10 - 4 - 17 Nirvana (2 minutes)

In the first reading of today the prophet finds an ally in what may seem to be an unlikely place, the Persian King Artaxerxes. The king allows him to go back to Judah and attempt to, to some extent, rebuild his homeland, as it greatly pains the prophet to see his ancestral home smoldering in ruins.

I think sometimes we romanticize Christianity in the wrong way, in an Ernest Hemingway or John Wayne type of struggle where it’s us against the bad guys. The sooner we remember that everyone on this earth is a child of God, the sooner we’ll look for help, and the sooner we will succeed.

But I just remembered an analogy I had thought of yesterday while squatting. In the last set of a 6 x 2 I went for three reps. I got it, didn’t hurt myself, all around good lifting stuff. I felt very strong. But I also was straining so hard I realized something. In that moment of exertion, say about halfway up on the rep, when the knees are at a sixty or so degree angle, I couldn’t hear anything. My teeth were clenched so hard (I think I need to consider wearing a mouthguard) and I was straining so much that I was fully within my own head, I couldn’t have heard someone shouting directly into my ear. Furthermore, I wasn’t thinking anything, at all. Not even, “come on get this bar up,” just, utter silence.

So in this moment I could only experience what was going on in my own head, and there wasn’t anything going on in my head. It felt remarkably like what I’ve imagined Nirvana to be like. Thoughtlessness. A lack of sensory perception. It was a very interesting sensation to be sure.

And it got me thinking about when, in my larger life, I feel at peace. When I feel that no outside criticism can really hurt me, when I’m deaf and unthinking. It could only be when I’m working extremely hard. If I know that I’m doing my best, I don’t experience anxiety or second guessing, I don’t spend time wondering what I could do differently. Now this may be because I’m not a very anxious person so I only experience it at all when it would become overwhelming for other people, but this is still a reduction in anxiety nonetheless.

It sounded more elegant, much more longwinded in my head yesterday as we moved on to doing Romanian deadlifts while I was still stuck back at the moment under the bar when my world stopped moving. Perhaps, for once, I just don’t have much to say.