Washing the dishes like your bathing a baby buddha, intentionally stimulating neurogenesis and renovating your synaptic scaffolding

This post explores the multi-faceted benefits and immense untapped potential of choosing our perspective consciously in each moment through both the lens of spirituality and the lens of science.

Each moment you are alive you are offered an opportunity to exercise your free will to enrich the more eternal part of your self and the collective you are an intrinsic part of. The single most powerful way you can leverage your free will in this universe is by consciously choosing the perspective and attitude you embrace as you look out at and engage with this world.

From the perspective of science your choice in perspective and in allowing specific thoughts/emotions to dwell in your mind, heart and body means you have the potential to intentionally stimulating neurogenesis (the creation of new neurons, or brain cells) ‘renovate your synaptic scaffolding’ via stimulating dendritic branching (synaptogenesis) or the creation of synapses which connect brain cells and modulating your epigenetic expression (which literally means consciously altering the way your genes become manifest in your cells, organs and body, resulting in a shift what phenotype, out of hundreds if not thousands of possible phenotypes, that your DNA is expressing).

Each moment we choose how we perceive the experience we are engaging in. This means that regardless of what that experience may be, we are capable of harnessing it to enrich our selves in meaningful ways (both spiritually and physically).

There is both scientific logic and spiritual wisdom backing the benefits of consciously engaging in such a shift in perspective. This is true for each time we choose to hold a thought, attitude and emotion in our conscious mind we are re-wiring our synaptic networks and re-attuning the receptor sites in our brain that receive the biochemicals responsible for our perceiving emotions. Thus, if we consciously choose to feel gratitude and appreciation (even while we are engaging in a seemingly mundane task) we are actually building up our brain’s capacity for experiencing greater depths of appreciation when we are engaging in all other tasks and experiences in life. Inversely, if we choose to allow frustration, impatience, boredom, anger or apathy to remain in the forefront of our thoughts while we engage in tasks we perceive as mundane we are training our brain to be specialized in experiencing frustration, impatience, boredom, anger and/or apathy. Additionally, allowing those thoughts and emotions to color our perception of seemingly mundane tasks could perhaps even create a sort of endogenous bio-chemical addiction, where we end up unconsciously seeking out more stimulus to produce those emotions, and which in time could lead to a decreased ability to experience gratitude, joy and appreciation while engaging in activities we consider preferable to the mundane task.

Here is a fun and informative clip from an old documentary called “What The Bleep Do We Know?” that explores these concepts further:

I came across one of the spiritual lenses of perceiving the scientifically confirmed truth I described above when reading some books about the practice of mindfulness.

The Buddhists have a saying that embodies and cultivates this way of living that invites one to “Wash the dishes like they are bathing a baby Buddha”.

I will now share a quote from the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. He expands on the above adage, way of perceiving and engaging with each moment in life by saying:

“If while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not “washing the dishes to wash the dishes.” What’s more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can’t wash the dishes, the chances are we won’t be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future—and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life…

...The profane is the sacred.

I enjoy taking my time with each dish, being fully aware of the dish, the water, and each movement of my hands. I know that if I hurry in order to go and have dessert, the time will be unpleasant, not worth living. That would be a pity, for every second of life is a miracle. The dishes themselves and the fact that I am here washing them are miracles!

Each thought, each action in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred. In this light, no boundary exists between the sacred and the profane. It may take a bit longer to do the dishes, but we can live fully, happily, in every moment. Washing the dishes is at the same time a means and an end- that is, not only do we do the dishes in order to have clean dishes, we also do the dishes just to do the dishes and live fully each moment while washing them.

If I am incapable of washing dishes joyfully, if I want to finish them quickly so I can go and have dessert and a cup of tea, I will be equally incapable of doing these things joyfully. With the cup in my hands, I will be thinking about what to do next, and the fragrance and the flavour of the tea, together with the pleasure of drinking it, will be lost. I will always be dragged into the future, never able to live in the present moment. The time of dishwashing is as important as the time of meditation.”

When it comes to the addictive social media platforms (such as those James Corbett discussed in this excellent Solutions Watch episode) I feel like they (whether by design or by accident) can act as stimulus that creates the exact opposite effect of meditation on the brain/body. Many social media platforms are designed in such a way that they accelerate the degeneration of our brain structure into being specialized at experiencing negative emotions (as well as projecting them onto others) and also cripple the user’s ability to be present and mindful (via hyperstimulation of the mind with endless scrolling set ups and various clickbait type content being promoted through behavior modification algorithms).

Thus, the imperative of redirecting the majority of our energy (mental and physical) to practical creative endeavors that involve working with our own two hands in the garden, in the kitchen (and in a wide range of other nurturing low tech creative outlets) becomes ever more clear. Each and everyone of us can cultivate a life and way of perceiving that advances this redirecting of energy (away from parasites and towards planting the seeds for a new way of living and civilization to take hold on Earth).

As Thich Nhat Hanh eloquently articulates, of the most powerful places to start re-directing our energy is in how we choose to feel about and perceive seemingly mundane moments in life. The truth he speaks about is (as shown by the studies linked above) also rooted in science.

Thus, when I feel tempted to rush through doing something because I feel that I have something 'more important' to be doing, I often think of the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh. I think of how he gracefully articulated that each moment is an unreplaceable gift and in our choosing to engage with that gift with all that we are we honor that sacred gift (and increase our ability to perceive beauty, joy and experience fulfillment in life regardless of outward circumstances). I believe that this truth applies to the moment a vibrant autumn leaf is aligned with my path, pulling weeds, turning the compost pile, commenting in response to a kindred spirit or even something as seemingly mundane as washing the dishes.

This truth applies to all aspects of life and experience but given my preferred creative outlets it is something I often end up applying in the kitchen and in the garden.

I love to create, explore and share in the culinary world. Sometimes I share the recipes for nourishing and delicious foods for the body but in truth those recipes (comprised of a list of ingredients that one combines in a specific way) is incomplete. The full extent of the the nourishment for the heart, mind, body and soul and the poetry for the senses I receive from my recipes is intrinsically connected to a larger process and holistic cycle of creation that extends far beyond the confines of the kitchen.

For instance, over the past few years of trial and error I ended up putting together three different recipes for our own take on kimchi (each one having a different visual appearance, different nutritional/medicinal focus as far as the range of anti-oxidants and other beneficial phytonutrients in the finished product and each using seasonal ingredients we have access to in abundance at specific times of year in our garden and/or from local organic farmers). The first version we make I just call “Garden Chi” as it is a variation on traditional kimchi flavors and appearance using some slightly different crops based on what grows best in our garden here in southern Ontario. The second is a super spicy, beta carotene and curcumin rich version of kimchi we make using Bhut Jolokia (aka “Ghost”) peppers, lots of carrots, golden beets, turmeric rhizome, cucumber, napa cabbage, ginger, Peruvian golden berries, diakon radish, Aji Charapita Peppers, Orange Bell Peppers and other herbs and spices. I call that one “Golden Dragon Chi”. Lastly is an anthocyanin rich kimchi we make in the fall that contains lots of purple and blue vegetables, herbs, berries and spices which I call “Purple Dragon Chi”.

Sometimes when I am chopping, slicing, shredding and bruising up the ingredients while making one of the above described kimchi recipes I just have to stop for a moment and appreciate the rich spectrum of color, texture and invigorating aromas present in front of me.. the process in and of itself is nourishing to the imagination and provides poetry for the senses. Then comes the process of encouraging the community of beneficial bacteria to proliferate and ensuring they have an ideal environment to thrive and do their important work… that too is a process that offers it’s own form of nourishment for the mind and the soul as it offers opportunities to develop one’s patience, pattern recognition capabilities and humility (through accepting we cannot get the intended end result without the help of our elder species in the L.A.B. kingdom). The finished result is profoundly rewarding (both to the body, mind and soul) but so is the creative process, this is one of the reasons I love fermenting food so much (that along with the immense health benefits offered and the fact it is a method of preserving seasonal abundances that can be engaged in with low tech tools in off grid situations).

One of the central reasons I wrote Recipes For Reciprocity was to highlight that the most important part of my recipe comes long before one even begins preparing the ingredients in the kitchen. The most profound nourishment that my recipes offer is found in the process to cultivating the ingredients, it is a nourishment one can access when they embrace the rhythmic cycle that begins from seed and goes to harvest, learning to be present and appreciate the little things during that process, all the way to the table and then back to seed again.. and last but not least, the cycle goes back to the soil. While the recipe for the kimchi nourishes the body and inspires the imagination, the recipe for how one obtains the ingredients (and what one gives in return for said ingredients) along with the measure of how truly present and in a state of appreciation throughout the process is the part that has the potential to nourish the soul.

A while back I shared an excerpt from my book which was my attempt to explore how the impermanence of our individual lives on this Earth can be seen as a characteristic that imbues them with intrinsic beauty.

In the story (an excerpt from my book) I invite the reader to see their own life as a perpetually unfolding piece of art in motion. Each choice we make is like stroking a paint brush across the canvas that is our life. I aim to invite people to see all moments in life through this lens, even those that are seemingly mundane.

In consciously changing how we perceive each moment, we consciously change the structure of our brain, the bio-chemical make up of our body and even how our genes are expressed.

Therefore, we are each offered the opportunity to embark on a path to physiological and spiritual metamorphosis and all that is required to unlock that path to transformation is a conscious choice within in each moment.

Through that choice, we plant the seeds within to become the change we wish to see in the world around us. As those seeds take hold and set down roots within us (and we are living from that place of feeling and knowing the miracle of life in each moment) we can begin to plant physical seeds in our gardens and communities with a new found sense of purpose, joy and ability to appreciate all the abundance of beauty around us during our journey to co-create the more beautiful world our heart’s know is possible.