{"id":514,"date":"2009-03-26T16:41:27","date_gmt":"2009-03-26T16:41:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/03\/hardcore-dharma-chokes-up.html"},"modified":"2009-03-26T16:41:27","modified_gmt":"2009-03-26T16:41:27","slug":"hardcore-dharma-chokes-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/hardcore-dharma-chokes-up.html","title":{"rendered":"Hardcore Dharma Chokes Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a lump in my throat.\u00a0 Like one gets when Dumbo visits his mom in elephant jail.*\u00a0 My lump decided to visit my throat a week and a half ago and, except for a few hours of respite here and there, refuses to leave.\u00a0 It is a very annoying sensation – like there\u2019s a small hardened chick pea stuck beneath my larynx or a persistent phantom pill scratch scar that no hot liquid can soothe.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a real physical sensation, but I know that its cause is psychological.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got a lot on my plate these days and multi-tasking is really not my forte.\u00a0 I remember once I was discussing busy-ness and Buddhism with the sagacious Greg Zwahlen.\u00a0 Ambitiously I said, \u201cif one has a strong mindfulness practice then one should be able to handle an insane schedule\u201d and he said, \u201cWell \u2013 you know – it\u2019s a practice \u2013 it\u2019s not an antidote.\u201d\u00a0 House.** I agree \u2013 mindfulness is not an antidote for an untenable schedule.\u00a0 Yet schedule or not I\u2019m always disappointed when I have physiological reactions to stress because I start feeling that I AM A BUDDHIST AND SHOULD BE MORE AWARE! It kind of bothers me that there are obviously some pockets of anxiety I am not \u2018awake\u2019 to.\u00a0 But I will admit that the lump-in-my-throat mystery provoked some reasonably interesting investigation of my oppressively boring discursive mind.\u00a0 God I bore myself.\u00a0 How is it that thinking can seem so interesting while you\u2019re caught up in it and then be revealed as so incredibly lame\u00a0 when you have the slightest bit of distance?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

This is how it went down.\u00a0 Yesterday I had more time to meditate in the morning and as a result a stronger commitment to objectively seeing what was going on in my mind for a few hours.\u00a0 While my throat lump is back in business today, for the few hours that I really, with a steady mind, paid attention to that sucker I was able to see some physical links.\u00a0 Vague, discursive worries about money led to a greater feeling of the lump\u2019s prominence.\u00a0 I realized that when I turned to seemingly benign thoughts about my appearance (considering my date outfit or rearranging the bobby pins in my hair) I nearly started gagging.\u00a0 Checking my email or facebook page increased the sensation as did any thoughts about meals.\u00a0 The sensation lessened while I was paying attention at rehearsal, visually absorbing the big blue sky or watching Rambo Solo<\/a>, which is awesome and you should go see.<\/p>\n

Talk about a physical barometer.\u00a0 There was actually so much less tension around the issues I thought I was tense about.\u00a0 The anxiety, rather, clung to and flamed the fire of the most pedestrian of my mental activity. These oppressively boring thought patterns crowded my brain like those air-filled plastic packing sacks in a package of dharma books from Amazon.com.\u00a0 Once I acknowledged, noted and let the air out of the intense \u201cscarf or no-scarf\u201d, \u201cwhat will be my protein source at lunch\u201d and \u201cwho\u2019s that woman who commented on my boyfriend\u2019s facebook profile\u201d conversations that were fascinatingly raging in my mind, I found I was totally able to handle or plan for all the to-dos on my list with far more ease and grace.<\/p>\n

Thank you adversity with providing me with greater insight, I begrudgingly mumble.\u00a0 Do other folks have physical responses that reveal when they may not be as beginner\u2019s mind as they had suspected?\u00a0\u00a0 Also, Hardcore Dharma tested last week, but Julia May Jonas had rehearsal and could not be there.\u00a0 Did anything interesting go down?\u00a0 Comment for me below.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

*If you have watched this scene and do not know what I mean, then you are either a robot or made of stone and you frighten me.
\n**\u2019House\u2019 is a term used by anyone who grew up in n New Jersey in the 1990s.\u00a0 When combined with ducking under a triangle formation created with the hands, it is synonymous with gotcha congratulation-esque terms like \u2018snap.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a lump in my throat.\u00a0 Like one gets when Dumbo visits his mom in elephant jail.*\u00a0 My lump decided to visit my throat a week and a half ago and, except for a few hours of respite here and there, refuses to leave.\u00a0 It is a very annoying sensation – like there\u2019s a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-media"],"yoast_head":"\nHardcore Dharma Chokes Up - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/hardcore-dharma-chokes-up.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hardcore Dharma Chokes Up - 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