We need to stop overthinking life

and just do our tasks.

What’s happening in the news? Should I buy that work- related book my coworkers are talking about or borrow it from the library? Wait a minute, who left that pink flamingo float in the pond?

Enough! We’re making our lives far too complicated. Instead of focusing on what we need to, we allow an endless train of random, wandering thoughts to distract us. Like that silly pink float.

Instead of being lured by, engrossed in, and held captive to endless distractions, we need to hold firm. And focus. We need to stop and ask ourselves, What is the best use of my time? What is my task, right now? Not my task next week, not my task tomorrow. Not even later today.

What am I supposed to be doing here and now? 

It’s not that things like what’s happening in the world and at work don’t matter. It’s about when we focus on our tasks at the appropriate time, we’ll handle them more efficiently. And maybe even forget the pink flamingo float and end up with some time to read that important book.

Is our chanting session a superhighway or . . . ?

Discriminatory seeds and habits
have been planted within each of us.
We need to remind ourselves of this before acting.

We discriminate all the time. Hearing or seeing something or someone, we instantly identify what we perceive with its accepted name or term.

If we see a person, the familiar vocabulary imbedded in our store consciousness springs forward: male, female, tall, short. In a flash, we move from recognition to assessing: attractive, talks too much, etc.

Pigeonholing by skin color (followed by the identifier of “like me” or “not like me”), religion (followed by “same as mine” or “not mine”), education level, sexual orientation, na- tionality.

If, in our cultivation, we haven’t found much success in stopping our biased discriminat- ing, we need to at least catch such thoughts before they lead to regrettable action. Discriminating thoughts can be dangerous. Both to others and ourselves. So as soon as we detect them, we need to halt. While still at the perception stage, we need to act appropriately, without discrimination.