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Meditation through housework

A couple of months ago, I was stressful from work and had to finish housework. I was tired and had no feelings to do it. I had no choice but started doing it slowly.

I focused solely on each step from start till end and kept aside my earlier stress. After an hour, I got my housework done and more significantly I felt better, relaxed and calm.

I asked myself what I had done to release the work stress. The answer was by doing housework! I was not convinced although it worked. I then shared the story with friends on Facebook just for fun and forgot it.

These could be tools to release stress.
Until recently, I came across a film on Buddha's life produced by the BBC. There was a scene where Buddha at a young age went out of palace with his father to join a farming festivity.

He carefully observed a farmer plowing the earth. He saw worms were dug up and eaten by birds around. His mind came to analyse why all these happened.

Everything is connected with causes and consequences, he thought, started from the plowing to the worms and the birds.

Experts claim that Buddha was actually doing meditation while he was watching the plowing. It is a stage known as 'Jhana', the act of focusing on something with 'peaceful and joyful' mind.

Based on the Buddha's story, I revisited my experience of doing housework and getting a better mood.   I assumed that I was actually meditating while doing my housework.

Without realizing it, I came to a stage of mind that shut down the stressful block but concentrating on what I was doing.

So killing stress and getting housework done at the same time is like killing two birds with one stone. But next time I will release my stress with something else as housework is never my favourite activity.              
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