Mindfulness. More of you will know what mindfulness is than when I wrote the first F**k It book seven years ago. The art of mindfulness is a beautiful one. But it’s not easy to write about – I tried for years.
And the best way I’ve come up with is through a character I’ve created: a character who finds beauty in the ordinary, who finds enlightenment in the everyday; a character called Bob the Buddha.
We’re releasing a whole range of stuff around Bob the Buddha soon (or, if you’re reading this after we’ve released it, that should read: And you can experience more of Bob the Buddha by going to www.bobthebuddha.com). But here’s a glimpse into the wonderful world of Bob the Buddha.
Bob vaguely remembers learning about Buddha and Buddhism at school a long time ago. He remembers that the Buddha became enlightened when he was sitting under a tree.
Bob likes sitting under trees, too.
He remembers his teacher asked them to try some meditation by thinking about nothing. He remembers it being very difficult to think about nothing.
The truth is – and the best of the Buddhists would confirm this – that the Buddha was no god… and anyone can become enlightened and become a Buddha.
Though Bob doesn’t know it, he’s a Buddha (that’s why I’m calling him ‘Bob the Buddha,’ but he doesn’t know that either). And you can be, too. We’re going to take a peek at Bob’s life: what he gets up to, what he thinks about, and find out how utterly simple it is to ‘wake up’ (as Buddhists would call it), become enlightened, and be happy to put your name in the following gap: _____ the Buddha.
Bob is very good at bringing his attention to what he’s doing.
He doesn’t do it all the time. Like every other human being, he spends a good deal of time daydreaming, thinking about the past or the future, or worrying about whether something might or might not happen.
But, over the years, he’s become more and more used to simply being present to what’s going on. His experiences in sitting still for a while occasionally have taught him that he doesn’t have to get so involved in what’s going on, either around him or inside him.
Different people call this process of ‘being present’ different things. The Buddhists call it ‘mindfulness.’ This is clear: we instantly know what we mean when we say we’re being mindful. But when we look into the word itself, it creates some difficulties (for me, at least). Our normal conscious state is to have our mind full of things, especially as adults. The process of ‘mindfulness,’ as intended by the Buddhists, is to clear the mind of the normal chatter by bringing your attention onto solely what is happening here, now. And by bringing your attention into the present, the mind often does clear, slow down, and become less ‘full.’ So, not really mindful at all.
Though Bob now owns a dishwasher (a machine, not a person, that is), he stills enjoys doing the dishes.
Of all the good things you can say about a dishwasher (again, the machine, we’re coming on to the person soon), it’s not so good with a whole range of necessary kitchen implements: sharp knives (it blunts them), fine wineglasses (it scratches them), and large pots and pans (it has trouble accommodating them).
Bob enjoys everything about the process of doing the dishes. He organizes everything well, so that the pots are sitting there on the counter filled with warm soapy water loosening the grease while he gets on with other things. He likes to feel his hands in the hot water.
He wipes and scrubs and rinses. He doesn’t think about other things, like what he’s going to do when he finishes the ‘job.’ He concentrates on what he’s doing: wiping, scrubbing, and rinsing. He enjoys the process of getting things clean.
Even though he knows that tomorrow they’ll be dirty again, and need cleaning again, he enjoys this process. Maybe he enjoys it precisely because it is a circular process. Most people like to aim to achieve something, work hard doing it, and then appreciate when it is done and ready for them to reap the benefits. But housework is circular and continuous. You have to enjoy the process rather than simply the end product.
So, in the suds of the kitchen sink, Bob finds his life message, his Zen master. This Le Creuset Master doesn’t allow Bob to think about the end product, only the process. If Bob’s attention wanders, the Master whips him back to attention, in the form of the transitory nature of the final product (the short-lived clean pot).
And, though Bob doesn’t know it, there’s a long tradition in Buddhism of doing the dishes mindfully. The Buddha himself, it is said, had just finished a heavy bout of dish washing, before he sat under the Bodhi tree. And Buddhist scholars have strained over the question as to whether this chore was a necessary precursor to the whole waking-up thing.
What’s good about doing the dishes as a mindful exercise is that you’d be hard-pushed to find a more mundane, menial, regular, relentless task in your life.
Because we so readily switch off in the face off this task (in the form of listening to the radio or daydreaming), it’s the greatest opportunity to switch on, and thus wake up in the face of true reality.
In this one ‘task’ alone, you might well look down into the mucky water and see the reflection of the Buddha staring back at you.
Bob’s always likes it when it really rains. Some of his strongest childhood memories are of watching raindrops falling down panes of glass, or listening to the rain on the roof of the family caravan, or splashing around in puddles in his bright red Wellington boots.
Now, he enjoys darting into store doorways, pulling his collar close, suddenly sharing something with other people: a kind of Blitz spirit in the face of a harmless and regular meteorological phenomenon. And he loves it: the chance for a break from the routine and the schedule.
He likes driving, too, in the driving rain. Maybe, he wonders, driving rain was so-named simply because its such good fun to drive in. Bob drives slowly in rain – it’s a great reason to exaggerate his usually careful, conscientious driving techniques.
Rain, especially big unavoidable rain, like many other things in his life, makes Bob feel cozy. Bob enjoys this cozy feeling. He gets it whenever he’s really in touch with the suchness of life. Rain bounces him out of any thought patterns he’s indulged in and reminds him of what’s going on around him. And, when he makes that jump from the mind’s constructions into the stuff of the material world around him, he feels good and cozy.
That’s Bob the Buddha. I hope you enjoyed meeting him. And I hope he’s helped convey the idea of ‘mindfulness’ and the magic that it can help create in your life.
Or, rather, for mindfulness is such an ordinary thing really, the way being mindful can allow you to see the beauty, the magic, the miracles, the divine, in the most ordinary things.
It’s very, very simple really: the magic is there if only you care to look.