If I Were Doing My Laundry

I wake up at six to take my pills, awakened by an alarm clock across the room to ensure I get up. I reset the alarm for later in the morning and then, evidently, go back to bed without actually taking my pills. So it is that I awaken shortly before nine, still aching from too many hours without codeine, take my pills with irritation, and get the link open too late, having to turn off the sound in the middle of the meditative exercise, though not after the prompt, "If I were doing laundry".

If I were doing my laundry and paying my bills in this hour, I would try to do them with clarity and presence of mind, honoring the Buddha’s admonishment: “Before enlightenment, do laundry and pay the bills. After enlightenment, do laundry and pay the bills.”

Over the centuries, the things we do remain consistent, in spite of changes to how we do them. We get heat by paying the electric bill or the gas bill or by doing maintenance on the solar panels, instead of by chopping firewood, but we must still do the job of providing ourselves with heat. We clean our clothing by loading a washing machine and a dryer - and by paying the electric bill and the water bill, or by doing maintenance on the well’s pump - rather than by building a fire and carrying buckets of water and then laboriously washing the clothing by hand, but the laundry must still be done.

And we must still handle our needs in an honest and rightful way. We must earn the money to pay our bills through right livelihood. We must treat the people who provide the things we need - and the planet that provides them - with due respect. We cannot dismiss those who serve us by saying, “It is their duty to serve, to be the hewers of our wood and the drawers of our water”, as the Israelites once declared it to be the work of the children of Ham, as Brahmins still say “It is work fit for Untouchables”, as so many Americans still say, “It is n****r work”. We must honor those who do the work - especially if we do it ourselves.

 After, as the host is reading the poem, I learn that the poem is "Homework", by Allen Ginsburg, and quickly find a link so I can read along: 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49311/homework-56d22b44cb0bd

I marvel at the poem, and note that it was indeed by a noted Buddhist.

I recall my notion of many years before, of becoming a Buddhist televangelist, making my Buddhist practice aggressively American, without any of the trappings of "they mysterious East" that so many American Buddhists affect.

I remind myself that I do try to practice the Eightfold Path, just as I try to adhere to three of the four Pillars of Islam (excusing myself from making a pilgrimage to Mecca), and that I am obliged to practice Christianity since that day I contemplated the name, "Religious Society of the Friends of Christ", and drew a conclusion, and because I thought it was a useful and significant conclusion, said it out loud:

"If the name of Jesus Christ means anything at all, I hope I may be counted as a Friend of Christ".

I remember how it felt to say those words, how I was surprised by how hard it was to force those words out, and how much more surprised I was that as soon as I had said them, I burst into tears. Then I remember how inconvenient that was, since I was driving at the time.

The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Be here now."