Read Pema.

It was strongly suggested to me this week. “Read Pema”. 

Read Pema.  Really?  “I’ve read Pema” says my snarky self to my even more snarky self.  I’ve done the yoga retreats and the buddhist classes and the personal growth training and I’ve certainly read Pema.  I decided to Read Pema. 

I am actually “listening” to Pema Chodron this week. The assignment to read Peam, collided with the start of my new job as a neighborhood “dog walker”. The structure of my daily dog walks allows me to “listen to Pema” as I walk, wth the occasional poop pick up.  

I have my two, four footed charges safely by my side, their leashes secured while I have one earbud plugged into “audible” tethered to my trusty orange iphone. I keep my other ear free from buds in order to hear oncoming traffic, gratefully not much, mostly contractors at that early hour.  Their pickup trucks bouncing along the dirt roads, ladders and tools defying gravity.  I would, on occasion, be distracted from the reading. Squirrel, dog off leash, aforementioned poop.  I have yet to figure out how to stop the narrator on audible with a heavily mittened hand and simultaneously pull in one of the dogs that has wandered with his expandable leash a bit too far into the road.  Instead,I half ass it. 

I estimate I’ve missed about 35% of what is read. The other 65% of the time, while the eight paws and two human feet synchronistically hit the ground, Pema’s words come through, sudden and sharp. I'm not even certain of this audio books  title.  Many of Pema Chodrons’s glorious books are filled with the basic concept repeated,  basic goodness. Her proliferance for saying the most amazing things over and over in a very different way each writing is a true talent of expressing the Dharma.  Every time you re-read her books you learn a whole new lesson and deeper understanding.

On my dog walk today, one of those lessons was to find beauty in the boring.  The washing of the dishes analogy.  To be fully present in all we do, including washing the dishes.  Enjoy the warmth of the water and the scent of the soap and the lightness of the bubbles.  Fully present with the seemingly trivial action.  

I don’t wash my dishes by hand, but I do vacuum. It is an addiction and a nemesis. This habitual pattern has been built upon years and years of multiple hairy dogs, at least one equally hairy cat that often slinks into the house with a close to dead backyard find. Not to mention the four children and their plethora of shoes through the years. The floor dirt has not improved now that we live on a dirt road.  As my family can attest, I take my daily vacuuming seriously. 

So after “reading” Pema, today I will practice being more fully present with this daily ritual. I’ll do my best to drop into the sacredness of that present moment,  respecting the sweeping movement, the uplifting action, and be grateful for my long living Miele vacuum.  

Finding the beauty in the mundane.  

-Ryn Robinson