Experience

Well i am back, my laptop is back in from its third send off in two years meaning the next thing to go wrong equals a brand new one! Wootles! Anywho, off of my tech semi detox i gotta say this one was way easier than the other times i have been without my computer, and i want to give props to the reasons why.

First and foremost would be the people who kept me busy, so thanks to my friends, family, girlfriend, and my boss who kept scheduling me for 40 hours a week despite my part time status. Next props goes out to my cell phone which has become my top way to keep in touch with people, through both texts and tweets. Final props has to go again to my girlfriend and the public library both of which provided me with internet access when i really strongly needed it.

So now i am back to my online life with what i hope is a new and lasting perspective. And so i have many things to write about (but as if i could come up with something planned in advance...).

So I'll go with something i saw today which happened to pop some new ideas into my head after meditating. I was walking down the street in Bowmanville and i saw a person get in their car, drive off, and head towards a subdivision that was within reasonable walking distance.

That made me think about what is going on with people driving places all the time and always being in a rush to get from place to place. This brings me to talking about my job.

Yesterday was my last day before my student leave began, yet rather than being filled with happiness that i was leaving i felt a melancholy fill me. I had been working their for almost three years, 40 hours a week for most of the summer. And now it was all over.

I had grown attached to the suffering that was so associated with working so much. With this sudden lift of it i had no clue what to feel. Which brings me to a book on power written by a Buddhist teacher, it is called The Art of Power. The teacher is Thich Nhat Hanh. In the book he talks about how people "never really walk on the ground" but rather as we walk we think about all the things going on in the past or that might happen in the future.

The point is that the woman who was driving home so fast, not wasting a single second, was doing just that, driving on all her worries as fast as possible, back to her stronghold. When an animal is scared it will go to somewhere it feels safe, a den or barn. I think that with all of our lack of interaction prompted by computers and texting and email we have retreated from really knowing what to do in the real world.

Because of this we don't really take the time to step outside our patterns and experience new things. We don't look for new places and people because we have too many things to think about, too many experiences to worry over. So we need to retreat to our strongholds, our dens, as fast as possible.

Anywho i hope meditation will help me to wake up from this a bit. I hope it will help me to let go of my suffering faster, and not miss the pain when it is gone.

Challenge to people who read this for the next month: take one walk a week and go to a totally new area. Totally experience it when you are there, don't think about the past or the future or what else could be happening anywhere else. Be present.