Acedia I

I had to go back and see... how long has it been?  


It started sneaking in around the edges in May.  Meh.  I forgot about the boredom.  Blamed my 40th birthday in October as the starting point for all this drought and aversion.  Or maybe it was the transition to our new Temple.  But it was setting in before, right in the midst of Spring beauty and blossoms, just the start of a trip into the desert.  


"Acedia (also accidie or accedie, from Latin acedĭa, and this from Greek ἀκηδία, negligence) describes a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one's position or condition in the world. It can lead to a state of being unable to perform one's duties in life. Its spiritual overtones make it related to but distinct from depression. Acedia was originally noted as a problem among monks and other ascetics who maintained a solitary life." ~Wikipedia

Hogen-San assigned me to report about acedia for our last Sanghakai meeting.  No accident there.  And I ended up writing him a long email about how I don't have acedia.  That it's more probably a mild depressive episode.  It must be so amusing to be a Teacher sometimes.      


My initial reluctance to claim this was its connection to sloth, aka "spiritual laziness".  This causes my Puritan DNA to get mighty self-righteous and defensive.  Greedy?  Yes. Ignorant?  Yes.  Heck, murderous sometimes.  Anything but lazy!  I still care about not caring!             

Nope, I'm in the desert of acedia all right.  Am I in the middle of it?  Almost out?  I can't see the edges from within.  No way to know.  Apparently all of us on the Path have to go through this.  Care to share your map?  A little water?        

Bored Bored Bored

I'm finally investigating this state of boredom.  I've been tolerating it, but hadn't bothered to really take a good look at what it actually IS (thanks, Algernon!).  Which is exactly the ground in which boredom thrives:  "I've seen it all before."  "I know what this is about."  "Same ole same ole".  It's a lot like looking through a ViewMaster.  Remember those?

I'm finding boredom to be a subtle (sometimes not-so-subtle) expression of aversion.  A turning away from what is.  Those ViewMaster pictures are not real.  There are only just the same 14 pictures, over and over again.  Something comforting, predictable in that.  But not life.    

Boring!

Meh:  The near enemy of equanimity.  


My practice is in a challenging place.  There was this place I called "dormant", suggesting some subterranean life somewhere.  Now it's full-on, undeniable "boring."  A dry, irritable place.  Desert metaphors do not do justice, for in deserts, there are potentially dangerous creatures, and those are interesting.    


One of the more recent expressions of this boredom is suddenly becoming enamored with another credential; flirting with the idea of getting into a counseling-related program which includes dream work, and art, and archetype study.  A 2-year training program, which I suppose I would be doing on top of the 3-year Buddhist study and leadership program several of us lay practitioners have just started with Hogen called Sanghakai.   

I sat down to blog about all this, and then realized a beautiful Portland spring evening was slipping away.  So I went out and took a walk to our new Temple (not yet open for business, but soon), which takes about an hour at a gentle pace.  

The world offers its sights, sounds of baseball games, dogs, and traffic, the smells of people's dinner cooking and laundry drying, and just feeling the sidewalk underfoot.    

 There are two kitties in the above photo!