When I was a child, I was taken by that song that goes, “…he’s got the whole world in his hands.” Ever since then I have loved imagery of hands, especially two cupped together. They speak to me not of emptiness, but of possibility.
Many years ago I worked for one of the world’s biggest publishing houses. While the job wasn’t exactly glamorous, I did enjoy office perks like being able to take home advance copies of books. One of the best books I grabbed while I was there was Everyday Mind: 366 Reflections on the Buddhist Path. I unearthed this book right after the new year started, and have been overjoyed to have found this book once more in my life.
Today’s entry was especially poignant, either if you read it as intended or replace “meditation” with something else, in my case it was “a new project.”
If you do decide to start meditating, there’s no need to tell other people about it, or talk about hwy you are doing it or what it’s doing for you. In fact, there is no better way to waste your nascent energy and enthusiasm for practice and thwart your efforts so they will be unable to gather momentum. Best to meditate without advertising it.
Everytime you get a strong impulse to talk about meditation and how wonderful it is, or how hard it is, or what it’s doing for you these days, or what it’s not, or you want to convince someone else how wonderful it would be for them, just look at it as more thinking and go meditate some more. The impulse will pulse and everybody will be better off- especially you.
-Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are
Last fall, I was excitedly talking about a documentary project I was undertaking, the Crafter Documentary Project. It was supposed to be up months ago, but I’m still stuck trying to figure out how to best use MySQL to my advantage and people involved are beginning to wonder what the hell I’m doing.
What I have learned from this experience is that the next project I have, I need to do a complete prototype and then tell people about it. Getting participants first and then working out the design, is not the best way to handle things, because you will just second guess your way through everything and it will lag.
But as I sift through old photographs and find this one of my hands cupped together, I am reminded that even though projects sometimes get lost and scattered, there is the distinct possibility that in time, they will be revived anew.
Hi Betsy,
I would be thrilled to assist you in this project in anyway possible. Please come bye and read the last writing on my blog (scroll down a few pics).
I look forward to hearing from You,
Namaste,
MB