A recent stay at the Monastery combined with starting in on the yearlong retreat in the Big Bamboozle highlighted an aspect of Monastery life: the entire structure of the Monastery is set up so that at every point in the schedule we are doing just one thing: meditating, cooking, eating, cleaning, attending to some task in working meditation, etc.
Within this structure any better ideas about how to do something, what should be done, or who should do it is quickly revealed. If I’m in the middle of cleaning a bathroom and conditioning attempts to distract me with a conversation about, well, anything, the lack of a readily available distraction (surfing the Web, checking for new email, etc.) makes it possible to see that the pull to anything other than what Life has placed in front of me is just conditioning crying out for my attention.
Looking at this from outside the Monastery, the number of distractions is countless and the pull to engage with them while I’m ostensibly engaged in some task or project is quite strong. Everything seems set up to support going down the road with conditioning.
And I’ve also started to see how I can bring the spirit of inquiry and experimentation to setting up an environment that supports doing just one thing at a time. What happens if I:
- schedule each day in time blocks for each activity?
- work without the radio or music?
- read or listen to music with my computer and cell phone turned off?
- work on a project without a computer or phone nearby?
- schedule time to do something that is otherwise a distraction (surfing the Web, checking email)?
What’s possible with this structure is that everything is cared for when the attention is on just one thing. If I am meditating (or eating or working or…), that’s the focus. And when conditioning attempts to distract me from that, it’s clear because meditating is all that is going on in that moment.
Gassho,
Bob