Stirring the Porridge - in Praise of the Ordinary.

Often in life we look for the special and exciting. We often don't want to be with the ordinary and simple everyday things like, washing the dishes, vacuuming the house and waiting for a bus and sending emails. In Zen Buddhism the highest of practice is not experiencing the glories or higher states of consciousness, not sitting at the side of the Buddha of golden light or experiencing god-like bliss but stirring the porridge.

There is no glamour or glory in stirring the porridge except maybe if you make it especially nice so people will compliment you, but that's as good as it gets. Stirring the porridge is really about bringing alive the mundane and simple aspects of life, which we often see as getting in the way of living.

These mundane aspects are the everyday activities that we all have to do, but quite often we resist, which leads to tension and distress. Our mindfulness practice is about noticing how we are with activities like, walking up the stairs, tying our shoelaces, talking to an employee, buttoning our shirt. It can mean observing how we are when cleaning the toilet, sweeping the floor, sitting in a meeting or eating a cheese sandwich.

Do we notice how we want to be doing something else? Do we observe when we are present with the activity we are engaged in? Being in the NOW is the buzz term nowadays, but do we know what it really means? It has very little to do with white lights and feeling cosmic bliss, but is more to do with stirring the porridge.

I remember my days of training in Buddhism when on retreat. We always had work periods and I really didn't like it. I would curse and resist like hell. “I don't want to do this sort of work.” This was my view, but slowly the penny dropped and I came to see that everything is practice.

Our practice when engaging in these activities is to notice when the thinking, dreaming mind takes us away. We say a gentle but firm “no” then return back to the activity at hand, return back to the present moment. We don't need to judge ourselves for thinking about a million and one things, but simply to notice and return back to the body and the activity.

It is good to know the consequences of indulging in certain kinds of thinking. Most of it may seem innocuous little day dreams but these distractions are the way ignorance maintains its hold over us. If the thoughts are charged with strong emotion such as anger or revenge we know that indulging these can lead to harmful behaviour. We observe it all and turn to the present moment, which means stirring the porridge, listening to a friend or doing a business deal.

But however much we tell ourselves that we want and should live in the present we don’t. We see ourselves time and again off on some day dream or regretting some past actions. Why is this? It is because we are not really interested in stirring the porridge or putting out the rubbish bag. We do these things physically but emotionally we just aren’t interested. We would rather fantasize about our latest boyfriend, play with our latest gadget or dream about what we are going to have for dinner. 

Conversely we may find ourselves worrying about the future and what it may bring. This is because we all have a self-image and this image exists only as a belief in the head. The image maintains and reinforces its identity through unconscious thinking. If you notice who is at the centre of all the chatter that rattles through your brain you will notice that you are. Much of the thinking is about protecting ourselves from hurt by either going over past hurts or making sure we don’t get hurt in the unknown future.

In times of happiness and pleasure it is quite easy to be aware of the present. When we are happy our self-image is much more fluid. Our mind is undivided and whole and we are at peace. However, when pain arrives it is quite a different matter and it doesn’t really matter whether it’s physical or psychological. We don’t like this. The mind then becomes separated from experience and goes into conflict with the pain. It may use its usual strategies of trying to get rid of it, condemning it, or even shutting down. It is only when we see clearly that these strategies don’t work that we stop employing them. We stop trying to do something to the pain – we learn to accept it as part of life and we mature as a consequence. 

Learning to come back to the presnt moment even in the midst of pain is what matures us as human beings. We are not being martyrs here, we are not looking for pain but if it is there we stop pretending otherwise. There are two ways to suffer. Either we suffer with awareness and learn from it and let it season and mature us or we just resist by any method we can. Those methods may include, over drinking, over work, keeping busy, running away from responsibilities. Blaming others is a very common way of not experiencing our own pain.

When I first started practicing Buddhism in the early 1990s I had a lot of fear inside me. I used various strategies to get rid of the fear but none of them really worked. The fear was still there most of the time. I knew the theory of meeting fear and had the read the books but didn’t understand it until I had a dream whilst on a solitary meditation retreat. In the dream I had to go into a room in a house. As I approached the room I realized there was a raging fire inside it. I of course did not want to enter and stood by the doorway wondering what on earth to do. At that moment a friend in the dream came by and pushed me into the room and I awoke with a start.

On waking I knew instantly what the dream was telling me. It was showing me that I must enter into the fear – into the fire. Only by entering into it completely would I understand what fear is and be at peace with it. I realized that by struggling against fear was a way of generating more fear. To be free from pain we need to stop separating from it. When we do this time and again we see that the only real possibility is to be with the pain just as we can be with pleasure. We need to learn the art of coming back to both the pleasant and the unpleasant in life. This as one good teacher called it is the wisdom of no escape.

Stirring the porridge then is being with the whole of life without separating from it. It is allowing the joy to dance and the pain to sing. Our work is to create a big space in which it can all happen in its own beautiful way.

If you wish to learn mindfulness please see our website www.mindfulnesscic.co.uk