Everyday

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

This morning I woke to the need to drive to the store to buy coffee. It seems we used the last of our coffee last night. Early morning store runs are always interesting. The grocery is just opening, few shoppers, clean floors, the beginnings of hustle and bustle. I chose a dark roast by Folgers, something called Black Silk. I am no coffee expert, clearly. I like ordinary coffee and avoid Starbucks altogether. We'll see how this new stuff tastes.

When we lived in the Refuge and made coffee in a stove top percolator, the aroma of the cedar woodfire seemed to add something to the coffee. And for the longest time we used a small French press here in the city, but my son recently bought us some sort of super duper coffee maker and now we are in the modern age.

I am not so sure the modern age is all its cracked up to be. Labor saving devices make us fat and lazy. Further, and most importantly, they take us away from the nature of the processes, divorcing us, if you will, from nature itself. When I was young, changing the channel on the television meant getting up and walking to the TV to manually turn the dial. And when I was really young, visiting my grandfather, our TV was the front porch of his farm house. Degrees of separation. Today we hardly move to entertain ourselves. It is truly a question as to whether this is an advancement.

The Zen way is the way of involvement in the process. Mindful attention to detail. When we make the coffee, even in a new, modern, coffee maker, we should be aware of the feel and smell of the coffee as we scoop it from the can. We should remind ourselves of the many hands and lives that went into bringing that coffee and the coffee maker to us. In this way we re-connect ourselves to the larger world, even to the universe itself.

In the Zen way, the everyday becomes our prayer.

Be well.

Enjoy the Everyday

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

We so often look for wonder in the big places, the edge of the Grand Canyon, some mountain peak, the completion of a grand dream like running a marathon, and while these are wondrous to be sure, to seek wonder solely in them often blinds us to the wonder in the ordinary. We often here people say, 'what's so special' about this or that. We hear people talk with dreamy eyes about planned adventures, sometimes to exotic places, and I feel good for them, but at the same time, sad.

Each and every day has its wonder. We wake in the morning to see a sun rise. We see the darkness turn to light. We hear the world wake up. My Little Honey brings me a cup of coffee. It tastes really good. I watch Tripper as he dances in dogged excitement waiting for his turn to go outside and smell the world. Ordinary wonders.

As we sit in the stillness of Zazen, we begin to notice the details of the moment. These details are often obscured in everyday life by the sheer volume and variety of activity in our lives. How does my back feel just here, or my toes feel as they begin to go to sleep ten minutes into Zazen? How do I witness my response to thoughts or feelings as I sit without physical response, except to return to my breath? We might hear a clock tick or the air flow through the ducts in our building. On one level, the wonders of life go on with or without our involvement.

Yet it is equally true that there is no wonder in life without us. In a sense, we add wonder to our experience. And therein lies the problem: we become addicts. What we need isn't so much wonder, big or small, but rather, appreciation. Our practice isn't the seeking of wonder, but appreciating the actual moment. No special trips necessary.

When we appreciate, deeply appreciate, each moment, a moment becomes eternal.

Be well.

Just Zen

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

The sun rises over the mountains in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I often sit with it as it does. Its a marvelous transformation of night into day, sleep to awake, and stillness to motion. We appreciate both the stillness and the motion. Eventually we come to realize they are one.

The Zen of stillness is the Zen of being seated while the world swirls around us. The Zen of motion is the Zen of being the world swirling. Awake we know there is just Zen.

Be well.

Libertarian Food for Thought

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

I just read a study at livescience.com which reported that happiness in the world in increasing. The happiest, Denmark. The unhappiest, Zimbabwe. The United States ranks 16th.

The researcher, Ronald Inglehart of The University of Michigan, says, "The results clearly show that the happiest societies are those that allow people the freedom to choose how to live their lives."

In a survey released last week, pointed to one reason the US is not closer to the top: Baby Boomers are generally miserable compared to other generations.

The livescience articles adds, "Further, a public opinion poll released by the Pew Research Center in April found that 81 percent of Americans say they believe the country is on the "wrong track." The response is the most negative in the 25 years pollsters have asked the question."

Link

Maybe we are finally getting the point that an open society is a living, dynamic, and happy thing. Efforts to make people follow this or that path are just efforts to close a system. We all know what happens to closed systems, don't we? They die.

Be well.

To be Worth Our Salt

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

There are sixteen vows to being a Zen Buddhist. They are: Vow to take Refuge in the Buddha, Vow to take Refuge in the Dharma, Vow to take Refuge in the Sangha. Vow to Cease Doing Evil, Vow to Do Good, Vow to Bring About Good for all Beings, Vow not to kill, Vow not to steal, Vow not to misuse sex, Vow not to lie, Vow not to intoxicate the mind, Vow not to gossip, Vow not to elevate oneself at the expense of others, Vow not to be greedy, especially with the Dharma, Vow not to indulge in anger, Vow not to speak ill of the Three Treasures.

It is important to note that these vows are both positive and negative. We must not only vow to not kill, but also affirm life, for example. A religious life is not simply rule based, however. A religious life is a life devoted to being awake. From a Big Mind perspective, what is killing? What is supporting life? This planet is but an infinitesimal speck in an expanding, boundless universe. There is no number for the number of planets, stars, and celestial material. As Dr. Carl Sagan pointed out in his Varieties of Scientific Experience religion to be worth its salt must account for this vastness and the essentially small part of the vast universe we occupy.

Solar systems and galaxies are constantly being born and dying; just as the complex human body is born and dies. Yet, we say, in Zen, there is no birth and death. We say this because we often speak from Big Mind, the mind of the Infinite.

So, we accept life and death are both cycles, like the in-breath and the out-breath, but that the names we give them are not them, themselves. Living and dying are ultimately processes of eternal life, eternal life on a vastness of scale we cannot imagine. So, how do we reconcile the particular? If death is a part of life, just this, then why not die, kill, or otherwise not worry about it?

This is a koan for each of us.

Be well.

On Pins and Needles

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

This morning I plan to meet my son in Old Mesilla for a bike ride. I have taken the last four days off from exercise in order to recover from a tweak in a hip muscle and an inflammation of my skin disorder (chronic folliculitis). I took a Zyrtec to relieve the terrible itching and it pretty much knocked me out for two days. Now the Zyrtec has worn off, I have some energy, and the itch is steadily returning.

I often sit with this itch. I watch it as what feels like pins stick my skin and remain there for awhile. I watch my response. Most of the time I float with it. When I am not mindfull, however, yikes, I scratch it...not good. Like a lion the thing roars. More follicles get inflamed and I am desperately searching for something to calm it down. These things used to be on my neck. I now have some on my forearm. They seem to be getting better overall. Fewer follicles are subject. But those two or three...goodness.

I sometimes am able to be thankful for them. Like sometimes I'm thankful that My Left Foot is what it is. This thankfulness is about appreciating being called to the present moment. Its a deliberate effort to come into alignment. Nothing wakes someone up like stumbling in front of people or having a flame war going on on your skin. Its when I start feeling sorry for myself that things go downhill.

We each have our issues, don't we? Some of us are in wheelchairs. Some have visual impairments. Some have hearing loss. Some are lost in nostalgia and fearful of the next day. What matters most, in my opinion, isn't the issues. Issues are part of the human condition. What matters most is our attitude toward them.

When we deal with issues directly, no problem. If my arm itches, it is my wishing it wouldn't itch, that's the real problem. That desire to be free from suffering causes the scratching, the medication taking, and the emotional irritation. When I am mindful, noticing the pins, I just wash the affected area, put something on it, place my attention back on my breath or whatever activity I was involved in, and the itch loses its power. This is Zen practice.

Zen practice is internal. It is how we orient our minds, hearts, and bodies to be in our environment as one.
Be well.

A Fresh Face

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

There is a sense of history being made, a turning of a corner in the United States with this election. Senator Obama's youthful, happy face and focus on change, the vibrant primaries with a very strong, very smart woman who ran a terrific campaign for the nomination for president, and on the other side a tired old man treading over the same old stories, supporting the same old industries, big businesses, and wars. In a word, its unsettling.

I like Senator McCain. I think he is a man of character. He fought for his country when many chose not to, was a prisoner of war for years, and yet had the willingness and fortitude to work with his previous captors to bring an end to hostilities post Vietnam War. Like John Kerry, he chose a career in politics to give something back to his country. Both men have been maligned in their careers by political opportunists and operatives.

Yet, here's the thing. Senator McCain is not the man of the hour. This is not his decade. He's in the wrong party, fighting for the wrong side of causes, and in nearly every photo opportunity, he appears tired.

We need a fresh face in America. Nearly eight years of idiocy, abysmal foreign policy, and a trashing of our constitution to address political agendas have wounded us deeply. Our economy is in the trash can, our housing market through deregulated craziness and market greed, is threatening to destroy the American dream, and oil...well just fill up that SUV and feel the hit on your overused plastic. We need a fresh face in America.

The religious and spiritually inclined people of the United States have, according to a recent Pew poll, a sense of openness and mutual respect of other religions...with a few exceptions. We must see past the abuses of the religious right to honor each of us as children of God, whether that God is Adonai, Allah, Jesus, or simply, the Infinite.

Moreover, we the religious and spiritually inclined people of the United States have an obligation to bring about social change for the good of all. As religious people our focus is always on the greater good of the community. We address the social ills, the inequities, and the disgraces of greed, illness, war, and other forms of violence. We must focus on what brings us together as human beings rather than on the insidious issues that break us apart.

It is time to engage our communities in ways we have not been willing to do. We need to hold ourselves responsible and accountable for the mess we are in and, as a result, build a better world.

Be well.