Yeah, right.

I was feeling stressed about improvements to my office interior. Apprehensive about the accumulation of e-mail, phone messages, and paper carnage during my absence. Concerned about my man-child entertaining female company while home alone. Dreading the consequences of my untimely submission of the FAFSA form. But after reading over the last paragraph, I'm feeling light and liberated, because none of the things I listed bother me in the least. I have water to drink and my wood is chopped. I'm going to focus on something based in reality. Breathing. Sitting real still. Bowing especially deep before I drop on my cushion.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc