Windshield Wiper Meditation

I’ve been dabbling in the practice of meditation, and found an interesting way to practice on my commute home.   Let me see if I can explain this.

It’s raining, and the wipers aren’t decidedly not slappin’ out a tempo to the tune of an Eddie Rabbit song.  (Does anybody even remember Eddie Rabbit?)  No, my wipers are doing an imitation of an asthmatic goose, chattering away with a honk-weep, honk-weep kind of sound.

One of the interesting aspects of Buddhism is that each one of us constructs our world from our thoughts and all the inputs we receive from our senses.  “All that you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be” in the words of Pink Floyd.

Another aspect of Buddhism is the notion that suffering is caused by wishing that things were different than they actually are.  In other words, I suffer only if I interpret honk-weep as a sound that is annoying and one I shouldn’t have to deal with.

And thusly I spent my commute learning to accept the honk-weep sound as part of my world, and noticed that despite the sound, they are doing a decent job of keeping the windshield clear.  Better yet, their noise and the cacophony of the heavy rain totally drowns out the buzzing noise that happens at about 2k RPM which I haven’t been able to track down yet.

Driving a 16 year old truck turns out to be surprisingly similar to running with a 40-something year old body.  You have to learn which noises signal something serious that needs attention, and learn to accept all the rest as part of the whole experience.  My ankle just cracked while writing this. No problem!