"Busy, busy, busy"?

     "To commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of modern times."       Thomas Merton 

     "Saying 'yes' to more things than we can actually manage to be present for with integrity and ease of being is in effect saying 'no' to all those things and people and places we have already said 'yes' to.

     We may be betraying what is deepest and best in ourselves, and we may be betraying our relationships to others, even those we most love, and even our connectedness to places, to being at home where we are and fully in touch with what is most important and required in any moment. We might be losing touch, unknowingly, with our very relationship to the possibilities and the impossibilities of time."
     Jon Kabat-Zinn. "The Infidelity of Busyness." Mindfulness 2019; 10: 588–589.

     "'How is your heart?' I recently asked a friend going through a trying period of overwork and romantic tumult, circling the event horizon of burnout while trying to bring a colossal labor of love to life. His answer, beautiful and heartbreaking, came swiftly, unreservedly, the way words leave children’s lips simple, sincere, and poetic, before adulthood has learned to complicate them out of the poetry and the sincerity with considerations of reason and self-consciousness: 'My heart is too busy to be a heart,' he replied."
       Maria Popova https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/05/23/my-heart-corinna-luyken/?mc_cid=8f44637385&mc_eid=0d773a20c1 

Mood, Self-concepts & Time

"Sometimes I go about with pity for myself
and all the while Great Winds
are carrying me across the sky."

Ojibeway Saying

     Regardless of our situation, be it objectively pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, we can embody EITHER 
         • a pleasant, natural, peaceful, authentic, nurturing mood, intimate with whatever is in the present moment OR 
         • dysphoria, in an adversarial or defensive mood (filled with fear, anger, impatience, distractedness, bitterness, cynicism, etc), escaping from the present moment, to the past & future.
     Such dysphoria is caused primarily by our attempts to create & maintain a solid, permanent "self", despite our deep understanding that the "self" is just an ephemeral concept. 
     'Excessive self-concern' or 'noisy ego' is closely tied to another human idea: time. (For a detailed examination, see: David R. Loy. “Lack & Transcendence. The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism.” Wisdom Publications, 2018) 'Time-poverty' is a major stressor these days. Paradoxically, the more anxious we are about not having enough time, the more time we squander by dwelling in the past & future.

     We all know what it's like to have an intimate relationship with people, pets, hobbies, projects, etc. Intimacy means being completely open to & engaged with whomever or whatever we're with. We also know the effect that intimacy has on time - instead of 'time-poverty,' we experience timelessness, 'the eternal now.'
     Being in an adversarial relationship with anyone or anything (eg our job, car, computer etc) clearly feels unpleasant, stressful, unhealthy, unnatural - a situation most of us would like to correct as quickly as possible.

     Being intimate with literally everyone & everything - 'life's 10,000 joys & 10,000 sorrows,' 'the good, the bad & the ugly' - is ideal from a Buddhist perspective, and shared by mystics & saints of all the world's wisdom traditions. Avoiding difficulties is an important primitive biological reflex but is inconsistent with human maturation & wisdom. Acceptance, including self-acceptance, self-compassion & 'leaning in' with kind curiosity to deeply examine & understand all that we once feared, are essential to growing up. (See: Kristin Neff. “Self-Compassion. The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself.” HarperCollins, 2011) Intimacy feels 'like home,' authentic, natural, healthy, right.

     "I was born
      when all I once feared
      I could love.”                  Rabia Basri 

     “The whole idea of compassion is based on the keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings which are all part of one another and all involved in one another… 

     The whole purpose of life is to live by love.”            Thomas Merton

 

Our Sense of Lack

     What do we typically do when feeling anxious, lacking, hungry, empty, fragile, needy, inadequate, etc? 
     It's very practical to deeply investigate this BECAUSE, whether it's obvious or eating away at us subconsciously, we very, very often DO feel like this. But why? This is an important question. And we all need to find answers AND solutions - if there are any.

     From a Buddhist perspective, “we experience life as frustrating because our usual understanding of it is deluded. Buddhism holds out the possibility of an alternative to this, a liberation from delusion, but such liberation is not common and so cannot be derived from an analysis of everyday life.” Again, according to Buddhism, "we can end our sense of a lack and our flight from it into the future, by realizing that from the beginning nothing has ever been lacking." 
     According to Blaise Pascal, “ ‘We do not rest satisfied with the present, for the present is generally painful to us.’ … ten minutes’ meditation confirms it. If our root problem is not fear of death, which looms in the future, but an always gnawing sense of lack right now, the reason becomes obvious. Dwelling in the present is uncomfortable because it discloses our nothingness, our groundlessness, and time is the schema we construct to escape that sense of inadequacy. … the mentally ill invoke the past only as a substitute for the present, as a need to defend against the present, and that the past is realized only to the extent that it involves a de-realization of the present. In contrast, those usually considered well-adjusted use the future to defend against the present. Time allows us to flee into the future (when, we believe, our sense of lack will finally be resolved) or the past (when, as we recollect, there was little or no lack). … complete felicity [happiness] is discoverable only in our recollections or in our expectations. Each tends to feed on the other. Individually and collectively, we dream of the Golden Age to come, which will restore the dimly remembered Golden Age of the past (our childhood, Periclean Greece, the 1960s).
     In sum, time is the canvas we erect before us to hide the sneering skull, the bottomless void. On that canvas we paint the dreams that fascinate us, because they distract us from our immediate situation and offer the hope of filling up our sense of lack. But if our experience of time is conditioned by our fear of death and our denial of groundlessness, true acceptance of them should reveal something hitherto unrealized about the nature of time and the things ‘in’ time.

     Being-Time

          He to whom time is the same as eternity
          And eternity the same as time 
          Is free from all contention.                        Boehme”

     Avoiding the contents of our present moment - our actual life - causes suffering. Awakening, or liberation from suffering, is: "intimacy with everything" - an open-heart-minded acceptance of everything, right here & now - our actual life. 

     The quotes above are from the highly-recommended, but challenging book:  
       David R. Loy. “Lack & Transcendence. The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism.” Wisdom Publications, 2018.

For Kate

I won’t die
I won’t go anywhere
I’ll be here
But don’t ask me anything I won’t answer             Ikkyu 

“In Ram Dass’s book Still Here, he describes a trip in India on a very slow train. He becomes impatient, thinking: ‘This trip is going to go on forever …. This present moment will never end. I’ve been on this train my entire life and I will never ever get off. Now what?'

Accepting and releasing into just what is …. Being willing to settle into just this experience – this is the teaching of saying yes to our life, not giving in to thoughts of another life.”

Katherine Thanas. “The Truth of This Life. Zen Teachings on Loving the World as It Is.” Shambhala, 2018.

Time to Prioritize Quality of Life - Moment-to-Moment

     "Time poverty", the feeling of being squeezed for time can give rise to frantic busy-ness. We seem to be competing for who can squeeze most into 24 hours. Quantity seems to be everything -  who prioritizes quality? - who provides the essential time & attitude for quality? 
     A cynical bumper sticker on a Corvette stated: "The one who dies with the most toys wins." Does the one who dies having cranked out the most widgets "win"?

     The sense of time running out gives rise to chronic fight/flight reaction. And in fact our time IS running out - we have a finite number of years, days, breaths. But attempting to outrun death by racing madly through life is a nightmare, not quality living. Quality & quantity are inversely proportional. Wouldn't you rather slowly savor a fine moderate-sized meal, than set a record for the most hot dogs inhaled in 15 minutes?

     Patients often ask physicians: "Does THIS mean I'm going to die?"

     Honest answer: "YES - OF COURSE YOU'RE GOING TO DIE! - But if you fully embrace your mortality, you can actually start living."