But What Do You Do All Day?
People have asked this of us for the past few years now. They’re asking this from their American/Western paradigm of speed, frenetic busyness, action, accomplishment, don’t just sit there…..do something! One of the principal realities of Asia for us is that everything slows down. People move more slowly, at least where we go. Things take longer. (We’re waiting for Nancy’s suit case to arrive from, now Delhi we’re told, for example, and this might well take several days…..UPDATE: it arrived here at Stupa Guest House, Sherabling, a few minutes ago, 4 days after we arrived in Delhi). There’s considerably more space and time surrounding events, so the prospect of wondering what to do all day takes on a different kind of meaning.
Not the same dance here
we move in a different realm
slowly with deep breaths
We’re not here to accomplish anything, or to be busy, or to get things done. It’s precisely the opposite of these things that we find so attractive about being here at Sherabling, and in village Thailand. Because there’s more time, or the experience of more time, or the slowing down of time, perhaps paradoxically time fills itself up more easily with the ordinary and necessary activities of daily life.
We’re still in the throes of getting re-oriented and settled in, but besides that, we sleep, we get up, we take walks, we visit with people, we stretch, we meditate (although, just being here is a meditation), we eat, we make inquiries, we make decisions, we write, we make plans, we do kora, we buy toilet paper and biscuits, we order lunch or dinner and eat again, we compute, we’re still dealing with the fallout from the debit card fraud we experienced before we left Santa Fe, all the more challenging with an 11 1/2 hour time difference). We do ordinary life, but in the slower, more spacious manner that one does sacred ordinary life in the parts of Asia we live in, and before you know it a whole day has gone bye, and then there’s another one on the evening horizon of our holy ordinary lives.
I do make it a point to tell people who ask this question of us that, probably, they would not be very happy where we go if they require a lot of stimulation. Simply because ……well……. there’s really nothing much to do, here.
It’s not easy when
making efforts to slow down
restless mind kicks in
