It’s a beautiful, sunny, temperate October day, so two of the kids and I drove to a local lake to just hang out near the water, soaking up the natural world and taking pictures. I’ll share some of mine here.
Earlier, at reading time, I got in pages from only five books, but more than one of them sparked a journal entry. Here’s a sample:
The scholar Mark Dyczkowski writes, “Nothing is impure, all is perfect, including Maya* (the world of illusion) and the diversity it engenders.” —Andrew Holocek, Reverse Meditation, 15
This is the sort of thing that is tough to take. The world is filled with misery and crimes against humanity, yet we’re not supposed to contract around that. I guess the only way to even come close is at a soul level, with the ego tucked safely away.
I just read, on page 56, about Holocek’s tennis match: being in the Zone all day, until self-consciousness broke in and ruined everything. That is the story of my life (and high school tennis career).
But let’s think about that for a minute. When I am in the Zone: creating art, maybe, or concentrating deeply on stuff like this, nothing else gets in: not only self-consciousness, but the contractors. I think, then, that the goal is to live in that egoless Zone as much as possible, and now I can understand how that above quote could be true.
Let me take a moment, here, and quote from Holocek on the concept of contraction:
Contraction is a principle that I will be using to describe the evasion tactics, the reactivity, the self-generated obstacles that stand between us and inner freedom. —Reverse Meditation, 6
This idea, though, is not true only in Buddhism. We see it in some aspects of Christianity, Stoicism (which is why it gives me pause), and in inner child therapy/trauma healing. The ego is supposed to be kept in check, being brought out only when survival is on the line.
*Those two A’s should have lines over them (a macron, apparently), but I don’t know how to create them here.
