A Bigger Container

A Bigger Container

"We can talk about "oneness" until the cows come home. But how do we actually separate ourselves from others? How? The pride out of which anger is born is what separates us. And the solution is a practice in which we experience this separating emotion as a definite bodily state. When we do, A Bigger Container is created.

What is created, what grows, is the amount of life I can hold without it upsetting me, dominating me. At first this space is quite restricted, then it's a bit bigger, and then it's bigger still. It need never cease to grow. And the enlightened state is that enormous and compassionate space. But as long as we live we find there is a limit to our container's size and it is at that point that we must practice. And how do we know where this cut-off point is? We are at that point when we feel any degree of upset, of anger. It's no mystery at all. And the strength of our practice is how big that container gets. . . . This practice of making A Bigger Container is essentially spiritual because it is essentially nothing at all. A Bigger Container isn't a thing; awareness is not a thing. . . ."

~ Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen

So much of what I do is motivated by agitation and anger. Did Primus turn in his work? Will his grades this last semester rise or is he going to drop back into old habits? Has Secundus taken the rolling green trash container to the curb? It is Wednesday morning and it must be done, you know. Will my fellow employee adopt a bad attitude about having work given to him because someone has gone home sick? I get angry just anticipating his anger because, though the act will not be of my choice, I will bear the brunt of his resentment.

If I get what Joko Beck is saying here I must find a meditative space in my mind and step back. Once I have placed that distance between the anger and the negativity I must label all of the nuances of these agitations and visceral responses and come to know them. I need to make my awareness larger than my petty concerns. I must become more that a series of strung together visceral responses to the world that I am in. Ultimately I must become one, aware and larger than the angers, the jealousies and the frustration that await me each minute of each day.


More time on the mat is called for, I guess.