Dishes and Dukkha: Housekeeping Aversion and Mindfulness

I seem to have an aversion to cleaning.  Today, I’m trying to get myself off my butt and off my laptop and get my house clean before I go back to work on Monday.  It’s not that I don’t like cleanliness.  I love a fresh, clean house.  It’s just that I don’t like the process of getting it clean.  I’ve examined this many times.  Is it because it’s boring?  Is it because it seems Sisyphean – you get it done just to do it again?  Is it because I was critiqued, as a child, on the way I performed household chores ?  Do I think I’m too important to do chores?  Was I a queen with a retinue of servants in my past life?  I wouldn’t mind having some now.

Right now, I can think of ten thousand things I’d rather do than clean, including writing, walking, meditating, shopping, gardening, getting a root canal…  And, yet, I remind myself, cleaning is practice in the zendos, monasteries, and ashrams of the world.  “This is because it’s boring and repetitive,” my mind rebels.  Yet, I can visualize myself calmly and mindfully sweeping the hallway in the zendo, or scrubbing the floors in the ashram, maybe in some faraway place, and it seems “spiritual.” I sweep so mindfully, so meditatively, that I’m swept up in a state of utter absorption, I become one with my cleaning, I’m the most mindful person around, I achieve kensho, I become enlightened.  OK, so I’m embellishing my fantasies here a little bit, but it brings up a question.  The question is, “Why does it seem somehow special or spiritual to clean in some far away place, when it seems so mundane to do it here at home?”  I could argue that, within the context of a retreat or intense practice community, the cleaning becomes part of the practice, and, possibly, we can deepen our practice by cleaning in such a setting.  I could also argue that cleaning is an expression of giving.  In cleaning the place of practice, I am giving back to the sangha.  Both these things may be true; but can’t they be equally true at home?  If the only time I’m in meditation is in the morning on the cushion, how does that affect the rest of my day?  How much more can it affect my day if I can see everything I do—even cleaning—as practice.  As for giving, my family is part of my sangha.  I give back to them when I can clean my house in a calm, mindful fashion (as opposed to the speed-demon, grouchy way).  My co-workers are sangha (even, I try to remind myself, the ones I don’t get along with as well).  So are the rest of my community.  When I help them, it is helping the sangha.

I tend to romanticize notions of taking off on an extended retreat, or travelling to add to or better myself in some way.  That’s not possible for me, right now, at this stage in my life.  But, as Robert Pirsig put it, “The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.”  Right now, I’m interested in the Zen I can find in my own backyard.