I.70 — Tired

There will be days when there is nothing left to look with. The instrument is a body, and bodies run out.

On those days the practice is not to push. Pushing is a fist. Sitting for ten minutes with a mind that can hold nothing is not a failure of will but a fact about the body, and the response to a fact is to meet it, not to argue.

So meet it. Sit for two minutes instead of ten. Or do not sit, and simply notice tiredness as tiredness — a weather, not a verdict on your practice or your worth. Rest is not a break from guarding the instrument. It is the guarding.

Test the difference on one tired evening. Try, for a minute, to force the looking, and feel what the forcing does. Then stop, and let attention rest on nothing in particular, the way a hand rests on a table. Notice which of the two was closer to the practice. It was the second. It is nearly always the second.

Kindness to the instrument is not time off from the work. It is the work, with the lights low.