More Cool Boredom

This is a video in which not much happens - just two "natural enemies" hanging out. It epitomizes the kind of day I've been happy to have: cool boredom. I see I blogged about this last Tuesday.  So I suppose I don't have much conceptual to say.

I started my day - or did I end yesterday? - enjoying the smell of clary sage, which is supposed to be "balancing."  I doubt that that alone can cool a bipolar down in August, but what do I know?  It's a nice smell, unusual, hard to categorize, but a little piney.  Wikipedia says it "has a lengthy history as a medicinal herb, and is currently grown for its essential oil."  My oils are mostly Aura Cacia, which is sold in the sweet hippie-spiritual shop in our neighborhood called Pearls of Wisdom.  Descriptions of this herb's medical use go back to the 4th century BCE. 

Pearls is a great place to buy things like an endless-knot pendant or a votive candle holder carved out of rose quartz (which is believed to aid in kidney problems).  Quartz has a measurable vibration.  Just saying.  And I do have such a candle-holder, a gift from Tom one birthday.  He is a scientist, majored in physics, so he understands what a huge amount we don't know in this universe.  Don't Know is also a Zen concept, and that reminds me of a charming story I read recently in another blog, Wild Fox Zen.

Reminds me of a story James Ford told me which I see will be in his new book due out in September, If You’re Lucky, Your Heart Will Break: Field Notes From A Zen Life.
Way back in the late ’60′s he was given zazen instructions at San Francisco Zen Center and then brought into the zendo to sit. Then …
“…I was ushered into an interview with a senior priest. Dainin Katagiri Roshi, then called by the title sensei, was on duty. I made the bows as I was instructed and sat awkwardly before him.
He asked how long I’d been sitting.
I estimated three, maybe five minutes.
He said, “Good. Keep that mind.’”

There is a point there that Zen students know - as we ripen in meditation practice, we develop what Joko Beck called "tricks" for amusing ourselves or evading aspects of our reality that are trying to catch up with us.  In Zen, we are reminded to approach not only meditation, but every moment, as if we'd never been there before, never done that before.*

Back to my day.  I sat over the Thursday NY Times with Tom - my favorite paper of the week.  I clucked over the follies in the Style section, and Tom told me about the craziness in the Home section.  Ate a good breakfast, cereal, walnuts (for Omega-3), dried cranberries and organic milk.  Did my stretches and meditated.  Did weekly pill box which took a long time, but that was okay.  No rush.  Air quality is bad today, and so are molds in the air, and I don't have to go anywhere, so I'm not.  I'd have to wear a surgical mask if I did; the immunosuppressants have made my allergies terrible.  Made tuna salad for lunch, with cucumbers cut up in it (they are cooling). Made tuna melts in the toaster-oven.

And so on.  That kind of day.  Not manic, not depressed, just a nice cool day appreciating our air-conditioned and filtered air, our shade, and especially, being retired.

* If I had never seen this computer screen before, I'd be flabbergasted.

Boredom Ointment

Self-portrait in orange shoelaces

The Vermont Country Catalog came today, and I was leafing through, looking at the supplements they offer us old people - this company is all about nostalgia, and easing old age.  There is a supplement for vertigo, for instance, that you smell to relax your anxiety and help you focus.  It contains lavender and some other essential oils; I approve.  It's fun to think of really old people (older than me) learning to use these hippy-dippy things that came out of the seventies.

I like aromatherapy, which is a science built on the oral tradition. I have a collection of scents I can use to bring me down a little or cheer me up or just relax me.

On the same page in the catalog I came across what I thought was Boredom Ointment.  What?  No, it's Boreoleum Ointment.  Which looks a lot like Vicks Vaporub for your nose.  But I already have a classy Ayurvedic nasal oil from Banyan Botanicals.  Ayurveda is basically another folk-wisdom tradition.

But, Boredom ointment!  If only there were a cream you could dab on and immediately feel interested in yourself and your surroundings.  I googled images for Bored student and got well over 2 million hits.  This seems like a lot, and accurately reflects what my own public schooling was like, but it's only 1% of the number of  hits for Britney.  Why Britney?  I don't know.  I didn't even know  she was the Queen of Pop until I looked her up. 

Anyway, this morning something led me to see that her Facebook page has over 2 million "likes".    Why is that number taunting me?  Because mine has 1,999,62 less, unless it's taken a huge growth spurt since this morning.  I asked why on my personal Facebook page, and haven't had any helpful answers, except that maybe I have too much time on my hands.  I think this difference is a comment on human nature, in fact. I'm a fun person (see photo above), but not as much fun as Britney, I guess.

Actually, these subjects - boredom and Britney- have found themselves side-by-side in my sprawling brain, and pulling weird, anomalous things together is what we artists do.  Britney is not an artist and Buddhist blogger, but an entertainer.  Entertainment is excitement, and seems to fill that big space of being bored or discontented with life or downright unhappy.  It pays much better than art.

Is discontentment the same as boredom?  I think it is, in a way.  There are some writings on boredom in the massive body of work left behind by Chogyam Trungpa, whose page is surprisingly small, with some 21,000 hits, though he was quite entertaining in his lifetime. 

To my surprise, there is no page for Ocean of Dharma, which sends me quotes like the one below from him.  Britney may be the Queen of Pop, but his honorific is Rinpoche, a Tibetan term for a Buddhist teacher which means "precious jewel". 

“Boredom is part of the discipline of meditation practice. This type of boredom is cool boredom, refreshing boredom. Boredom is necessary and you have to work with it. It is constantly very sane and solid, and very boring at the same time. But it’s refreshing boredom. The discipline then becomes part of one’s daily expression of life. Such boredom seems to be absolutely necessary. Cool boredom.” Chogyam Trungpa