Don't know/don't care

sweeney (a fellow Wellpern, for those of you who are reading locally), gets pretty much to the heart of what I was trying to say:

I have had a long-running struggle with "don't-know" mind subtly shifting into "don't-care" mind. I don't know if you have had the same experience, Mike.

There are Buddhist practices of taking passion or emotion and transforming it into positive energy. Tonglen is one example.

I'm pretty comfortable with 'don't-care' mind, at least as it has manifested itself in my life. As recently as a couple of years ago, I would work myself into a complete rage over things I saw as unfair in life and society. Nothing changed because of my ranting outbursts, and nothing has changed since I decided to let go of them.

I've gotten past a lot of personal issues over the past couple of years by simply putting them down. And in some cases, circumstances changed in a way that made them irrelevant - early retirement covereth a multitude of sins.

A therapist would tell me, I think, that these issues are still unresolved, but I feel relaxed and at peace and glad to have them off my plate. I just don't care that much anymore.

(I made a lot of process with resolving issues during the couple of years I was in regular therapy. But eventually, I reached a point where with certain things I just went through the same chain of thoughts over and over again, with no new insight or progress.

It was something of a leap of logic to get there, because it wasn't actually what he was talking about, but Seung Sahn's teachings led me to see that it wasn't necessary to audit and account for every emotional or intellectual nickel and dime of my existence. Oh, $1.75 disappeared in 1964? Well, I've gotten along fine without it until now.)

But there are times when I would like to muster some degree of enthusiasm for things like housecleaning and perhaps art - but to keep it directed in a way that doesn't lead me into some overwrought scenario that blows up in my face and sends me yet again into a couple more years of steady don't-leave-the-house depression.

And I wonder, as I said previously, how we as a society would get some things done without passion.

Part of the reason I was so closely drawn to Taoism was because it mirrored beliefs I had already held most of my life. It was heartening - I mean it brought tears to my eyes - to discover that people who saw things the way I did were once called 'sages' instead of 'underachievers.'

(And a parenthetical rant: what an insidious term that is. I hadn't thought of it until just now, but jeebus - underachieving at what? Only what someone else decided was important. Not a good candidate to be a pod person.)