Unfinished

 The aspiration to take on long and arduous undertakings is a very noble one, but there are times when I feel that there could be certain joys in leaving things unfinished as well. It leads me to wonder what the true meaning of 'finished' actually is? Perhaps from a Chan perspective we can say that the moment is already complete in itself. In taking up this attitude, maybe things can be delayed and put aside until a later time when the body and mind are stronger.
   One of the things I have observed with reading especially is that I often adopt two different attitudes. One attitude is to treat reading as an exercise in finishing, regardless of where the work takes me--whether there is relevance or irrelevance, arduousness or ease of being. This reminds me of the meditation cushion, where participants are asked to sit in the same place without getting up whenever sitting is considered inconvenient. This approach suggests that reading itself is a discipline in completion, and the journey itself is what is most important, rather than the final 'point' of the book. I tend to like this approach because it asks the reader to suspend her or his judgment on the book's ultimate value, opting instead for a more intimate connection that goes beyond preference.
   There were a couple of books (among many, in fact) which I can remember I was not able to finish in spite of my best efforts. One of them was Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, while the other (still a work in progress, alas) is Bertrand Russell's History of Philosophy. It's not that I didn't like these books, but that I never found a concrete time to focus on them, considering the attention and effort that they demand. Magic Mountain is actually a book I continue to remember enjoying, up to the time that I chose to abandon it and take it up at a later time! So, does not completing these books make them less savory or worthwhile? Sometimes it's our memory and connection that counts more than our perception of how the experience should have 'closed' or finished. And I don't think that one should let the expectation of closure ruin the enjoyment of the experience of the book itself.