Category Archives: failure

Abject Failure, Desire, and Compassion

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I’m pro­cras­ti­nat­ing right now. I’m pro­cras­ti­nat­ing, I think, because report­ing fail­ure is never that cheery a prospect. And my “month of desire” — to analyse, work with and per­haps help myself over­come my grasp­ing at food, at con­sumer good, at any­thing — failed.

Not only did it fail, but it failed quite spec­tac­u­larly, with me overeat­ing like a par­tic­u­larly hun­gry ghost, and even giv­ing up med­i­ta­tion for a cou­ple of weeks.

And this is where I would prob­a­bly, in the past, have given up. And sunk back into despair.

But not this time. I have, instead, bought a cou­ple of par­tic­u­larly good-looking books on overeat­ing. I’ve also bought and have been lis­ten­ing to (I bought the audio ver­sion) Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen, to get some inspiration.

(Don’t fear, gen­tle reader, I know Zen is not about read­ing books. To para­phrase the emi­nent Mer­lin Mann, read­ing a book about Zen is like buy­ing a chair about jog­ging. But I’m hop­ing to find some point­ers in the right direc­tion, at least.)

And I plan on pick­ing myself up after this fail­ure, and get­ting back on with things. Because I think that this fail­ure may be part of the process. I’m def­i­nitely feel­ing dif­fer­ent things as a result even of fail­ing to let go of my desires. And I’ve been more emo­tional recently, which I think is a good sign of change.

So, I’m going to read these books, and try to get to the bot­tom of my desires, and specif­i­cally my prob­lems with overeat­ing and other addic­tions. Partly I’m going to try it through thought, and partly I’m going to med­i­tate. Because sim­ple daily med­i­ta­tion did seem to be tak­ing me in a good direc­tion in my life, and I don’t want to lose that.

The first thing I’ve found to use as inspi­ra­tion are these words from Zen mas­ter Hiakajo, quoted by Alan Watts:

“When hun­gry, eat, when tired, sleep”

That’s a def­i­n­i­tion of Zen. And it’s two areas I’ve been hav­ing such a prob­lem with all my life — for decades, at least — that it really hit home when I heard it. It sounds so sim­ple. And yet it feels so, so dif­fi­cult to do, for me. Even the sleep­ing, but espe­cially the eating.

But I’m going to bear those words in mine. And start­ing tomor­row (I’m too tired today, and it’s gone 10pm, so I’m going to head for bed right now) I’m back on the med­i­ta­tion, and I’m going to focus on sim­ple eat­ing and sleep­ing, and get­ting them right. Because I think those two key areas could specif­i­cally help me lead a more mind­ful life than any­thing else I can think of.

See you tomorrow.

Food and Failure

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I seem to be fail­ing an awful lot recently. I have at least been med­i­tat­ing for the last few days, though the ses­sions have seemed quite long — often a sign that I’m not prop­erly being present. Hmm.

The main thing I’m fail­ing at is eat­ing. Or rather, I’m suc­ceed­ing at eat­ing rather too well. Though I’ve been try­ing to make myself analyse the addic­tive desire I feel for food, at most I’ve man­aged a few min­utes here and there, and then eaten. And it’s not been good food this week, either. It’s all carbs and fat. I can’t remem­ber the last time I ate an actual vegetable.

All of which makes me sad. I want, intel­lec­tu­ally, to analyse the cling­ing that’s going on, to try to fig­ure out why I want to eat so much when I’m really not in the least bit hun­gry. But the will just doesn’t seem to be there. It’s like I’m two dif­fer­ent peo­ple, and the one who wants to eat crisps is the one that always wins.

Sigh.

Well, let’s try again tomor­row, and see what hap­pens. Fail­ure isn’t a ter­ri­ble thing, but I feel like I’m strug­gling to learn from this fail­ure, which means I’m not mak­ing any decent progress.

Yesterday’s Failures

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After yesterday’s suc­cess, being mind­ful of my desire to pick up my phone and dis­tract myself, came yesterday’s many fail­ures. I ate too much, with­out being mind­ful of that, and then, yes­ter­day evening, I didn’t meditate.

The first half of my evening was good — hav­ing din­ner, read­ing a book (William Gibson’s Zero His­tory is excel­lent, by the way) qui­etly and with concentration.

But then I got dis­tracted by other things, desires, the inter­net, what­ever. The point is that it got to about twenty min­utes to mid­night and I hadn’t meditated.

Pre­vi­ously, in this sit­u­a­tion, I’d try to retrieve a bad sit­u­a­tion by med­i­tat­ing even that late. But it struck me last night that that was just a cur­sory way for me to pre­tend I’d not failed. I knew sit­ting in med­i­ta­tion for twenty min­utes before mid­night at the end of a long day would almost cer­tainly just mean me sit­ting on a zafu falling asleep and not learn­ing any­thing about myself. That’s always been the case when it’s hap­pened before.

So, instead, I decided to admit my fail­ure, make the best of it, and go to bed. Now, this morn­ing, I’m deal­ing with that fail­ure, rather than, per­haps, being a lit­tle dis­hon­est with myself and blog­ging about a par­tial suc­cess, where I sat on a cush­ion regard­less of how late it was.

A Failure To Start The Month

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On Tues­day I didn’t take time to med­i­tate. To be fair to myself, Tues­day was so busy for me that I man­aged to miss lunch and didn’t have din­ner until I got home from a gig at around 11:30pm, but I sup­pose I could have at least tried a walk­ing med­i­ta­tion on the way home from work. But I didn’t. Wednes­day I just didn’t med­i­tate in the evening — one of those evenings where I was so tired I just lazed around feel­ing a bit sorry for myself and being over-tired. But if I’d med­i­tated as soon as I got home, I might have at least been able to check the “sat on a zafu for twenty min­utes” box.

And it was touch-and-go yes­ter­day, too, though I finally sat right at the end of the day.

I think I’m feel­ing a bit of resis­tance, not just to bump­ing up my ses­sions to twenty min­utes, but also to the start of the “month of desire” I talked about in my last entry. For today is 1st Octo­ber, which is the beginning.

To recap, this month I plan to exam­ine my desire, and my appar­ent lack of self-discipline and inabil­ity to delay grat­i­fi­ca­tion. This man­i­fests itself as a desire to eat too much food, as a fre­quent rash of impulse pur­chases, espe­cially in online shop­ping. My eat­ing, for exam­ple, has very lit­tle to do with hunger, and the quan­tity of food I eat very lit­tle to do with how much I actu­ally need. Which is the main rea­son I’m over­weight — I do do a decent amount of exer­cise, and I don’t eat ter­ri­bly junky things on the whole, I just tend to eat too much too often.

I’m going to try to focus on that, not just dur­ing the med­i­ta­tion, but dur­ing the nor­mal course of the day. Which is the right time to focus on it, as I’m pretty sure you can only study your addic­tive desire when you’re feel­ing it. And it’s then — when I’m sit­ting there at my desk and some­one has brought in cakes and sweets, or when I’m cook­ing and I decide to sling in more rice or pasta than is strictly nec­es­sary, or when I’m in Wait­rose and the larger pizza seems like the best choice — that I feel that addic­tive desire. And it’s then that I should watch it, look at it in my mind and try to learn more about it.

So, that’s what this month will be about. I’m going to try to blog every day, and I’m going to try to focus on my desire at least once a day, and we’ll see what comes up.

Reboot Day 89: Failure

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An unusual fail­ure for me tonight, a fail­ure to sit for the whole length of time. I got to around thir­teen min­utes out of fif­teen, and sim­ply gave up, cer­tain that the last two min­utes weren’t going to help. I was in a bit of a strange state of mind, and cer­tainly wasn’t think­ing — or not think­ing — too clearly.

I had a headache all day yes­ter­day, and I’ve felt a bit “spaced out” all day today. And I really did fall asleep briefly on the zafu just now. I think I may be com­ing down with something.

Next time I get struck by this urge to cut short my med­i­ta­tion, I must try not to let it win — the extra two min­utes might not have led me any­where great, but what’s the point of giv­ing up and feel­ing like a fail­ure for the sake of sit­ting on my back­side for two more minutes?

Still, easy to say, now I’m up and not feel­ing quite so out of touch with reality.

Any­way. I’m going to bed. I’ve a day off work tomor­row, so I’ll try hav­ing a lie-in, then med­i­tat­ing after break­fast. Should go bet­ter than today’s ses­sion, no mat­ter what.