“Fill the used jar with water and rinse it well. Shake it hard to clean the inside and then…”
I feel like resetting my mind to such an image to clean it out occasionally.
I am still making efforts to “not think about anything”.
Efforts to become “nothing”.
As I have often mentioned in my essay since I learned that swimming, walking, and doing simple tasks silently can empty my mind, I have been trying many things.
Cooking is one of them.
I silently slice onions into skinny slices.
After slicing about two whole onions, I continue to fry them silently over low heat until they become golden brown. Onions become softer and smaller, and when they are brown enough, I finally add water to make a soup. I only use a tiny bit of salt for seasoning. As soon as the healthy soup is ready, I notice that my mind has become clearer than before.
I also do the same with carrots. I cut a whole carrot into strips.
I need to be a little more careful with carrots, as raw carrots are harder. When the cutting is done, I rub them with a little vinegar and salt and they are ready to eat. Shredding daikon (radish) in the same way can be useful for making salads, they will last for a day or two.
If my mind is in a mess, and if I don’t happen to have onions or carrots in my fridge, I sort out the leftover vegetables in the fridge! I fry away anything in a large frying pan, things that I can find like carrot ends, enoki mushrooms, cabbage, broccoli, leeks, and ginger hidden in the corner of the fridge. They would be wasted if I didn’t eat them….
While frying them, I imagine what kind of dishes I could make. Add eggs, salt, and pepper, and it will become simple fried vegetables, or add water and make a curry. Or season it with sake, mirin, and soy sauce and make a simmered dish. My rule is to eat everything up however my creative cooking results may be. If I decide not to leave any leftovers no matter how bad it tastes, I will struggle to try my best with it until the end. As a result, it has a very positive effect
on me when my mind is a little muddled up in everyday life.
Being an egg lover, I cook very thin eggs in a small frying pan. I make them as thin as possible. When they are done, I pile them up on top of each other and cut them into very thin strips.
When the “kinshi-tamago” is done, I feel happiness with a sense of achievement, and my head feels lighter.
Swimming is also a great way to empty my mind, and it is even better when I count the number of times I swim back and forth in the pool when I swim a kilometer or so.
I will be going back and forth for about 20 times to swim a kilometer, and I count the number by chanting “5, five, five…” in my head, so naturally, I won’t be thinking about anything else.
As the numbers become bigger, I tend to recall my memories of that age.
“12, the year I made my debut as a violinist, full of hope, not afraid of anything…”
“19, a freshman at university. I fought with my mother. I was really interested in the lectures at the uni…” etc.
In the gym I go to, there are studio classes in various sports that you can attend freely. I sometimes take yoga classes there.
I have been taking part in yoga classes from time to time for some years, but I am still a beginner and therefore cannot do anything difficult. I admire and even applaud the yoga teacher’s poses, and I try them myself but I usually can’t do them, but the time I spend trying and facing what I can’t do, also helps me to get rid of the daily chores that fill up my head. So I find it refreshing to do.
The trick is to enjoy trying the various innovations. I wonder what else I can do to make time for achieving “nothingness” in my way.