Today felt like Sunday. I guess that happens when your life becomes routine, routine and more routine. I work 5 1/2 days so if I wake up at any day where I don't have to go to work, I'll automatically register that day as a Sunday. It is not so bad unless the public holiday actually falls on a Friday. I abstain on certain foods on Friday and when my days get messed up, I'd be chewing on a piece of lamb and going, "something doesn't feel right...". I would promptly realize my folly and beat myself up internally for not being aware eventhough I have been practising abstinence on Fridays for more than a decade!
So, routine is good but can also be not good. It gives a system to your daily life but it also dulls the mind. It is like auto-pilot. You don't think but just do. I think that will not do. Whilst we try to create some sort of system and stability in our lives to make it more comfortable, we should not do so at the deprivity of thought and reason.
By analogy, when I train in aikido, it is the same techniques over and over again. Through routine and muscle memory I know how execute an ikkyo technique, but it is different each time. Different uke, different maai, different degree of connection, different physical response...but doing an ikkyo nevertheless. So if I execute the technique in each and each situation as if it is the same because it is an ikkyo move, I would find the result to be rather different. It is the same technique, but different every time its done. That is because you are executing the technique at that moment, in that time, with that person. So my mind cannot form an attachment to what I had done before. It was a combination of factors THEN. It is different NOW.
Its human to yearn for comfort, but let's keep awake.
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