How to Sit Still
I've always been hyper and high-strung. So when I heard about entire weekend of sitting still at a Buddhist temple, I considered $80 price tag a bargain. There was only one little hitch. It's really, really tough for me to sit still. As I sat in a temple with about a hundred other sitting stillers, I was bored. I mad a list in my head; what I needed to buy, what I needed to do, who I needed to call. Then, I looked at my watched and figured a couple of hours have passed. Six minutes have gone by, six! No wonder when you are bad in school, the teacher made you go sit in the corner. This stunk, so I left. On my drive home, I realized I had just paid $80 to sit for six minutes, but to me that was a better deal than spending $80 to sit for 7 minutes. I began plotting my day, I grab one to the Kabab Palace, get my car washed, watch baseball and I felt superior to the temple people who are all wasting their time, not moving, not thinking, not eating Kababs. But I just sat at the car wash, yapping on my cell phone, or flipping through air freshners. I kind of wished they were still, sitting still because my mind did need a break. The paradox is until you put your brain on pause, you won't realize how much it needed the vacation. So, now when I have to sit still and wait for doctor or a haircut, I just tacked the time on to the six minutes for my sitting still weekend. I am almost up to an hour now.