Beautiful Troubles

 Today, I was working on fine tuning some of my draft proposals for a scholarship at the library, based on some readings. There came a point where in all honesty, all the proposals were looking quite uninspiring to me. One of them is so vague and broad that even the process of narrowing it down to a single topic to be researched felt daunting. I ended up reading a book about Jonathan Swift instead, in preparation for Saturday's classes. I have to say that these moments are often quietly despairing, almost a sense of "waiting for inspiration to happen" when there really isn't much hope on the horizon. I sometimes wonder if I am not being affected somewhat by the cold weather (we are in quite a deep freeze now in Toronto) as well as the looming work week.
  There are times when I truly believe that these "misses" aren't as bad as one thinks if one re-frames them as a time of incubation or even "non-doing". But because people are so enamored with stages, they might not see the value in non-doing or not taking initiative.  There is actually something valuable about the feeling of "being on the train tracks": there is a beautiful sense of trouble if one stops the mind for a bit and appreciate and savors the trouble itself. I am reminded of the Buddhist parable about the monastic who is surrounded on all sides by dangers, only to find themselves savoring fruit on a tree. Why savor? Well, why not savor? Is there anything else to do in those situations?
  I have often had nightmares in the past which relate to either not completing a course that I am required to take, or worse still, not being able to answer questions which somehow I feel I am supposed to answer. If I put down the dire need to answer, the situation changes somewhat, and I can appreciate the trouble in the mind in its context. Another analogy I like to ponder in this regard is that of frantically kicking one's arms and legs to prevent oneself from drowning, only to realize that these frantic attempts are not only unnecessary but even counter-productive to staying a float. Again, I see here my own terror of non-doing, and the sense that non-doing or slowing down will lead me to perdition. All of these examples, in fact, point to an opposite skill, namely yielding to the grace of non-doing, non-achieving, and even allowing oneself to be stupefied at times: cut short in one's endless train of thoughts, to behold what exactly is, the way one sees a work of art.