The Old Recipe For Enlightenment

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

What to do if you are constantly tired

The Italians have an expression - dolce far niente. Which has taken root in a variety of languages. In Russian as well. It was still used by Pushkin and Batyushkov in their joyful letters. Dolce far niente means sweet doing nothing. The art of killing time. Kick the bulldozer.

It's not so easy, in fact, to do nothing. And so that it also makes it good.

How, and a long list of important things to do? And what about the list of films you want to watch for a long time? Friends with whom you have no time? A stack of purchased and not yet read books? And more gigabytes - downloaded? Dusty bike? And how is it at all - to do nothing? Maybe take a bath? Go for a walk? Call someone?

And no bliss can be caught. Instead, only anxiety and self-dissatisfaction. Loss of meaning. Still, so much time - and down the drain.

But they can do it - cats. Just enjoy life. It is important to do nothing with dignity. Spread across the sofa like liquid. Quietly look out the window for hours. At such hours it seems that they know something that you do not know. Some kind of main meaning that can be revealed only in idleness, and only if you - too - open to him.

“Doing nothing is the most difficult occupation in the world, the most difficult and most spiritual,” Oscar Wilde knew a lot about this.

Still not spiritual. Resist growing anxiety, compulsive urge to do something. Withstand the frightening emptiness inside, stopping yourself from wanting to fill this emptiness with something. Listen to inner silence. And start hearing something. Somewhere. Close. It doesn't get any closer.

“Sometimes the soul can be felt only after feeling emptiness,” says psychotherapist Alexander Alekseychik.

Vyacheslav Polunin practices

The creator of the technology of happiness, Vyacheslav Polunin, came up with his own law "feet in the water" for this. Sit on the bank of the river, put your feet in the water, do nothing, sit and think … He does this once every three to five years. When he realizes that it's time to change direction.

Once every five years, this is a general audit. It's also good to do regular inventory. For example, to arrange empty days for yourself. Let's say once a week. Or at least an empty evening. Stop. Halt.

Moreover, idleness can be included in your life in general permanently. Practicing it just always.

For example, even while doing something, allow yourself and sit back at the same time. As Pablo Picasso advised: “Always work not to the best of your ability, but below that measure. You can master three elements - use only two. If you can master ten - use five, then with those that you use, you will cope playfully, skillfully, and it will be clear from your work that you still have strength in stock."

Zhuang Tzu and the butterfly

And then, with the practice of sweet idleness, it will come, enlightenment. As in the Zen parable of the butcher, based on Chuang Tzu.

A bad butcher sees only a carcass in front of him. It cuts tendons and cuts joints. He has a hard job. He gets very tired. And he sharpens his knife several times a day.

A good butcher is another matter. This one sharpens his knife only once a day, before starting work. He cuts only in meat, bypassing the tendons and dismembering the joints. True, and he gets tired well.

But sometimes there is a true master among the butchers. It does not cut meat, does not cut arteries, veins, muscles and veins. He makes no effort. His knife slides along the gaps between muscles, films and ligaments, without damaging the carcass, but easily dismembering it. He easily and with pleasure carves thousands of bovine carcasses, and his blade remains freshly sharpened for years.

And somehow Fet still looks like Polunin

Making something easy is difficult. No, that's not what we were taught. And hard work and selfless struggle.

I remember how we passed Fet at school. Rather, we did not go through Feta at school.

Only a couple of paragraphs in the textbook were devoted to him. It said that a real poet necessarily defends a civil position and fights against evil. But Fet did nothing of the sort. And so he was the wrong poet. He even practiced “art for art's sake,” an empty and harmful principle of various irresponsible aesthetes there.

And at the end of these paragraphs, one of his light, striking poem was printed in small print. (Of course, as an example how to do it is not necessary). Here it is:

"Quasi una fantasia"

Dream, Awakening, The haze melts.

Like in the spring

Above me

The height is bright.

Inevitably, Passionately, tenderly

Hope, Easily

With the splash of wings

Fly in

Into the world of aspirations

Admiration

And prayers;

Feeling joy

I do not want

Your battles.