Some Days Are Just Like This

By Michael Erlewine

It was around 11 degrees above zero when I started out this morning at 6 AM to the local grocery store, about four miles, and on the way back I caught a full-blown flat, just barely limping home with a shredded tire. And on the way to the store, just after I left our driveway, my mind told me I should not be driving this far without a phone. I checked that box in my mind, and, on the return soon found myself crawling along, trying to get back home. A flat tire.

On top of that, I have had an email screw-up for days, so I was stuck on the phone for an hour a second time trying to clear that. Not possible for the next 24–72 hours. That’s my day so far. I’m waiting for AAA to come and fix my tire. And it’s only 8:30 AM.

Later. The tire is fixed. It took two separate jacks to lift the car up because the car was on an incline. The car shifted suddenly and blew one jack out. We had to carefully reconstruct. Of course, there is snow all around. We got through it, and I took the shredded tire to be repaired. Some days are like that. Of course, in response some dharma reflections reflect on this day. They kind of went like this.

Being in a hurry will not bring realization any sooner; quite the contrary. I freeze frame, focus, and rest in that. In the well of the present moment, everything is once again possible.

Let’s not ‘do’ anything. Allow whatever it is to fold back in upon itself, recursively.

Sorry I have to say the following: I have collected so many tens of thousands of books over the years, but I just can’t stand to read books anymore. I recently got by mail one big fat book, with information that I need. I opened it up and it was all text. No lists, graphs, or arrangement of text to make it readable. Just 482 pages of dense text, with one diagram, that itself was useless.

Sorry folks, but that dog will no longer hunt.

I kind of need to read that book because it is about longevity. LOL. I’ll be dead before I can read all that. I just put it aside, then gave it to Margaret in case she has it in her to read it. I don’t.

I still read dharma texts, and even then, just what are called pith texts, the shorter the better. I have a problem with words if they are not succinct. I don’t mean lots of words. I know I write many words here, yet I try to make them cut through the verbosity and get down to what they mean or point to.

The antidote, the remedy for this modern society is grounding our thoughts and ideas in experience and feelings, in the Hara or gut. As I look through what I see being written or posted online, the only prose I can credit is that which seeks to ground out conceptuality in the reality of experience, in what we feel and experience.

As a ‘coda’, there is this.

I’m kind of boxed-in by fate, at least today, the CMEs, the flat tire, the messed-up emails, etc. As mentioned, it’s one of those days.

Whatever befalls me has to be handled exactly, like for example, anything else. No sloppy moves will help, no quick fix. Careful, detailed, without effort does it demand. Nothing different, nothing else.

Getting through a day hour by hour and minute by minute. It’s not that I can’t rush, but that nothing can be rushed and still work out. That’s the whole idea, the process itself, the means is the end. As mentioned: no sloppy fixes.

I can go round and round as much as I want, but I will always end up right back here in the midst of the effect of a solar-flare CME day. Ha!

Rolling over, getting along, going with the flow is just that. No sneaking up on or getting around it. Where I leave off with it is just where it is. No one is going to do it for me. It remains undone until I do it.

It’s like the fat and the frying pan. Start from here and move forward or don’t. And also, as mentioned, a sloppy or quick job doesn’t do it, just does not work.

That’s the most amazing thing!

Everything remains the same until I do something about it, or often it even gets worse. LOL.

The lesson is that the lesson ‘IS’. That’s the lesson.

As the poet Gerard Manley Hokins put it:

“See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair Is, hair of the head, numbered.”

That’s like infinite, and it starts right here and right now!

It remains here unchanged until I change it.

That’s why the dharma says that we each must turn the wheel of our own dharma. Dharma is a do-it-yourself project. Dharma is so patient that it can wait forever until we do it, get around to turning the wheel of our own dharma one more round.

And so, take a pause, or better yet, stop pausing and get on with what obviously has to be done, turning the wheel of our dharma.

Even on a day like today, with wildfire buzzing around my head, I might as well take a deep breath and get on with turning that wheel. Incrementally, take steps forward, one foot in front of the other.

Trust me, some days are just like that.

[Midjourney graphic prompted by me.]

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As Bodhicitta is so precious,

May those without it now create it,

May those who have it not destroy it,

And may it ever grow and flourish.