Bedside Table ૐ

I was reading the long discussions. The part about the Buddha toward the end of his life, and there was something in there about the things around him becoming very high quality. I thought, well, obviously. The Buddha. Of course. But then I started thinking this may be useful in that idea. What if you tried, as much as reasonably possible, to make the things in your immediate environment high quality?

Then you immediately run into the question, what the hell does high quality even mean? Because I don't think it means going out and buying the most expensive version of everything. That's probably missing the point completely. Quality and price sometimes meet, sure, but they aren't the same thing. You could probably find some beautifully made old table at a garage sale for twenty bucks that's better than something new for three hundred.

So say I'm lying in bed and I look over at my bedside table. For years my bedside table was basically two boxes with a sheet over them. I never even thought about it. It was just the thing beside the bed. But if I actually decided to understand quality, I might start there. What makes a bedside table good? What kind of wood? How was it joined together? How was it manufactured? Maybe I'd discover that some older furniture was made better than what I can easily buy now. I could combine it with this little meditation thing I sometimes do when I'm trying to fall asleep. I'll think of a tree. The tree has leaves. Leaves grow on branches. The branches grow from the trunk. The tree grows from the ground. The ground contains bacteria. The bacteria does whatever bacteria is doing down there, and on and on it goes. You just keep associating one thing with another until eventually you fall asleep. But it also gives you this strange sense that everything connects to everything else.

So maybe you do that with quality. There's the bedside table. Then there's the mattress. Then the sheets. Whoa, that seems like a lot let's just do pajamas. Okay, what are quality pajamas? I don't know. Now I have to learn about fabric. Maybe cotton works for me. Maybe linen. Maybe something else. Does it breathe? Does it feel good against my skin? Do I like long sleeves or short sleeves? Is this way too much for my budget? Suddenly something as stupidly ordinary as pajamas becomes a little investigation into materials, comfort, my own body. 

And I think that's the part I like. It's not really about collecting expensive objects. It's about paying attention. Comfortable sheets. Socks that actually fit. Shoes that fit correctly. Hell, do my shoes fit correctly? How are shoes supposed to fit? Apparently I've got research to do.

Maybe quality is partly understanding yourself well enough to recognize what works when you encounter it. You don't have to strain yourself trying to perfect everything at once. That probably defeats the whole purpose. You just keep paying attention. And eventually, when the right object and the right understanding meet at the same time, a little pathway opens up.