I have no inspirational quote, because to have one to start with is to imply that I have something. This is about having nothing.
I’ve spent almost three days doing nothing. Pretty much veggin’ out and simply watching tv. I’m not sick, I’m slightly injured. I sprained my ankle and I’m simply using it as an excuse to be lazy…to escape the whip of the clock and the calendar. I don’t have to be anywhere. I don’t have to do anything. I can afford to do nothing.
Allowing myself to indulge in this nothingness is actually rather frightening. My mind can’t settle and I find my own imagination screaming at me to DO SOMETHING. I want to write. Not just here on this blog. I want to write poems, essays, hand-written letters to my long lost friends, stories, lesson plans…anything. But I write nothing.
I want to cook, grill, bake. Yet doing nothing doesn’t really require caloric intake, so, ultimately, I eat nothing. I drink water. I pee. Even that seems to be an aspect of nothing too.
I’m not in a depression because I genuinely considered the possibility. I’m not sad or happy or anxious or anything….I feel nothing. Well, maybe I feel a little inquisitive at thinking that I feel nothing.
For nothingness can’t really exist. To claim nothingness is to claim something. It is to make it an it and when there is nothing to point at and call “it.” Now I’m thinking of a passage from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. See, there would be my opening quote. Maybe I’ll find that and put it here – nah, I’m not going to because today is still devoted to doing nothing.
Maybe I’ll regret this waste of time when I’m on my deathbed someday. Maybe I won’t have the kind of death that will allow for even a split second of reflection. We can’t control that and it frightens most of us so we tend to not focus on it since there is nothing that we can know for certain. I think that the Buddhists have it right to meditate upon death. Christianity does this too, only not in a formal thought process per se. The focusing upon one’s physical end of life begs one to do something with the time they are given. My doing nothing is another route to this thought process. To physically do nothing, to have to be nowhere or accountable to anyone, to have the freedom to sit and realize that minutes, hours, and now days have melted away is realize mortality.
By doing this there is that spirit in me screaming at my body “Do Something!” My mind reaches farther in scenarios. Can I now see how many choices there are in each mundane day? Can I now realize that quantum theorists are really onto something? If I set my mind, I can probably realize anything. I could probably find a way to live in Italy by this time next year…but could I really follow through on it? Do I really even want to live in Italy? The thought just popped up into the room of my mind that I’ve only now allowed to exist since it isn’t thinking of anything since I’m kind of focussed on nothing. There would be much sacrifice with that Italy scenario. There would be other scenarios that couldn’t play out. Holding still in so-called nothingness allows for me to “see” these potentials.
But one can’t remain stationary forever. To do so is to die. This is the power of meditation. This is why so many westerners probably can’t stick with the pratice of it on the whole. To meditate is to tap into what we perceive as nothingness. Our culture has trained us to never waste a moment. We think that to sit still is to be passed by. There is danger in being passed by in a “keeping up with the Jones’” culture. What if the Jones are all wrong? What if culture is diseased? What if buying into the mainstream is to compromise vivid dreams and unimaginable experiences only sparked when there is the room to reimagine such existence?
Oh boy does this sound like the writing of a lunatic. It sounds frenzied and far too grand…too abstract. Yet, it comes from a mind somewhat trapped in a completely lazy body. A mind that claims ownership to the experiences of this body that has forgone much in the way of a physical experience for a while now. The mind is grappling…the mind is whirling with creativity for lack of managing the little details.
I like this experient but I know it ends tomorrow. The calendar and the clock will step back in to dictate the day’s events, the experiences, the stuff of routine thinking. I see that as dangerous. Too much of anything is dangerous, right? I think tomorrow I will go to the gym and work out. I was once able to make work outs very meditative. I put on African drumming music, tuned out my task list thinking, and allowed my imagination to run wild while doing a leg press or a bicep curl. Can I do that agian? Can I still tap into that higher mind, my truer self?
Nothingness – cool experiment. Too bad I couldn’t also turn off the TV. I did that once and I thought I would go crazy. The silence was profound. I want to know why I’m so autoprogrammed to need the noise.
Ah, there it is. In the quiet I can hear my heart beat and something about that overwhelms me. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.
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~ by the10sdoc on July 9, 2010.
Posted in Buddhism, journal, philosophy, psychological, soul-searching
Tags: buddhism, commentary, cultural commentary, culture, emptiness, life, philosophy, psychological, psychology, quantum mechanics, Reality, thoughts
Nothingness
I have no inspirational quote, because to have one to start with is to imply that I have something. This is about having nothing.
I’ve spent almost three days doing nothing. Pretty much veggin’ out and simply watching tv. I’m not sick, I’m slightly injured. I sprained my ankle and I’m simply using it as an excuse to be lazy…to escape the whip of the clock and the calendar. I don’t have to be anywhere. I don’t have to do anything. I can afford to do nothing.
Allowing myself to indulge in this nothingness is actually rather frightening. My mind can’t settle and I find my own imagination screaming at me to DO SOMETHING. I want to write. Not just here on this blog. I want to write poems, essays, hand-written letters to my long lost friends, stories, lesson plans…anything. But I write nothing.
I want to cook, grill, bake. Yet doing nothing doesn’t really require caloric intake, so, ultimately, I eat nothing. I drink water. I pee. Even that seems to be an aspect of nothing too.
I’m not in a depression because I genuinely considered the possibility. I’m not sad or happy or anxious or anything….I feel nothing. Well, maybe I feel a little inquisitive at thinking that I feel nothing.
For nothingness can’t really exist. To claim nothingness is to claim something. It is to make it an it and when there is nothing to point at and call “it.” Now I’m thinking of a passage from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. See, there would be my opening quote. Maybe I’ll find that and put it here – nah, I’m not going to because today is still devoted to doing nothing.
Maybe I’ll regret this waste of time when I’m on my deathbed someday. Maybe I won’t have the kind of death that will allow for even a split second of reflection. We can’t control that and it frightens most of us so we tend to not focus on it since there is nothing that we can know for certain. I think that the Buddhists have it right to meditate upon death. Christianity does this too, only not in a formal thought process per se. The focusing upon one’s physical end of life begs one to do something with the time they are given. My doing nothing is another route to this thought process. To physically do nothing, to have to be nowhere or accountable to anyone, to have the freedom to sit and realize that minutes, hours, and now days have melted away is realize mortality.
By doing this there is that spirit in me screaming at my body “Do Something!” My mind reaches farther in scenarios. Can I now see how many choices there are in each mundane day? Can I now realize that quantum theorists are really onto something? If I set my mind, I can probably realize anything. I could probably find a way to live in Italy by this time next year…but could I really follow through on it? Do I really even want to live in Italy? The thought just popped up into the room of my mind that I’ve only now allowed to exist since it isn’t thinking of anything since I’m kind of focussed on nothing. There would be much sacrifice with that Italy scenario. There would be other scenarios that couldn’t play out. Holding still in so-called nothingness allows for me to “see” these potentials.
But one can’t remain stationary forever. To do so is to die. This is the power of meditation. This is why so many westerners probably can’t stick with the pratice of it on the whole. To meditate is to tap into what we perceive as nothingness. Our culture has trained us to never waste a moment. We think that to sit still is to be passed by. There is danger in being passed by in a “keeping up with the Jones’” culture. What if the Jones are all wrong? What if culture is diseased? What if buying into the mainstream is to compromise vivid dreams and unimaginable experiences only sparked when there is the room to reimagine such existence?
Oh boy does this sound like the writing of a lunatic. It sounds frenzied and far too grand…too abstract. Yet, it comes from a mind somewhat trapped in a completely lazy body. A mind that claims ownership to the experiences of this body that has forgone much in the way of a physical experience for a while now. The mind is grappling…the mind is whirling with creativity for lack of managing the little details.
I like this experient but I know it ends tomorrow. The calendar and the clock will step back in to dictate the day’s events, the experiences, the stuff of routine thinking. I see that as dangerous. Too much of anything is dangerous, right? I think tomorrow I will go to the gym and work out. I was once able to make work outs very meditative. I put on African drumming music, tuned out my task list thinking, and allowed my imagination to run wild while doing a leg press or a bicep curl. Can I do that agian? Can I still tap into that higher mind, my truer self?
Nothingness – cool experiment. Too bad I couldn’t also turn off the TV. I did that once and I thought I would go crazy. The silence was profound. I want to know why I’m so autoprogrammed to need the noise.
Ah, there it is. In the quiet I can hear my heart beat and something about that overwhelms me. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.
Like this:
~ by the10sdoc on July 9, 2010.
Posted in Buddhism, journal, philosophy, psychological, soul-searching
Tags: buddhism, commentary, cultural commentary, culture, emptiness, life, philosophy, psychological, psychology, quantum mechanics, Reality, thoughts