Breaking the Cycle of a Split Mind
Doing a lot of things is easier if you can just do ONE thing.
It is so tempting to get hung up on our shortcomings and recent mistakes. It is so easy to make a mess of little things in our lives. The minutiae. Doing small tasks thoughtlessly or carelessly because something else is on our mind. Something else is “more important” than what is in front of us. We want to know what’s happening on Instagram or TikTok. What’s happening in the news cycle. The stock market, whatever. We attach so much importance to the world that lives inside our phone.
Also, we might think that a “productive” or “creative” activity is more important than what is in front of us. Finishing the screenplay or novel chapter is far more important than tidying up the mess in my bedroom. Creative people are supposed to be messy, right? That is what I told myself in my 20s, when my apartment was a cluttered mess.
In our busy, digitized lives, it is pretty easy to ignore what is in front of us. Until very recently, my mind was virtually always in multiple places at once, and it often still is. I originally became hooked on martial arts practice because it forced me to keep my mind in one place: on the mat or on my training partner.
I guess that is why I got into filmmaking as well. In the rapid flux of a film shoot, you have to focus on what is in front of you. What is directly in front of the lens. Your lens has to focus as does your mind.
Of course, I have also been meditating for many years—but as a whole-hearted, fully committed Zen practitioner who embraces all aspects of the tradition, I am still a relative novice.
Throwing myself deeper into Zen practice has left me with a powerful realization: I can maintain full concentration in whatever I am doing—no matter how “trivial”—and that is okay. In fact, it is much better that way. I don’t have to operate the way I have operated for most of my life, with a mind drifting in multiple directions.
When I am doing a chore, I do not have to think about all the things I want to accomplish in the next month, year, or decade. The big aspirations will still be there when I am done with my chore, and I will continue working on them accordingly.
In fact, if I can concentrate and make a sincere effort in the task that I am doing right now, I will move a little bit closer toward those bigger goals and aspirations. Everything is interconnected. It takes great patience and a little faith in the Way or the cosmic order to realize this. For much of my life, I lacked patience and faith.
After all, there are only so many hours in the day. So much to do. So little time.
In my case, I want to make another feature film project in the next year while progressing further as a student and teacher of jiu jitsu and while maintaining a strong commitment to Zen practice. Of course, I also work a full-time day job that, while remote, consumes a decent amount of mental energy.
My journeys in filmmaking, martial arts, and the Path are all DIY (“do it yourself”). Life is a DIY project. Therefore, my study and output have to be concentrated and consistent. I never feel that I have enough time. Even though I have a regimented schedule, I am often weighing the costs and benefits of doing X instead of Y on a given day. Rest and relaxation are important as well. I am often left with the feeling that there is too much to do.
As it turns out, there is never really too much to do. Only that which needs to be done. That which brings me into greater harmony with all other beings—i.e., actions that help others instead of glorifying myself.
We have to learn, through great concentration and effort each day, to live in the here and now and drop off the ego that forms most of our obsessions. Most of us (including me) glorify our ego with selfies and social media posts and so forth. The French psychotherapist and Zen student Hubert Benoit argues in The Supreme Doctrine that such efforts are vain attempts to shore up evidence against our own nullity. Sooner or later, we have to confront our ego’s nullity. Its smallness and nothingness.
Goals can also become a subtle way to glorify the ego. Joseph Nguyen, author of Don’t Believe Everything You Think, talks about goals from inspiration versus goals from desperation (i.e., goals that make us feel excited, bigger, and more expansive versus goals that are based merely on external validation). My Zen teacher, Richard Collins, astutely describes ambition as “regret’s future shadow” in his book No Fear Zen. Similarly, Jason Wilson uses the term “shadow mission” to describe goals from desperation in his book Battle Cry. Essentially, this idea is universal and can be expressed in countless ways.
As I have documented in this newsletter, I have become well acquainted with the sometimes nebulous line between goals derived from inspiration and desperation. Goals from the former have sometimes morphed into goals from the latter, and vice versa. I have spent years chasing after ambitions that were actually “regret’s future shadow.” Paradoxically, this process also allowed me to step out of the shadow.
The whole dilemma drops off more or less when I can give myself fully to what I am doing here and now. Whether that be filming, training jiu jitsu, meditating, writing this newsletter, scooping cat litter, or whatever.
In the end, we naturally move toward balance. A hundred different things tug at our attention each day, creating a seemingly irresolvable tangle of priorities and desires and conflicts. Somehow we manage to cut through all of it—that is, if we are willing to make a sincere and whole-hearted effort to do the work in front of us. Here and now. It is not easy, but it is not hard.