A Quiet Mind

There is a famous story about a man who approached Bodhidharma with intent of becoming his student. "My mind is not pacified," he told the monk. "Master, pacify my mind."

"If you bring me that mind, I will pacify it for you," Bodhidharma replied.

"When I search my mind I cannot hold it," the student said.

"There," Bodhidharma answered. "I've pacified it for you already."

The house is turning into a mess again. I did a little house cleaning today, but only a little. When I try to clean, my mind sort of freezes up. I'll look at the stuff, ponder what to do with it, and perhaps throw a few things away. Then I get simultaneously bored and overwhelmed and just walk away from it.

When Kat comes over here to clean, she just wades into it and does it. There's no existential crisis attached. Even my ex-wife has come over and cleaned for me, and does a faster and better job than me.

My mind is not pacified. If it were, I would settle in to these tasks and do them.

I do not understand how Bodhidharma's answer to the student applies to my situation, but I think it must in some way.

I spent an hour or so this evening indulging in some self-pity about my failures in relationships. I think I have written about this before, but here it is again, anyway. I've always screwed up with the women I was really interested in. Always. This has inevitably been followed by weeks or months of soul-searching and agonizing about my flaws and shortcomings.

I finally learned from zen that I needed to stop analyzing and re-analyzing. I learned to see that the thing didn't work out, note in my mind that I was having some reaction to it, then move on.

Once in awhile, though, I lapse back into analysis and self-pity, as I did this evening. I saw it for what it was, which was good, but I continued to indulge it, which was not good.

Ten or twelve years ago, when I was much more active on the Well than I am now, I wrote page after page after page of self-criticism and analysis of my failed love life. At one point, I was the single largest user of disk space on the Well's conferencing system. There were users who posted more frequently, and users who had been there three to five times longer, but I outpaced them all in sheer tonnage of text. And it was all about my inept love life.

I mention this because I had the temptation this evening to revert back to that form right here. I was going to post a careful outline of all my inadequacies. But I caught myself in time. No inadequacies. No analysis.

Only don't know.

Even what I've written is too much. 'As soon as you open your mouth to speak,' the zen proverb says, 'already you've made a mistake.'

Master, quiet my mind.