In recent months I’ve taken to wearing a small mala (a Buddhist rosary) on my wrist. As my friends say, it’s not quite the affectation my beret is, but… Personally, I like the mala and feel it really is something more than a fashion statement. I even use it, admittedly less for counting breaths and more in the fashion of Greek worry beads; but use it I do. Anyway, this morning as I was dressing I put on a nice wooden set that I’m quite fond of. Then I thought, oh dear, I’m going to weigh in at Weight Watchers this morning; and traded it for a smaller, lighter set…
Much of my daily practice consists of watching what I do and think and feel; and from that while not my intention, there are often cascades of ruminations on the whys and wherefores of what I do and think and feel. Which, I also try to notice.
And so I followed a thought trail from my noticing that changing of malas.
First, the silliness of trying to shave off fractions of an ounce, and we’re talking very small fractions of that ounce. Then there was an all too familiar rush of emotions mostly colored with shame about being fat, being able to be fat, and being able to lose fat in a support group with a bunch of very middle class American people. And knowing I’m one of them, every precious ounce of me, which wasn’t shameful, but interesting and curious. And considering from where I come, class-wise, rather surprising…
(I am a subscriber to that maxim attributed to several wise ladies, my favorite being May West: “I’ve been poor and I’ve been rich. And, honey, rich is better.”)
We follow our karmic currents some aspects, like our genetic predispositions are beyond our control. Others, like what we put in our mouths, are to some degree within our personal control. At least if we’re fortunate enough to be born to affluence. And, while not being not born into the American middle class, but now very much, however tentatively, a part of it; what I eat is very much my choice.
So, where does this rumination go?
I suspect to other thought trails: gratitude, knowing I’m just plain lucky, and an abiding sense of responsibility that seems to come with the good fortune of my current condition.
And, probably most important, allowing gratitude and a sense of unearned good fortune and that sense of responsibility coming with it, to know that it is all empty.
A kind of glorious empty, sparkling with light and possibility.
I find myself wondering where it will lead.
More beads on that lighter mala, spinning through time and space…
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