Cacophony
I actually thought the word was cacaphony which seems all the more fitting but also infuriates the grammar tyrant that I am for thinking it was an onomatopoeic word (Dear Reader- I’m now hoping to win back your love and respect by writing “onomatopoeic word” in this sentence).
I’ve been feeling a bit meh about writing these days. Kind of meh over quite a lot of things. It’s not really a depressive or morose meh… but just a meh. Not a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Like or unlike. But m-e-h. Meh.
It could be seasonal affective disorder but it seems so strange for a Buddhist who is seeking to cultivate a sense non-duality and relationship to non-attachment to really HATE winter and let a little bit of light deprivation get to their neurons.
Whatever it is, it will likely pass… All things do. Thank you dependent origination. (Isn’t that part of that Alanis song?)
So yeah. Back to the cacOphony. I’m a classic retreater. Not in the sense of being a prolific retreatant and going off to caves to sit in silence. I retreat when I feel like I’m overwhelmed and it’s so very easy to be overwhelmed these days as a ‘modern Buddhist’. It sometimes feels like walking through a outdoor fairgrounds and everyone’s shouting at you to try your luck at winning the giant googily eyed bear , take a ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl, eat the candy floss all while blaring out some AC/DC or Def Leppard.
Oh the online book clubs, podcasts, zines, tumblrs, Facebook groups, pithy quotes on Pinterest with images of fractals bouncing around quotes mistakenly attributed to the Buddha, magazines, Google Hangouts, Second Life groups, blogs. There’s so much deliciousness to choose from.
And it’s all so much more delicious than what I should be studying.
How do you handle the overwhelm? How do you get back to focusing on what you should be working on rather than the juicy, fun stuff that distraction can bring with it? How do you tune out the cacophony?
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When I saw the title of this post, I thought maybe you were referring to the neo-classical guitar group of Jason Becker and Marty Friedman, but I was wrong. Seriously, I’ve been there, and have been there for quite some time. I have all but stepped away from my practice, due to some major changes in my life. However, it is still a part of my day-to-day living in how I interact with others. I haven’t written a blog post in a LONG time, rarely even go to twitter, etc. I still read, I still meditate, albeit rarely. But it’s there. Maybe it just takes a hard reboot of your computer (self), stepping away from everything people think you should be involved with. Back to basics. There’s nothing wrong with this type of retreat, when you may feel that it interferes with what is important. You don’t owe us a blog post, or a comment, like, or share of some fancy buddhist quote on facebook. You just owe yourself the ability to focus on what is important. Yeah, the other stuff is fun, but following a twitter feed can get stressful, and is that really what we want?