Mindful Clover
February 20, 2025
Who’s to blame for the knot in my chest?
I feel it even now, writing this. I’ve been tied up inside for the past week or so, maybe the past 2 or 3, because of how “busy” and “intentional” I feel. Specifically it’s related to how much I’m doing across research and fellowship projects plus increased demands at work. Even writing this now I’m thinking about a training I’m facilitating out of town in a few weeks; of administrative work and meetings that I struggle to make time for at work, and yet still find a way to get my work done, probably at the cost of increased anxiety.
I’ve been thinking of the way I generate anxiety, of Rob Burbea’s quote in Seeing That Frees: about making wolves with your hands and being scared of them as if they are real:
“In this scenario, although your friend may have been trying to ‘be with’ the wolf, ‘accept’ its presence, even remind himself of the impermanence of all things, at the deepest and most significant level ‘insight’ and ‘wisdom’ here must mean seeing that the wolf is a fabrication that he himself has been fabricating… Understanding this, there might then be the possibility that he could do something about it―stop it perhaps, or fabricate something else that doesn’t bring so much dukkha” (16).
I find the fixation on my chest to be the most unnerving. It feels like a knot that I simply cannot unravel. Do I know if writing this is positive and helpful, or another form of proliferation? Asking these questions seems to inevitably lead into a skeptical-doubt line of questioning that isn’t helpful, but there is something in here for me to pay attention to.
“Life seems to be a perpetual struggle, some enormous effort against staggering odds. And what is our solution to all this dissatisfaction? We get stuck in the ‘If only’ syndrome… Where does all this junk come from and, more important, what can we do about it? It comes from the conditions of our own minds. It is a deep, subtle and pervasive set of mental habits, a Gordian knot which we have built up bit by bit and we can unravel just that same way, one piece at a time” (Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English, p. 3)
I’m increasing attracted to Zen style practice―or at least what I think it is―because of the rich tradition of moving away from the intellectualizing mind. Of just sitting.
Controlling experience
I suppose the feeling of control is connected, and the tension of intention holds here, too. That is, in my day to day I feel incredibly driven toward completing the next thing. The next thing can and has occupied entire weeks for me. It’s as if I lose perspective on why I’m doing what I’m doing, and get lost in increasingly “irrelevant” microtasks. Inevitably and eventually, I am driven to a place of rawness, exhaustion and frayed experiencing that seems more intense emotionally and less precise perceptually. Then I finally step back, and suddenly purposelessness washes over me.
I feel this quite often on days off, so even as I look forward to weekends I also secretly despise them. I can then end up filling chores and habits into the spaces as a way of having some goal-driven tasks on my weekends. In fact, basically every action gets reduced in my mind in this way. It is difficult to speak about, because it feels like an emotional-perceptual orientation toward all behavior, thoughts, things. It is a driven-ness that feels fundamental, I think toward controlling my current experience as well as the future in front of me.
No resolution, just thoughts at the moment. Maybe some just sitting and deep breathing is called for.
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