Planting Seeds, not Running Races

  There is something to be said about not making too many leaps. I learned this in meditation, because it's the most subtle thing that there is in the world. Anyone who tries to put a marker of 'progress' on meditation is bound to be disappointed, because eventually you will reach a kind of still point where even the idea of progress seems superimposed, if not a bit fake. Can we put 'progress' on water or oceans? We never think that these things 'progress' and yet there is a tendency to value progress over and above the simple things in life.
   I tend to think it in this way. For everything I do in life, I will say that I try to put in 400% of who I am. I mean: I set a high bar for myself, even if I know that deep down, it's not possible for me to achieve it given my mental and physical limitations. But there is always going to be something out there that surprises me or dumbfounds me. For instance, even with the best intentions,  I might test a process at work, only to find later that there is some bug in the program that wasn't even discovered in the test cases. Even with the very best blueprint, there are times when that plan itself can blind a person to other factors that could not have been imagined or conceived of when the blueprint was first designed. Does progress or 'thinking fast' help in those situations? Sometimes it does help to think quickly, but one should never be lulled into equating quickness with solving a problem thoroughly. In other words, there is no guarantee in progress that one doesn't have to start all over again.
    I find that it's important not to think too linearly. I cannot harbor this illusion that success happens when a person covers all the bases. Life doesn't happen this way, because there is no plan that can account for all the karmic seeds and how they ripen at different moments in time. When you see a well-crafted movie, you will notice all its subtle twists and turns, and how the good director weaves the details together symbolically, and none of it is quite what you expected. Now take that movie and multiply it by all the people and situations you come across, and you will find that life is made of a million overlapping and conflicting movie plots, plans, and blueprints. Can any of these things orchestrate to create a predictable outcome? One can reasonably expect things to happen based on previous trials, but besides that, can it be done so quickly and in a linear fashion of jumping from A to B?
    I think Buddhism has an interesting take on this, and that is to refer to merit as a field, instead of as an edifice. The typical meritorious symbol in certain cultures in the West is that of a statue: I build one to commemorate a famous person, or someone who contributed their resources to a better society. But Buddhism uses the field instead of the statue, to represent virtue or goodness. Goodness does not come about automatically by doing something noteworthy. Rather, it is about doing certain things at certain moments, to certain things, and waiting for other conditions to co-create a wholesome result. None of this is about rushing: we can't just plant the seed and stare at it, waiting for it to grow. In fact, the whole process of observing the development of something is teaching us about the ways of the universe: complex, unpredictable, and always full of twists and emerging new karmic results. None of this is boring, and it's wonderful to think that relationships themselves are really about learning the ways of the universe from each other. Why race through it when it can be enjoyed slowly?