(This reading is an excerpt from an earlier draft of The Skill of Living.)
Addiction to Busyness
We are busy people. We spend lots of time doing lots of things. All day long, we’re doing all kinds of different things. It’s one thing, and then another thing. And then another. Our calendars, as a rule, are booked up.
“Maybe I can find some time at, say, four o’clock, on Thursday, three weeks from now … We won’t have that much time … But maybe we can spend an hour or so….”
For many of us, it goes like that.
We suffer an addiction to busyness. We’re constantly burdened with things to do. We’re stressed. We’re a stressed out lot, that’s for sure. There are significant drawbacks for dharma students, for everybody, in having such busy, activity-filled lives. Many of us will benefit greatly if we make the relinquishment of some activity, at least some activity, a component of our practice of renunciation.
It can be exceedingly diffcult to give up our busyness. But it’s something that we can learn to do, by following the Buddha’s course, by developing the skill of renunciation according to the Buddha’s instructions.
Work, for many of us, is an area that we may want to address, in considering where we might practice renunciation, reduce our level of activity. The workaholic is, of course, a prominent figure on the American landscape. Whether or not we identify ourselves as workaholics, it may very well be that we over-work, that we spend an excessive amount of time in the work mode. Work is important. But when we put too much time and effort into work, there are drawbacks. Our mental health is adversely affected. To put it simply, we suffer. We’re prevented from moving further along the Buddha’s path.
We work a lot. And we’re working more and more. In today’s culture, people work more than ever before. In my old job, in publishing, the amount of work that we were asked to complete, as part of the basic job description, increased substantially over the years. From the time I began, in 1977, to the time I left, in 1999, there was a marked increase in the workload. I’ve always liked to think that when I started publishing was still a gentlemen’s business. We were expected to put in a reasonable effort. But not too much effort. By the time I left, things had changed rather dramatically. We were expected to work more than forty hours per week. We were expected to cover more bases, accomplish more tasks, assume more responsibilities, bring in more revenue. We were expected to work some evenings, some weekends. My experience, I think it’s fair to say, wasn’t unusual. It’s the way it is. It’s the way of the world, in the business world, at least in America.
For some practitioners, renunciation might include being less involved in social activity. We might decide to cut back on the degree to which we engage in social interaction. Largely due to the influx of technologies that facilitate social engagement (cell phone, email, social networking, etc.), we may find that we’re in nearly constant contact with others. But for dharma students, taking the Buddha’s path, a certain amount of seclusion is important. It’s essential.
There are many, many ways that we protract our busyness. We go from one activity to another. And there’s no shortage of activities from which to choose. There’s no end, it seems, to “things to do.” Living in the modern world, exposed to an abundance of material resources, techological means, etc., we’re confronted with an overwhelming array of choices. It’s good, of course, to have choices. But it’s not such a good thing to have too many choices. It makes for an extremely complicated world. As dharma students, we have to learn to deal skillfully with the complication, the complexity. We have to learn, in short, to practice renunciation. We have to limit our choices, our range of activities. We have to cultivate simplicity.
As our good friend Thoreau put it:
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion.
In making an effort to cultivate simplicity, to relinquish some activity, to reduce the number of our affairs, it will serve us to take some time to reflect, consider where we are, where we need to get to. In this spirit, we might ask some pertinent questions:
How much activity do we engage in?
How much is useful?
How much is too much?
How much activity can we give up?
In what areas can we reduce our level of activity?
What things might we give up?
If can be hard. Very hard. In many ways, we’re addicted to busyness. And addictions are difficult to surrender. In an attempt to lessen our preoccupation with work, we may go on vacation for a couple of weeks, but when we return, we may fall right right back into our familiar patterns, our workaholic mode. We may decide that we need to go on vacation, but find that we’re unable to make the necessary plans; we’re unwilling to take the time off. Frequently, when the modern businessman goes on vacation he brings along his laptop computer, checks in with the office a few times every day, conducts business via email. In a recent conversation, a friend indicated that when he was away, on vacation, he worked for several hours every day, interacting with co-workers and clients by email.
We may vow to moderate our activity, pare down our busy schedule, but we may not be able to follow through. Habit is difficult to alter. In order to bring about change, we have to develop wisdom. As we’ve explained, we develop wisdom by seeing the drawbacks in what’s unskillful. As dharma students, cultivating simplicity, we see the drawbacks in our busyness. We pay close attention. In a clear, objective way, we study the consequences: we see what it’s like when we over-indulge in different kinds of activity. We see what when we’re over-involved, stricken with busyness, we suffer. We see that we move further and further away from true happiness.
We have to see the drawbacks in busyness.
And we have to see the benefits in cutting back.
As followers of the Buddha’s path, we have to make an effort to study the consequences of our actions. It’s a practice. We’re not going to be able to comprehend the drawbacks in busyness, the benefits in simplicity, unless we take the time to look. Wisdom is acquired if, and only if, we participate in this kind of active looking, clear-seeing.
There are certain activities that you might try, as part of your training, as you attempt to curtail activity.
One thing you might try: Every morning, make a “to do” list. Write down everything that you’re planning to accomplish that day. And then eliminate one item from the list. If you’re feeling especially bold, eliminate two items.
Another thing you might try: Every month, take a full day to do nothing, except practice the dharma. At Downtown Meditation Community, we hold a day-long retreat every month. Students relinquish their regular activities, and, instead, practice meditation, listen to the dharma. This is a very good practice. If a full day is too much to give up, then try a half day. (It’s very strongly recommended that new students not practice meditation for any extended length of time without having learned requisite skills and without teacher support; students, in general, shouldn’t attempt any sort of self-retreat until they’ve had a fair degree of experience, in retreat form, in a setting where they’ve practiced with other meditators, under the supervision of a qualified teacher.)
Many of us, driven by the desire to be doing something, accomplishing something, are constantly striving to fill our days with activity. Our days are like a large bag that we’re compelled to keep filled, right to the brim. If there’s a little room at the top of the bag, we have to put something in there. We have to fill every moment. You may notice that you have this tendency. You have about ten minutes of “free time” before you have to leave the house, and you feel like you have to utilize the ten minutes. You have to do something. You have to engage in some task. You go to the computer, send a few emails. Or you pick up the phone, make a call. Or you water the plants. Or you scrub the kitchen sink. Or something. You’ve got to do something.
One student in our community made it a regular practice to refrain from this sort of behavior. She was a therapist and when she was waiting for a client to arrive she sat quietly, connected to her breath, established tranquility. Previously, she would have done something, read something, made phone calls. She’d have tried to filled the empty minutes. But now she quite purposefully relinquished that sort of activity. If she was meeting a friend and reached her destination twenty minutes early, instead of going into a store and doing some shopping, which had been her habit, she’d find a place to sit, she’d feel her breath, settle into an inner refuge. And so on. It was a key part of her dharma practice, developing simplicity in this manner. It’s another good practice.
As we cultivate simplicity, it’s essential, as always, that we practice skillfully. It’s essential that we develop skillful intention. Setting out to cut back on some form of activity, noticing what the mind is like, we may discern resistance, aversion, etc. Putting aside any unskillful qualities, we assert skillful intention. And we act (or in this case, not act) out of love, compassion. By following the five-step process for developing intention/action, we begin to practice this form of renunciation in a skillful way. We begin to find release from the addiction to busyness.
Copyright 2018 Peter Doobinin
Addiction to Busyness
We are busy people. We spend lots of time doing lots of things. All day long, we’re doing all kinds of different things. It’s one thing, and then another thing. And then another. Our calendars, as a rule, are booked up.
“Maybe I can find some time at, say, four o’clock, on Thursday, three weeks from now … We won’t have that much time … But maybe we can spend an hour or so….”
For many of us, it goes like that.
We suffer an addiction to busyness. We’re constantly burdened with things to do. We’re stressed. We’re a stressed out lot, that’s for sure. There are significant drawbacks for dharma students, for everybody, in having such busy, activity-filled lives. Many of us will benefit greatly if we make the relinquishment of some activity, at least some activity, a component of our practice of renunciation.
It can be exceedingly diffcult to give up our busyness. But it’s something that we can learn to do, by following the Buddha’s course, by developing the skill of renunciation according to the Buddha’s instructions.
Work, for many of us, is an area that we may want to address, in considering where we might practice renunciation, reduce our level of activity. The workaholic is, of course, a prominent figure on the American landscape. Whether or not we identify ourselves as workaholics, it may very well be that we over-work, that we spend an excessive amount of time in the work mode. Work is important. But when we put too much time and effort into work, there are drawbacks. Our mental health is adversely affected. To put it simply, we suffer. We’re prevented from moving further along the Buddha’s path.
We work a lot. And we’re working more and more. In today’s culture, people work more than ever before. In my old job, in publishing, the amount of work that we were asked to complete, as part of the basic job description, increased substantially over the years. From the time I began, in 1977, to the time I left, in 1999, there was a marked increase in the workload. I’ve always liked to think that when I started publishing was still a gentlemen’s business. We were expected to put in a reasonable effort. But not too much effort. By the time I left, things had changed rather dramatically. We were expected to work more than forty hours per week. We were expected to cover more bases, accomplish more tasks, assume more responsibilities, bring in more revenue. We were expected to work some evenings, some weekends. My experience, I think it’s fair to say, wasn’t unusual. It’s the way it is. It’s the way of the world, in the business world, at least in America.
For some practitioners, renunciation might include being less involved in social activity. We might decide to cut back on the degree to which we engage in social interaction. Largely due to the influx of technologies that facilitate social engagement (cell phone, email, social networking, etc.), we may find that we’re in nearly constant contact with others. But for dharma students, taking the Buddha’s path, a certain amount of seclusion is important. It’s essential.
There are many, many ways that we protract our busyness. We go from one activity to another. And there’s no shortage of activities from which to choose. There’s no end, it seems, to “things to do.” Living in the modern world, exposed to an abundance of material resources, techological means, etc., we’re confronted with an overwhelming array of choices. It’s good, of course, to have choices. But it’s not such a good thing to have too many choices. It makes for an extremely complicated world. As dharma students, we have to learn to deal skillfully with the complication, the complexity. We have to learn, in short, to practice renunciation. We have to limit our choices, our range of activities. We have to cultivate simplicity.
As our good friend Thoreau put it:
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion.
In making an effort to cultivate simplicity, to relinquish some activity, to reduce the number of our affairs, it will serve us to take some time to reflect, consider where we are, where we need to get to. In this spirit, we might ask some pertinent questions:
How much activity do we engage in?
How much is useful?
How much is too much?
How much activity can we give up?
In what areas can we reduce our level of activity?
What things might we give up?
If can be hard. Very hard. In many ways, we’re addicted to busyness. And addictions are difficult to surrender. In an attempt to lessen our preoccupation with work, we may go on vacation for a couple of weeks, but when we return, we may fall right right back into our familiar patterns, our workaholic mode. We may decide that we need to go on vacation, but find that we’re unable to make the necessary plans; we’re unwilling to take the time off. Frequently, when the modern businessman goes on vacation he brings along his laptop computer, checks in with the office a few times every day, conducts business via email. In a recent conversation, a friend indicated that when he was away, on vacation, he worked for several hours every day, interacting with co-workers and clients by email.
We may vow to moderate our activity, pare down our busy schedule, but we may not be able to follow through. Habit is difficult to alter. In order to bring about change, we have to develop wisdom. As we’ve explained, we develop wisdom by seeing the drawbacks in what’s unskillful. As dharma students, cultivating simplicity, we see the drawbacks in our busyness. We pay close attention. In a clear, objective way, we study the consequences: we see what it’s like when we over-indulge in different kinds of activity. We see what when we’re over-involved, stricken with busyness, we suffer. We see that we move further and further away from true happiness.
We have to see the drawbacks in busyness.
And we have to see the benefits in cutting back.
As followers of the Buddha’s path, we have to make an effort to study the consequences of our actions. It’s a practice. We’re not going to be able to comprehend the drawbacks in busyness, the benefits in simplicity, unless we take the time to look. Wisdom is acquired if, and only if, we participate in this kind of active looking, clear-seeing.
There are certain activities that you might try, as part of your training, as you attempt to curtail activity.
One thing you might try: Every morning, make a “to do” list. Write down everything that you’re planning to accomplish that day. And then eliminate one item from the list. If you’re feeling especially bold, eliminate two items.
Another thing you might try: Every month, take a full day to do nothing, except practice the dharma. At Downtown Meditation Community, we hold a day-long retreat every month. Students relinquish their regular activities, and, instead, practice meditation, listen to the dharma. This is a very good practice. If a full day is too much to give up, then try a half day. (It’s very strongly recommended that new students not practice meditation for any extended length of time without having learned requisite skills and without teacher support; students, in general, shouldn’t attempt any sort of self-retreat until they’ve had a fair degree of experience, in retreat form, in a setting where they’ve practiced with other meditators, under the supervision of a qualified teacher.)
Many of us, driven by the desire to be doing something, accomplishing something, are constantly striving to fill our days with activity. Our days are like a large bag that we’re compelled to keep filled, right to the brim. If there’s a little room at the top of the bag, we have to put something in there. We have to fill every moment. You may notice that you have this tendency. You have about ten minutes of “free time” before you have to leave the house, and you feel like you have to utilize the ten minutes. You have to do something. You have to engage in some task. You go to the computer, send a few emails. Or you pick up the phone, make a call. Or you water the plants. Or you scrub the kitchen sink. Or something. You’ve got to do something.
One student in our community made it a regular practice to refrain from this sort of behavior. She was a therapist and when she was waiting for a client to arrive she sat quietly, connected to her breath, established tranquility. Previously, she would have done something, read something, made phone calls. She’d have tried to filled the empty minutes. But now she quite purposefully relinquished that sort of activity. If she was meeting a friend and reached her destination twenty minutes early, instead of going into a store and doing some shopping, which had been her habit, she’d find a place to sit, she’d feel her breath, settle into an inner refuge. And so on. It was a key part of her dharma practice, developing simplicity in this manner. It’s another good practice.
As we cultivate simplicity, it’s essential, as always, that we practice skillfully. It’s essential that we develop skillful intention. Setting out to cut back on some form of activity, noticing what the mind is like, we may discern resistance, aversion, etc. Putting aside any unskillful qualities, we assert skillful intention. And we act (or in this case, not act) out of love, compassion. By following the five-step process for developing intention/action, we begin to practice this form of renunciation in a skillful way. We begin to find release from the addiction to busyness.
Copyright 2018 Peter Doobinin
