Zen and the art of painting and weeding
I wish I could say that my mind is clear, poised and focused on the bristles of the brush as the green paint ebbs and flows in waves across the grain of wood. At times it is, albeit interspersed with the splurge of my discursive mind as thoughts about this, that, then, what if, what about, blah blah blah, float around the ether.
I am immersed in the job and equally, for a significant and disappointing amount of time – in the assessment of my instinctively judgey mind – preoccupied with wondering, planning, thinking, imagining and analysing things that have nothing to do with the task at hand.
I could say it’s the heat from the scorching sun as the UK endures a heat wave, and the fiery nature and flame-licking pace of thoughts of my Pitta-like temperament.
It’s also the slip into habitual running and racing from what I’m doing and where I really am, partly because I want it to be done and to not be doing it in this heat, even though I am enjoying the process and glad to be able in all ways to build this modest little space that will soon (please soon) be my writing and meditation haven.
Just do it
I’ve been contemplating the word “just” a lot lately. It’s no-nonsense assertion. The defensiveness it can provoke – “it’s not that easy”. The simple truth of the matter – “stop making a big deal out of things and get on with it”. The affront to the fact that we find it so hard to just do anything without the interference of a million other things, some real, some mental make-believe.
This is the paradox. The truth of the paradox. The fight within it. And the simultaneous release from the fight. If only we can let go. If only we quit the jibber jabber – as Mr T would say, for any A-Team fans/kids of the 80s out there – and just do it.
While this pithy phrase might exist in the public conscience as one popularised by Nike, I believe it was the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi who coined the term as a teaching on doing what needs to be done without fuss.
It’s a teaching because we need to be taught, to be reminded. Precisely because it isn’t easy to “just do it”, but just do it we must, if we want to be free of the jibber jabber.
