What do we do when things aren’t working? How do we respond to dismal situations, when we’re trying our best, but the world decides to hand us lemons?
Consider the following Haiku, written by Basho:
Fleas, lice,
The horse pissing
Near my pillow.
Although he was on a spiritual journey, and thought himself something important, Basho spent the night on the floor with urine and lice. All night the roof leaked, and he was cold. The night was so miserable, he wrote a poem about it.
So what do we do when things aren’t working?
How do we change our personal realities when we’re sleeping on a floor covered with urine?
We forget all about ideas for “how things should be”.
Stop Scheming
Our minds want to endlessly scheme and plot. Figure out ways so we never have to spend the night in dirty sheds. But inevitably, we eventually find ourselves in dirty sheds.
The real danger then, is not in dirty sheds, or in failure. The danger lies in pretending our will, our intelligence really adds up to anything. Though we may be extremely clever, and think ourselves resourceful, things will come that knock us over. It is our ability to accept things as they are that gives us true strength.
Be mindful when you spend too much time scheming, planning. Information paralysis is real, we can get endlessly caught up in ideas of “perfect information”, and forget to ever participate in life.
Because we’re always facing problems within our lives. And in response to these problems, our minds are ceaselessly looking for solutions. They’ll seek out information until finding a logical solution.
Reality Doesn’t Know About Logic
Unfortunately, reality doesn’t respond to logic. It responds to actions, and to incredibly chaotic patterns already existing within the world. Our best laid plans can be immediately destroyed by chance.
Understand, we can lock ourselves up in rooms forever, seeking out all the world’s knowledge for a perfect answer. To a life that’s perfectly solving every one of life’s problems. But we’ll never finish. It’s always an incomplete.
Accept Things as They Are
So instead, we must turn the prison of logic on its head. Accept reality as it is, and forget our scheming. Zen Buddhism says instead, we should focus completely on the present moment. What we are doing right now.
In this way, we can escape the endless cycle of logic, planning, and disappointment or success. We can just accept things from one moment to the next, and forget about achievement or loss.
We can spend the night in the piss, and wake up the next day ready to climb the next mountain.
