posted 15 Apr 2012, 17:39 by Akasharaja Bruton
Today I had something of a breakthrough: instead of leaving clean washing with unironed shirts hanging around to be dealt with later, I decided instead to do the ironing and putting away as soon as the clothes were dry. This may be second nature to many of you, but to a "Perceiving" type (to use Myers-Briggs typology) like me - someone who tends to be spontaneous and do what interests him on a spur-of-the-moment basis - it represented quite a significant step forward.
In his book "Life with Full Attention", Maitreyabandhu talks about the significance of completing your cycles: finishing what you start. This has both practical and ethical-aesthetic effects: practical in that, in my case, the house isn't ongoingly festooned with clean washing whilst, at the same time, there is a complete lack of clean underwear in the place where it should be; and ethical-aesthetic inasmuch as making sure you finish what you have started contributes to the generation of positive mental states and is a reflection of what Bhante Sangharakshita calls the "mindfulness of things" - awareness of the objects in the world around you, coupled with heightened regard and care for them. There is something unaesthetic about slovenliness in one's dealing with things: after all, a space full of uncared-for objects is not an attractive space. Furthermore, an uncared-for external space is very often a reflection of an uncared-for mental space, and vice-versa: slovenliness of mind is likely to be reflected in one's surrounding space, and an untidy and unkempt external space will have a negative effect on the mind that is forced to inhabit it!
As I said, this may be obvious to many of you. But spare a thought for me as I dwell well-satisfied in the knowledge of a cycle completed and a slightly more perfumed mind.
And, in my defence, at least I can say that the washing in question is usually clean!