Runaway horse

I sat last night for the first time in months it seems. My daily practice gave way to a move, vacation and lots of business that made it easy to avoid. But I returned to staring at a wall with only my breath and runaway thoughts.

I also picked up where I left off reading Living with the Devil by Stephen Batchelor. This is my second reading I believe...and the first few paragraphs of the next chapter really sunk in after my 20 minute sitting.

I wanted to share some of it because it describes so well our daily condition in this life:

“All the unhappiness of men” remarked Pascal, “comes from one thing: not knowing how to stay quietly in a room.” Sitting still on your own confronts you with the intolerable contingency of your existence. You feel the breath come and go, the heart thud, a jab of pain in the lower back, a ringing in the ear, another anxious cascade of thoughts. When Michel de Montaigne retired to his country estate in 1571, he hoped to leave his mind “in complete idleness to commune with itself, to come to rest, and to grow settled.” To his surprise it turned out to be “like a runaway horse” confronting him with “chimeras and imaginary monsters, one after another, without order or plan.”

Batchelor continues…

Rather than face the contingency of my existence, I flee it. This existential flight is the diabolic undercurrent of human life. It is that bewildered and fearful recoil against having been born and having to die, that brooding anxiety that is not anxious about anything in particular. Its quivering unease is like the lazy collision of two rings of ripples on water: one a reverberation from the shock of birth, the other an intimation of the shock of death.

I am divided against myself. Part of me remains aware of how weird it is to be this self-conscious animal; another part averts its gaze and flees to the security of what seems manageable. I succumb to an insatiable fascination with trivia and gossip. I crave stimulation and intoxication. I suffer an uncontrollable tendency to daydream, a chronic inability to remain focused on what matters most. In spite of lofty aspirations to pursue a path, I begin to suspect that I am spinning in circles.

Comments

[Bob D.]

Sounds like a great book, Shawn. I especially relate to that final paragraph. I'm going to Mexico soon, to spend a year doing not much of anything. Maybe I'll find a copy of the Batchelor book to bring along. Maybe I'll stop spinning in circles.

[Andy]

Yes, it is a great book, there are a lot of information sources available on the net itself though ..