Friday, October 2, 2009

Why do self help books

sometimes sound so flakey?

... in doing the dishes mindfully, you may come to see with great vividness the reality of impermanence. Here you are, doing the dishes again. How many times have you done the dishes? How many more times will you do them in your life? What is this activity we call doing the dishes? ... By inquiring in this way, by looking deeply into this ordinary routine of "doing the dishes," you may find that the whole world is represented in it, that you can learn a lot about yourself and the world by doing the dishes with your whole being, with alert interest and an inquiring mind.

This is from page 135 of Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness.

This passage reminded me of the following:
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If ... 'is' means is and never has been, ... that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement ... (Bill Clinton, grand jury proceedings 1998?)

This book is a good follow up to Ellen Langer's Mindfulness. The real "guts" of the book (i.e. the practical, how-to stuff) is in the first 10 chapters of the book.

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