Breaking News--When you get regular sleep and plenty of it, you have no trouble staying awake during the day and you don't even need coffee. Who knew? You totally need to try this sleeping thing out. It's so necessary for your well-being. Promise me you'll try it. Try it for a month. You'll be amazed!
I used to feel terrified of death, especially during the time when my husband, Karl, was dying of cancer.
Then when I was working for Rigpa, I reached a point of, what I thought was a bit of renunciation. I was happy that I was helping people find and follow the Buddhist teachings and I didn't care if I lived or died. I could die knowing that my life was well-spent and hopefully I would meet the teachings again in my next lifetime or at least eventually.
Now, however, I am enjoying my new slacker life so much, I would really, really prefer to live!
So on the one hand, you could say I was so miserable that I didn't care if I lived or died and I was so tired I was numb to all pain and discomfort. On the other hand, I feel as if I've ended one life and am now in heaven and probably I'm using up the good karma I created in my life version 1.0. Either way it's all good. Liz calls working for your buddhist group "Staff Ngondro" and now I do believe it's true. Ngondro is a practice of purification. It's sort of like polishing the tarnish off to reveal the gold underneath. My life version 2.0 would not be this amazing if version 1.0 hadn't come first.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Beware life 2.0 - it seems different but the features of life 1.0 are still there, just hidden in some obscure preferences menu. Having the sleep till I wake up preference is my favourite but if you turn it off the old defaults from staff Ngondro can easily turn back on.
ReplyDeleteSince we need purification we will have to foray back into repeated short staff ngondro retreats but its good of the sleep preference stays on even during those retreats since with sleep you can actually still do work of a good quality anyway.
Its all those "productivity habits" that are risky - I recommend contemplating the 4hr work week and some books like that to put into perspective that we have to be workaholics to be successful even if we are working for the benefit of beings. We can use the other 36 hours to nourish ourselves and actualize the teachings etc.
Grumpy monk
Love
Sangye
HAHA!!! Your comments are brilliant and true.
ReplyDeleteHere's what I think the ideal schedule is:
4 hrs practice
4 hrs work
4 housekeeping, cooking, cleaning, gardening, eating, paperwork, various chores
4 hrs write my book
8 hrs sleep
I emailed Diane saying I was thinking of not coming to CL and I thought they would be fine with the A/V and IT without me. She gave me a wonderful email lecture/chewing out, which I was very pleased with, and said it was going to be a "huge problem" especially since Austin's not going.
Her whole rant was so hilarious I told her I'd go (and do more staff Ngondro).