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!
