The holiday shoppers downtown compete with the wind and flurries to get their last minute shopping done. There are swirls of snow in the dark clouds outside as people haul into the Bay and Winners, lining up for the 40% off sales, 20%, then 10%. And people calmly appraise the items as though on a mission to get the best deal imaginable. And in the store fronts on Queen Street there are many welcoming signs of the holidays: montages of animated mannequins who display the comforts of holiday seasons, including the anticipation of gifts, the decoration of trees, and the making of toys for kids. Sometimes the displays are quite fun, while other times, the sense is of being overwhelmed.
Holidays are often times when people might feel the push to maintain a festive spirit in work and daily life. I once heard the story that many people end up feeling worse around the holiday seasons, precisely for the reason that people's feelings might not resonate with the expectation and anticipation that the holidays promise. It could also be a failure to empathize with the attitude that the holidays are trying to induce. There are times when I wonder what kinds of attitudes would most endear me to the spirit of the season.
I have often experienced a sense of dislocation in the bigger department stores, particularly toward the end of the year, as the holidays approach. When I look at the feeling carefully, I think part of this disorientation is being faced with the range of choices in terms of gifts to buy, sales be aware of, signs and signals from the aisles. I am simply not a shopping type at the moment, except when it comes to things like books. I imagine that this process takes getting used to, and shopping in the holiday season often feels like coming out of a hibernation of sorts. I think there is also an anxiety of not wanting to buy things that are not needed. These experiences teach me the value of discerning the difference between want and need. And that discernment seems to take a long time of cultivation. Still other times, there is a sense of disengagement. Many stores try to make the experience much more exciting than it actually is. Shopping is a kind of work, like any other.
Today, I read a chapter from a selection of writings from D.T. Suzuki, Zen Buddhism, where he talks about the role of the 'material' in daily life. Suzuki echoes a general approach to material things when he notes that they are an integral part of the daily experience of mind. At one point, he notes "You do not want salvation at the cost of your own existence. If so, drink and eat, and find your way of freedom in this drinking and eating." (p.14) Here I think: the very basic things of life, like eating and drinking could become an experience in practice, just as shopping or doing some other chore can also create the same opportunity to investigate within.
Suzuki reminds me to take shopping as one more aspect of mind. Whatever experience is arising from it is not coming from the shopping itself, or the items in the aisle, and nor is it coming from a specific place within. So where is this experience coming from, exactly? Where does one locate the feeling of disorientation? It's not something anyone needs to answer, but it is turning something that seems mundane into a source of wonder. It also avoids thinking of the experience as just another habitual thing that is performed.
I think that if I can learn to practice an awareness that isn't comparing to my previous memory, everything can look fresh to me and new. But even in the event that I cannot achieve that freshness, I found it enjoyable to simply be with the emotions I was having while shopping, and letting go of the judgments. It is still a long journey for me before I can say that this experience is natural or enjoyable to me. But in observing it the way Suzuki describes, it can become an interesting experience to observe the mind's variety of reactions, and never to conclude that it is an absolutely 'good' or 'bad' experience.
Suzuki, D.T (1956) (ed, William Barrett), Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D.T. Suzuki. New York: Doubleday Anchor.
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