Zen and the Art of Mowing the Lawn

I mowed the lawn today. I keep trying to achieve pure Buddhist satori no mind while mowing the grass, but stuff keeps getting in the way of that. I mean, what did the zen master say when all the grass hit him in the face? I personally curse a lot and in particular I curse the day I decided to disable the safety guard on the lawnmower so it would work more efficiently and I wouldn't have to keep leaning over with a stick and pulling grass out of the discharge thingie while balancing on one foot (the other one, you see, has to keep the guard open) and also holding the safety bar by the handle with the hand that isn't poking the moving blades with a stick. Since then, lawnmowing has been less acrobatic but more hazardous; the likelihood of going blind when a stick or part of a dog toy (or, as happened one horrific and memorable day a couple years ago, half a rather large copperhead snake) flies out of the mower and slams into my eye (okay, the half snake didn't hit me in the eye. It flew out near me and I screamed for a surprisingly long time - from several hundred yards away, in fact, from more or less under my bed, where I had teleported myself pretty much instantaneously) is incrementally higher. What's life without risk? Mowing the lawn: a life or death experience.

I also mow the lawn in concentric counterclockwise, or widdershins for all you Wiccans, spirals. This is the most efficient method, I believe, since it lessens the amount of old caked grass the mower has to suck up and then either get clogged in it's innards or spit out into my eyes to blind me. Also, I like to think it keeps ghosts, demons and aliens at bay because, as we know, interlocked spirals confuse the hell out of the supernatural. That is, if the supernatural beings in question aren't really the sharpest tools in the shed, and I, personally, live in hope that, if I'm ever being psychically attacked by creatures from another dimension, they're kind of clueless. That way I can just shout "Look, over there!" and speedily make my getaway. Or divert them from ever attacking in the first place and instead come outside one morning to find them plodding around and around my yard, fascinated by the crop circles therein. That would rock, because then, after quickly whipping up some spiffy uniforms, I can make them my minions, at which point, look out world: I'll be a very happy camper. I absolutely know that my life would be exponentially better if, in many given situations, I could just say, "Minions, attack."