mindfulness

since the onset of winter and some severe cuts to the operating budget in the monastery monks have been asked to take on some of the household cleaning chores

once or twice a week i dry mop and/or wetmop a long corridor
yesterday i counted out my steps
figuring roughly a yard for every step
and i counted to about 14o from doorway to doorway
at each end of the cloister corridor
a 140 yd corridor!!
i am aware that i live in an institution

over the years since becoming aware of the concept
i've attempted to
practice a form of what the eastern spiritual writers
and practioners of eastern methods of meditation
have called "mindfulness"
when i do manual labor

what goes through a person's mind
when he is merely working??

how often are we working but really thinking about other things??

mindfulness is a practice that suggests some conscious regulation of breathing
and awareness of breath

but when applied to sweeping the floor the concentration is
more of a direct and consistent
acknowledgement of precisely what one is doing

only mopping only sweeping the floor
these should be the words of thought
only baking bread only driving to school

it is difficult to express my discovery of
"lightening" (LIFE GETS LIGHTER)
that occurs when this practice
is practiced
and even a sense of joy in the task AT HAND
no matter how menial
only cleaning toilets

to arrive at the sense of freedom
an inner sense
that what one is doing is the only thing worth doing
and the only thing worth thinking about at the moment
is a form of liberation
all other matters of interest fall away
and this act becomes the center of selfawareness
and world awareness

as i swept the floor i realized
there are probably prisoners in prisons
doing this sort of thing somewhere
certainly there are mothers doing this
there are algerians in paris doing this sort of thing

what is known then in the act of
attempting to be quietly mindful of ones' task??

it is the sort of thing that can only be offered reasonably as a suggestion
i can't claim that what i experience is what anyone else will experience
even if it approaches a positive comparison with what
people like thich nhat hahn say about the ancient practice the ancient understanding

try it sometime when you're washing the dishes
simply begin by taking a breath letting it out take another one
follow your breath all the way in and all the way out
and whisper the words
only washing dishes while you in fact are washing dishes
and when you sense that other thoughts are
hanging around in your mind awaiting some kind of
consideration simply say again - only washing dishes

i have found this to be a most beneficial and "freeing"
way of being very "wide-eyed" about what i am doing

only typing words