#2: Dishwasher Meditation
Do dishes often enough, and eventually you'll notice you're the one getting rinsed.
Most evenings I load the dishwasher.
Like a short-order cook at closing time: rinsing, stacking, sometimes muttering small apologies to the plates I promised I wouldn’t chip or wondering why in the world someone placed that dish in that slot. But once in a while, the spastic, rapid movements downshift. I take a beat. I notice the way warm water slides across porcelain, the pleasant click as a mug finds its place, the quiet pride in a lineup of gleaming forks, spoons, kids cutlery, and all the cups and plates in their glorious designated slots.
It isn’t a ritual I inherited. Nobody taught me the Way of the Bowl. Yet, as James Hollis might say, meaning sneaks into these small acts, these daily repetitions. Grand gestures rarely surface. I’m reminded the ineffability of it all, The Tao (or Way), moves through every detail, even the sound the dishwasher makes as it latches shut.
There’s a certain comedy here, too. One of my Stoic heroes, Marcus Aurelius, may have faced the weight of empire, but I face the spray arm that always falls off when I look away. Still, the lesson lingers in a soft tempo. Most of what needs attending doesn’t announce itself. You simply show up, suds and all, and pay attention.
In those moments—one hand on a chipped plate, the other closing the door—I remember that clarity emerges naturally through rhythm, through motion, through not reaching for my phone while the cycle runs. I can’t force clarify but I do tend to it. And in that mind frame, I notice I am, at least until the steam clouds my glasses and I call it good.
If consciousness moves as the field of awareness, then this too is being aware: stacking bowls, arranging spoons, listening for the soft rumble as everything inside begins to transform.
Eventually, the cycle ends. I open the door and embrace the cloud of steam. It’s not enlightenment, but the forks are clean and that’s usually enough for one evening.
[1] James Hollis, Living an Examined Life: Wisdom for the Second Half of the Journey (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2018).
[2] Derek Lin, The Tao of Daily Life (Woodstock, VT: SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2007), see also Derek Lin’s Tao blog.
[3] Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, translated, introduced, and edited by Robin Waterfield (New York: Basic Books, 2021).