Category Archives: observations

Reboot Day 90: Back to Average

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This morning’s med­i­ta­tion was a lot bet­ter than yesterday’s. Though that isn’t say­ing a lot, of course. Still, it makes a nice change to med­i­tate in the morn­ings, when I’m feel­ing awake.

I’m won­der­ing if I should really turn my morn­ing rou­tine upside down, and med­i­tate in the morn­ings rather than in evenings, even on week­days. Strikes me I stand more chance of get­ting bet­ter at med­i­ta­tion if I do it when I’m awake, and it fur­ther strikes me that all my efforts at being less sleepy for my usual evening med­i­ta­tion ses­sions have been fairly fruitless.

Hmm.

I think I’ll try med­i­tat­ing in the morn­ings as much as I can over the next week, though that will be both harder and eas­ier to achieve, bear­ing in mind I’ll be vis­it­ing my par­ents over in Crete. I don’t know what the setup will be there — they’ve moved house since the last time I vis­ited — so it’s all a bit unknown as yet.

One thing’s for sure: I’ll be try­ing to get my fif­teen min­utes a day. Because those fif­teen min­utes are all that sep­a­rate me from the “night­stand Bud­dhist” I was before, just read­ing about Bud­dhism and med­i­ta­tion, but not actu­ally doing it. And that’s impor­tant to me.

Mindfulness In Daily Life

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I was out jog­ging this morn­ing, when I was stopped by a cou­ple pulled over in their big four-wheel-drive thingy.

“Excuse me,” said the lady lean­ing from the pas­sen­ger win­dow, “But we’re try­ing to get to Clifton Col­lege.“
“Turn left down there,” I pointed, “And I think it’s maybe the first or sec­ond turn on the right. It’s next to the zoo, any­way.“
“Yes,” she said, “We were told it was near the zoo, but we just passed the zoo, and we couldn’t see any signs for it.“
“Well, keep an eye out for Col­lege Road.“
“Oh, yes, we saw Col­lege Road.“
I raised an eye­brow. A few moments passed.
“Oh. That’s why…”

Yes, that’s why it’s called Col­lege Road. This reminded me of a sim­i­lar con­ver­sa­tion I had with a taxi dri­ver a month or two back. “Hey, mate, do you know where Hope Chapel is?“
“You know Hope Chapel Hill?
“Yeah, course I do.” A beat. “Oh, f—.”

We all have moments like this. I cer­tainly do. I enjoy them, those penny-dropping moments when the con­nec­tions are made that are hang­ing there, obvi­ous, in front of you, but that you’ve not quite put together yourself.

But here’s my ques­tion: if you’re prac­tis­ing mind­ful­ness, in daily life, would this kind of thing, this dif­fi­culty form­ing con­nec­tions, be more or less likely?

I mean, my first thought is that if you’re being mind­ful whilst try­ing to find Clifton Col­lege, see­ing Col­lege Road as you’re dri­ving through Clifton might hit you as a bit more of a clue.

On the other hand, mind­ful­ness, being in the moment, seems to involve almost not mak­ing these kinds of con­nec­tions — which are chains of thought, really. Maybe you’d just see the sign and observe it, not react­ing, not putting two and two together. Because mind­ful­ness is, by some def­i­n­i­tions, almost the absence of thought. But is it the absence of think­ing? What’s the difference?

Using mind­ful­ness in daily life, for tasks which tra­di­tion­ally might require some decent cog­ni­tion, is appar­ently very chal­leng­ing, and maybe this is why; the gap between think­ing and thought­ing, the dif­fer­ence between think­ing and being caught up in thought, is very nar­row, and very wide at the same time…

Reboot Day 79: Dumb Things

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I’ve done two dumb things since the last time I blogged.

The first was doing the Bris­tol Half Marathon yes­ter­day. Now, don’t get me wrong, run­ning a half marathon is a very reward­ing, fan­tas­tic thing to do. And I raised a chunk of money for char­ity. But believe me, my thigh mus­cles think it was a pretty dumb thing to do. Despite dunk­ing myself in a cou­ple of very long, hot Radox baths, and going for some walks to try to stop myself from going com­pletely solid, they’re still complaining.

When I came back from my last walk, climb­ing painfully down my base­ment steps, my legs seemed as stiff as they’d been when I climbed painfully up those same steps on the way out.

Which leads me to the sec­ond dumb thing I did today, which was cook­ing steak. Again, not too dumb per se — though some Bud­dhists tend toward the veg­e­tar­ian, I’ve not looked too closely at that bit of my life yet — but dumb for a dif­fer­ent rea­son. Because I kept the kitchen door open just too long, and man­aged to set off the fire alarm for the whole house — all five flats.

It’s a loud fire alarm. It demands your atten­tion in no uncer­tain terms, and you don’t really want to be the guy who cries “wolf” and gets faced with peeved peo­ple from the other four flats.

So, I was straight out my front door, up the stairs, and into the com­mu­nal hall­way above, twist­ing that “reset” key on the alarm box in about twenty sec­onds flat.

It was only when I’d got back down the steps and closed my front door that I realised what I’d done. Yes, just run up and down those same steps I’d hob­bled gin­gerly up and down ear­lier on, cling­ing onto the rail­ings and doing that “get halfway down then drop the last few inches with a wince” kind of stair-climbing.

So. That was my con­crete reminder for the day that even phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing can be all in the mind — or at the very least, if you’re not actively cling­ing to it, you can com­pletely for­get it’s there, not even notice it.

I won­der if I were truly mind­ful, would I feel that pain in my legs? Or would I realise that three quar­ters of the pain was my own expec­ta­tion of suf­fer­ing, a men­tal pro­jec­tion on a minor phys­i­cal ail­ment, that in other cir­cum­stances I wouldn’t even notice?

Some­thing to pon­der, anyway.

Today’s med­i­ta­tion: too late, and too tired. But heck, it’s the day after a half-marathon. I think being tired is allowed.