Empty Containers

"It's okay, baby, I'll hang up the laundry. No writing is coming out of my fingers so I might as well use them on something." - Me, just now.

Day 77. Yeah, yeah, yeah! I love typing seven's. Clearly, I am unabashed at revealing my Number Neurosis. Hell, it's been 77 days! If anyone is actually reading this, I'm considering us a long term relationship!

I realize that the above quote is casual and out of context. But I'm trying to write from Wild Mind, and when that came out of my mouth (about 125 seconds ago) it was so bare and truthful that I decided to capture it. After all, the blank white blog box was staring me in the face.

I am struggling with brutal, demoralizing, all encompassing fatigue. We blasted into the spring training season like a bunch of over rested zealots, and it caught up with me. It's hard to be temperate when we are riding so well. I'm off the Middle Path! I could saunter right down it if, like the guys on the Tour, all I did was ride bikes, ingest enormous amounts of food, and lay around while my masseuse soothes and salves my muscles. Unfortunately, secondary tasks like parenting and preparing meals and washing clothes and practicing psychology circle like sharks, taking gaping bites of me. Balance! I need balance!

A client mentioned something today that has stayed with me, though my thoughts about it are only half formed. She referenced an idea about needing "bigger containers" within ourselves. My associations have gone way beyond the concept in the therapy session, but the phrase "bigger containers" has lingered in my consciousness. I think it must be cerebrally juxtaposed upon the Buddhist idea of "Big Mind."

Obviously, the quantity and sources of stimuli our brains and hearts must process has exponentially increased in the last couple of decades. The information highway went autobahn sometime in the 90's. Even with impressive effort at simplifying life, we can't avoid being exposed to more than our psyches can optimally manage. Thus, we're left with the necessity of "containing" more. It is difficult to be diligent gate keepers of the sensory assault that bombards us every day. Like an undetected radiation leak, we absorb lethal matter that remains largely outside of our awareness. It is hard to protect ourselves against what we don't see or know.

It just occurred to me that "Big Mind" may be the opposite of "big containers." Big Mind doesn't try to contain. It allows and accepts and refrains from attachment, so there is nothing that needs to be contained. The idea is forming in my mind more completely now. I am grappling with the recognition of how much more comes at us and gets in us now. Like it or not, our interconnectedness necessitates contact with people of different colors, religions, belief systems, values, sexual orientations, life experiences. We are reminded of prolific suffering at a global level as well as within our own skin. If we are drawing breath, there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Like the Buddha before his enlightenment, we are out among the masses, bearing witness to a vast quantity and variety of suffering. Thankfully, we also have the opportunity to observe tremendous acts of kindness, compassion, and generosity.

I'm concluding that we don't need bigger containers; there is far too much to contain. If we try to hold on to it all, we'll be filled to capacity. And if we are filled up, what then? Where is room for growth? For new experience? For evidence to the contrary? For change? For release and renewal and evolution?

I am opting for emptiness. Acceptance, detachment, and letting go. Tending an infinite space within my Non-Self that lies at the ready, so that Reality can find its way to me without twisting and contorting itself. Like my breath, experience can then move calmly in and out . . . in and out. I will always have room for what comes next.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc