Five years ago, I bought a new house that had an old hot tub. It was manufactured in 1998 and was the 81stoff the Bullfrog hot tub line. After replacing the control panel, a pump, and a pressure switch, it’s worked without fail.
My wife is responsible for the subtitle of this piece. Upon initially getting into the tub and having the warm water soak aching muscles and calming eucalyptus vapors enter her nose, she exclaim, “where have you been all my life?” The question of how we lived so many years without a hot tub is for us an existential one.
I have found another essential use for my old Model-T of a hot tub—a place to soak in the Dharma. It is hard to find time to do any concentrated listening these days. I feel I am very good at blending activities—writing for work, service projects with my wife, and meditating over my lunch break—but having a healthy selfish soak in selfless contemplation really up’d my game!
A hot tub is really great for reducing distraction. Want to have a great conversation? It’s easier in a hot tub. Don’t have time to really listen to an esoteric discussion on the nature of mind? Prop a speaker up on the side of the hot tub, stare into the night sky, and just be in relation to these profound teachings.
In my mind, Sam Harris’s Waking Up App has really got the best collection of Dharma talks. The full collection of Alan Watts’ lectures or Joseph Goldstein’s The Path of Insight talks are restorative, interesting, and surprisingly fun listens. They probe deeply not only on Buddhist concepts, but all mystical traditions. While deep, much of what is taught is simply to remember, poignant in its mantra like quality to help you return to the depths with a few simple phrases.
For example:
Watts’ exposing, “You are it!” Not some sideshow, not a devotee, but a universe unto yourself. The ordinary illuminated!
Goldstein’s practice of the Buddha’s central claim in the 4 Noble Truth’s that “What has the nature to arise, also has the nature to fade away... so there is no need for grasping.” (Emphasized coda added by Goldstein)
Harris’s own discussions on the nature of awareness, “As a matter of experience, all there is, is consciousness and its contents.”
This timeless wisdom is surrounded by context that really feels in the gaps on unsatisfactoriness and its causes; worldly and unworldly desires, aversions, and uncertainty; consciousness’s cosmic significance; the nature of the mind; being in relation with other conscious entities; and so much more.
Have a soak in the wisdom of the ages!