Labour - an essay on housework

Yesterday my mother did childminding 6,000 miles away. We were Skyping and she watched Ghin shuffle about like Yoda, in his dressing gown, admonishing me with comments like Eh, careful he's gone into the hall. Oi, watch, what is he doing now. It was weird, like having a vitual child alert, but in Singaporean. As she worked away, i washed dishes. I have gotten used to this now, but this was clearly a novelty for my parents, the visual of me doing domestic work.

My dad even went so far as to say, You're a scholar you know Steph. Washing dishes! I maybe or have been a scholar, but it wasn't Hogwart's a graduated from, so the dishes ain't going to magically do themselves now are they? However, i did say, it is because of that that it's important to do the dishes - there is hope for the world when scholars do the dishes.

There's this great passsage in Chogyam Trungpa's Shambala, which sums this up.

Great Eastern Sun vision....is based on appreciating ourselves and appreciating our world, so it is a very gentle approach. Because we appreciate the world, we don't make a mess of it. We take care of our bodies, we take care of our minds, we take care of our world. The world around us is regarded as very sacred, so we have to constantly serve our world and clean it up. The setting-sun vision is that washing things and cleaning up should be the domain of the hired help. Or if you can't afford a housekeeper, you clean up yourself, but you regard if as dirty work. Having a nice meal is fine, but who is going to wask the dishes? We would prefer to leave that to someone else.

...The setting sun approach is to sheild ourselves from dirt as much as we cal, so that we don't have to look at it - we just get rid of anything unpleasant. As long as we have a pleasurable situation, we forget about the leftovers or the greasy spoons and plates. We leave the job of cleaning up to somebody else.

The approach produces an oppressive social hiearchy in the setting-sun world; there are those who get rid of other people's dirt and those who take pleasure in producing the dirt. Those people who have money can continue to enjoy their food and ignore leftovers. They can pay for luxury and ignore reality. In that way of doing things, you never see the dirt properly, and you may never see the food properly either. Everything is compartmentalised, so you can never experience things completely. We are not talking purely about food; we are talking about everything that goes on in the setting-sun world; packaged food, packaged vacations, package deals of all kinds. There is no room to experience doubtlessness in that world; there is no room to be gentle; there is no room to experience reality fully and properly.

In contrast to that, Great Eastern Sun vision is a very ecological approach. The way of the Great Eastern Sun is based on seeing what is needed and how things happen organically. So the sense of hiearchy or order, is not connected with imposing arbitrary boundaries of divisions. Great Eastern Sun hiearchy comes from seeing life as a natural process and tuning in to the uncontrived order that exists in the world. It is based on seeing that there is a natural source of radiance and brilliance in the world - which is the innate wakefulness of human beings.

And it goes on a bit more about what this vision is - but it explains why, even as a child, i felt so guilty when looked after by the many, many women and men whom we paid next to nothing, just because we could. The divide that separates me, as an individual, from another is defined ironically by the most common of labours - taking care of myself. I still don't know how to do so many things properly - clean windows, the toilet, keep a house tidy - these could probably be considered failures in education.

I am proud that i do my own housework - how are we keep the world tidy if we can't do the same for ourselves? It is the most concrete manifestation of the personal and the political.

I think i will put down the Great Eastern Sun vision - cos it finishes off on a good positive note:

The sun of human dignity can be likened to the physical sun spanning the darkness. When you have a brilliant sin, which is a source of vision, the light from the sun shines through every window of the house, and the brightness of its light inspires you to open all the curtains... In the vision of the Great Eastern Sun, even criminals can be cultivated, encouraged to grow up.In the setting-sun vision, criminals are hopeless, so they are shut off; they don't have a chance. They are part of the dirt that we'd rather not see. But in the vision of the Great Eastern Sun, no human being is a lost cause. We don't feel that we have to put a lid on anyone or anythings. We are always willing to give things a chance to flower.

This is a great article on acheiving peace of mind. What a state to be in huh?