” This Buddhist practice is not complicated. Just let go of your cravings, your aversions, and your attachments.” That’s what the teacher said at my first meditation retreat many years ago. He was right that it’s not complicated, but I don’t remember him mentioning that it’s just next door to impossible. You can spend a lifetime trying to eliminate your cravings, aversions and attachments and hardly make a dent in them. Good thing traditional Buddhists believe in reincarnation because it will surely take countless turns of the Great Mandala to get the job done.
But I can’t concern myself with that. Since I have at best a few years left in this incarnation, I’ve no time to waste. Now that I’m a couple of weeks into retirement I can already see that one of my oldest, coziest attachments is going to be a major problem: deeply entrenched torpor. In Buddhist orthodoxy torpor is seen as a kilesa, an affliicting emotion or mind state through which we make ourselves miserable. Of course most of us have many of these, but each of us has certain ones that are our own personal best misery makers. One of my own favorites has always been torpor, probably because I’m so good at it. No doubt the consequence of bad karma from past lives. If it’s true that our Death is always standing to our left watching us, waiting for the Day of the Tap, then surely Torpor is standing to my right, always yawning in my ear.
I’ve been pretty good about getting up and going to the Y for a workout most mornings since I retired. When I get home, however, Torpor follows me through the door. The new Tempur-pedic mattress turns into a malicious memory foam magnet. The tv remote attaches itself to my well-meaning but weak fingers. Just one episode of “Leave It to Beaver”, and then I’ll meditate for a couple of hours. And then, Look! A documentary about Roswell and UFO’s! That could be significant, and by no means a waste of time.Ten o’clock already? Okay, just a few minutes of Sports Center, and then I’ll meditate for an hour. Now it’s eleven, so I’d better take a short nap to regain my focus. Comes noon. Lunchtime. A bagel and a piece of pineapple just for energy purposes so that I can really get down to business.
So it goes. Being a lay monk has its challenges, not the least of which is the fact that all the discipline has to come from inside, not from routines of the monastery or some master with a stick. One thing that that I’ve noticed about mindfulness and sitting meditation is that if you do it diligently over a period of time, your kilesas become increasingly clear and obvious. It becomes harder and harder to bullshit yourself. The personal demons who used to rumble and groan for acknowledgement briefly and on rare occassions are now consistently getting up in your face. When you’re in sitting meditation and your mind starts to slow down and focus, all (or most) of the blabbity-blab that is normally going on in your head eventually goes quiet. That’s when the Big Kilesas come crashing out of the jungle like King Kong looking to be appeased. You start to see yourself as you are.
One of the things that keeps me going in this practice is something that I’ve experienced just enough to call it a belief, a very sustaining belief. This practice is gradually transformative.

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