Devotion to "Oneness"

 In my last blog, I hinted at the acceleration of time that often assails people in today's technological societies, and how easily one is driven to distractions simply by virtue of all the many choices at one's disposal. This evening, I was having a conversation with a fellow practitioner from the Thursday meditation group, remarking about how I rarely attend the Toronto International Film Festival screenings because there are simply too many films to choose from! In this regard, I wonder if having too much choice in life can sometimes bog down the mind.
    The British writer Alan Watts had a lot of say about this, where he used two analogies: the sidewalk and the dirty dishes. In the sidewalk analogy, Watts talks about there only being one sidewalk tile that one needs to walk at any given time. Because the other sidewalk tiles only exist in a hypothetical future and the previous ones exist in a hypothetical 'past', there is really only one sidewalk tile that you ever really have to approach. Of course, many Chan practitioners would argue further to say that even the present tile doesn't exist outside of the mind itself, so it is even wrong to say that we 'only' have this present sidewalk tile. But the reason I find this analogy so powerful is that it limits the scope (but not the freedom) of the mind to remain in the moment, rather than projecting into an unlived future. The second analogy that Watts refers to is that of a pile dishes that need to be cleaned. Watts, true to his previous example, suggests that there is only ever one dish to clean! Why worry about the pile of dishes when we really only handle one dish at any given time? I tend to like this latter example even more than the first, because I tend not to like doing dishes (not the plural), but prefer washing one dish instead...only to realize that the two are the same.
   Both analogies mentioned by Watts suggest that one can learn to reduce distractions by devoting themselves to a kind of unity, such as that of present moment. If a person feels overwhelmed or anxious about something, it's often the case that the person is seeing a pile of dishes rather than respecting that there is only one dish to clean. Watts is exhorting his readers to stop projecting the present into the future, but instead to take the present moment as a place of enjoyment and devotion. As soon as I project or abstract-ify the present, I create hydra-like monsters, where each head represents accumulated responses and possibilities.