It’s three weeks into the semester and classes are already beginning to take a toll. The mental fortitude we’ve stockpiled during the long (or sadistically short, depending on how you look at it) break between semesters has been nearly used up. Soon, students will be desperately searching their calendars for the salvation of time-off in the far future. We take homework deadlines as sacred writ and stress for weeks in advance of midterm exams. If you’re like me, you’ll often come home with a load of homework and sink lethargically onto the floor for a three-hour nap in the fetal position. Things begin to look desperate at week five and we begin to Google careers that don’t require a college education, eventually realizing they basically all do.
Besides the University Counseling Center, what is there that can be done? I posit taking a breath and giving Eastern philosophy a try.
Some, particularly those angsty youths in college, may empathize with the Buddhist ideal that everywhere around us exists dukkha, which means suffering and anxiety. While Buddha — the artist formally known as Siddhartha Gautama — believed that suffering is a universal, all-pervasive component of living, he also believed there is a way to escape this anxiety: the Eight-Fold Path.
More has been said and written on Buddhism than could ever be summarized in a single article, but one aspect of the eight-fold path that bears mentioning and relates directly to post-secondary life is the art of mindfulness (step seven). Mindfulness is the ability to see what’s happening right now. Some would call this ‘epiphany,’ some ‘joy.’ Others, like the late David Foster Wallace, would argue that this is no less than simple awareness of our natural default setting, of “what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time.” Awareness, which is really just a consciousness that extends beyond our own busy, self-centered headspaces, is what gets me through the day. What — in every sense is a cliché, though no less true — gives me perspective about what it means to really listen to something other than myself; to understand that dukkha is universal but that it’s also okay. Suggested books available through the Marriott Library: What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula; Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Taoists are similar in caliber, though variant in approach. They believe, as Laozi wrote in the Tao Te Ching, that there are “three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion.” A minimalist approach to the Buddhist idea of suffering, harmony with the Tao (“the way,” or “the path”) asks for great serenity and moderation. It means that one can maintain peace with the universe — what I consider peace with oneself — through compassion. It means that we don’t look ahead and instead embrace the present with a kindness we rarely observe in others. Suggested books available through Marriott Library: The Tao of Poohby Benjamin Hoff; Tao Te Ching by Laozi.
Put into practice, what could either of these philosophies possibly mean? I propose it means stopping at the lawn adjacent to the Union and resting briefly beneath a tree. Appreciate, momentarily, the walk you make as you approach the Marriott Library, taking note of the landscape and the ‘there-ness’ of everything beautiful. Get to class five minutes earlier than everyone else and practice breathing until you’re less worried about an assignment’s looming deadline. Take assignments for what they are — challenges — and prove that you’re up to them. Look passersby in the face and try to comprehend the worry, terror and stress they feel every day. Hold the door open for those people. Pick up the item they’ve just dropped. Smile at somebody and really mean it. Go to work thankful that you have something worth making money for. Do one thing mindful everyday, and do it slowly, deliberately, without thinking of the future.
It’s very likely your assignments won’t get done more quickly and that you’ll still spend more time doing things less-than-relevant to school. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you must view your commute to class as a holy time. I’m simply suggesting you take a moment from your busy, tedious, college-student life to pick up a book you normally wouldn’t and learn about something that has the potential to make you calm and relaxed and happy. If it doesn’t, at least you’ve gotten away from assignments for a few hours and you can dive back in with all the confidence and anxiety society expects of you.