just enough light

I’m reading Natalie Goldberg’s The Great Failure this morning. She wrote of her Zen master’s words, “My job is to make you dumb.” She went on to write that “dumb” was a compliment in Zen. “It meant you weren’t running ahead of yourself, planning, organizing, strategizing. You were open to receive the world as it is.”

Of course, there is a place for planning, organizing, strategizing, and all the other things we do to anticipate important parts of our life. It’s the “running ahead of myself” that gets me in trouble, that produces lots of my needless suffering.

When I am truly planning, organizing, and strategizing, I get clearer about the upcoming task I am spending my energy and attention on. The problem comes when I am going through the motions of organizing and planning, but my mind is somewhere else, running out ahead of myself.

For example, this is Saturday, and this afternoon my plan is to bring some law and order to my garage, which has exploded with tools, winter plants, and random stuff that is piled on my workbench and scattered on the floor, all of it covered with a layer of sawdust, waiting to be “organized.”  This is not a casual task.  I have nearly fallen twice stepping over one thing to get to something else I needed for my current job.  This is a casualty waiting to happen.

I know already that if I can mentally devote an hour or two to that task and put all other things aside, I will not only accomplish a lot, but I will be energized by the work. However, if I get started on the task and then start thinking about other things I “probably should” be doing, I will be distracted, I will jump from thing to thing, and will eventually abandon the project long before it’s done in order to move on to something else that I’ve convinced myself is more important. I will have gotten ahead of myself rather than being with myself and in the midst of the moment.

I have to be dumb (in Zen terms). I feel dumb in a miserable way when I get distracted. I need to be dumb in the moment, enjoying and experiencing it for all it’s worth. Right now that means sitting here with my book and keyboard and coffee. I could easily let the garage encroach, but then I am getting ahead of myself.