How is my life spent?

A Nokia mobile phone, two Kindles and a Samsung galaxy tablet. They all need to be charged and have small, delicate USB sockets to facilitate the process.

My ICT stuff serves several purposes. Email, Facebook, and Twitter deliver the incoming local, national and global news. Google and Wikipedia provide timely links to an ever growing database on a wide range of topics. Amazon is my on-line shop which has figured my interests and presents me with relevant stuff – especially books.

I contribute to the internet through my blog and various web sites. Nothing has as yet gone viral but the main blog gets about 40 page views per day and they come from all parts of the world.

The content of the posts tend to be personal reworkings of cutting edge ideas. There are also some posts with links to ‘Wow’ content. For the last few years on each blogpost there has been a doodle which is intended to make the posts stand out from the crowd.

The computer is also used to make new versions of my old songs. This involves working with the band and then editing.

The gadgets fill my time. The Parkinsons Disease slows my use of them. But I live alone so it is not a problem.

It was while coming up the road from the Coop with a 20p plastic bag in each hand that I was inclined to notice how I spend my life and how other people spend theirs.

In the Coop there were two old men whose wives died a short time ago. One member of a couple will die before the other. When there is dementia or other long term ailments in the partnership it will be rough for the ‘healthy’ one. And there may be children and grandchildren who live nearby or far away.

The Buddha noted that in life there is pain and suffering. It may be tough fighting the pain but the suffering is man made and can therefore be unmade. The process involves sitting quietly and watching the thoughts, feelings and moods arise from the unconscious, hang around for a while and then vanish.

The ancient Buddhist world view has a lot in common with modern, cognitive behaviour therapy. The contents of any mindbrain are rooted in nature, nurture and chance and are constantly busy processing data from the sense organs and thus reworking a covert and/or overt understanding of reality and the self.

Passing thoughts, feelings and moods. With practice I have reached the stage of being able to switch on the non judgemental witness to the coming and going of mental stuff.  And, as a bonus, I find that I am often in non-egoic flow. It is true, what they say, “no self, no problem”.