As I began a new job this week, I thought about something my meditation teacher told us in our sitting group one night. At the monastery, students are given various work assignments, which often have nothing to do with the student’s abilities or proclivities. But one day, she was assigned to work in the kitchen, assisting the chef, and cooking was something she was good at — it was her “thing.” Although she was supposed to simply follow the recipe, her ego had better ideas. She started improvising and adding spices, trying to make the dish her own, until the chef caught on to her extracurricular activities.
Now maybe the stuff she added to the recipe actually did make it better, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that she saw how ego had hijacked her working meditation. Her ego’s frustration with the assignment was the source of suffering. It was entirely possible to simply follow the recipe, assist the chef as was needed, and not have her identity wrapped up in that dish.
My ego thinks that writing is my “thing.” It wants to constantly assert itself to prove that. Is it any wonder that writing has been such a huge source of suffering in my life? A lot of writers would call this a “love-hate relationship” — writing is how I feel good about myself, and also how I feel awful about myself. This duality is the process that egocentric karmic conditioning uses to keep us in suffering.
So, as I embarked on a new and yet familiar work assignment yesterday, I saw how ego wanted to jump in there and prove what a great writer I am. But my authentic nature doesn’t want to prove I’m a great writer. What it wants is to enjoy my job.
If my job were to mop floors, I would do my best to mop the floors well. But I wouldn’t feel that the cleanliness of the floor was some sort of statement about who I am as a person. So why should it be any different with my writing job? As Cheri Huber says, “The content is irrelevant.”
Conditioned mind says, “You can’t treat this job like working meditation. It’s too important!” I say, what is more important than working meditation?
brooke said,
August 19, 2009 at 8:01 am
“But my authentic nature doesn’t want to prove I’m a great writer. What it wants is to enjoy my job.
If my job were to mop floors, I would do my best to mop the floors well. But I wouldn’t feel that the cleanliness of the floor was some sort of statement about who I am as a person.”
I love this. And I understand what you are talking about regarding ego-hijacking as this has a lot to do with my relationship to singing and what keeps from consistently enjoying it as a job or simply as an activity (a love-hate relationship as well). However, in the example of the assistant chef, I would imagine her creative efforts were also allowing her to enjoy her job. I guess the point is that she was expected to follow the directions as part of her work in meditation, but why would it be consider a hinderance to do something you enjoy? If you are enjoying your job, than that is greatness alone and therefore indicative of a great product (a meal, a song, a piece of literature). Are we to meditate away from enjoyment? Is producing something great always doomed to be followed by ego-hijacking and therefore unvalued at the monastery?
The Sitting Duck said,
August 19, 2009 at 9:29 am
Producing something great is not always doomed to be followed by ego-hijacking. Ego wants us to think this is the case, so that we throw up our hands in despair. I think it’s entirely possible to produce something great without ego getting involved at all. It’s just a challenge because of how we’ve been conditioned.
If we’re invested in producing something great — i.e. “this has to be great or else… I’ll feel bad about myself, this will have been a waste of time, etc.” (you can fill in the blank here with whatever self-defeating comment usually comes up for you) — then ego has already gotten in the way. Most of the time when I’m not enjoying writing (or avoiding it altogether), it’s because I (ego) is invested in a certain result.
When I let go of the desire/need/expectation of a certain result, then I can enjoy the work for the work itself. The result becomes irrelevant. When doing something creative, this is very liberating. The paradoxical part is that this letting go is often what produces the best result. I would go so far as to suggest that all great art was created in this “meditative” state.
But of course, if we’re letting go of the result as a way of getting a result, then we’re not really letting go! I’ve tried to “trick” myself by doing this, a la The Artist’s Way, and ultimately found it didn’t work. Because deep down ego was still very much invested.