The Art of Zen Living

When I set out on this path, I remember thinking “What could be easier than living simply?”

Heh.  It didn’t take long to figure out that simple and easy are worlds apart.  The simple way to live is to bake my own bread.  It’s wholesome, nutritious, and has lots of good things store bought bread lacks, and lacks all of the bad things store bought bread has.

Easy is running to the store and picking up a loaf of bread for a dollar.  That bread, even if it’s marketed as “healthy” is likely to have a variety of preservatives, processed and enriched flour, high fructose corn syrup and any number of other things that you probably don’t want in your food.

Ironically, this is what I was thinking about tonight as I baked my bread.

So if living simply isn’t easy, why would anyone do it?  Let alone do it on purpose?

I can’t answer that question for everyone that lives this way, but I can answer that question - for me - in a single word.

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The days are long, but the years are short.

Over at The Happiness Project, Gretchin is talking about the third splendid truth.  Which I’ve quoted above.  I should also clarify that when I say All Things Mulch, I’m not talking about garden supplies.  Mulch is my male cat, pictured to the left.

Yoda, of course, is the little green jedi guy that chided Luke:

“All his life has he looked away—to the horizon, to the sky, to the future. Never his mind on where he was, on what he was doing….”

Wow.

What is the Present Moment, anyway?  To my mind, it’s the unchanging now.  Time is something that we have invented to help up make sense of the ever changing flux and flow that happens inside the unchanging Present Moment.

I know, right?  Makes my head hurt a little just thinking through that sentence.  Let me put it a different way.  Right now, in the present moment, I am writing this blog post.  Also in the Present Moment the Buddha attained enlightenment.  Also in the Present Moment, Jesus Christ hangs on the cross.  Truman gives the order to drop the first atomic bomb.  The first atomic bomb detonates.  The Spartans defend the pass at Thermopylae.  Babylon falls.  Rome rises.  All happening in the unchanging Present Moment.

So why do we spend so little time there?  Why do we always look away - to the future and to the past?

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Trent over at The Simple Dollar recently posted about Starting a Natural Collection.  It’s a fascinating post, the idea being to collect for personal enjoyment things that are found free in nature.  It got me thinking.

I like rocks.  I really enjoy interesting rocks.  For me, a rock connects me in a very real way to a place I’ve been.  I have a rock in my office from the parking lot of a job I had in Las Vegas.  I have fond memories of the job and the people, and while I have given away many, many other keepsakes from there, the simple rock is harder to let go of.  I can’t explain it.

Rocks, on the other hand, will quickly become very heavy to haul around - even small ones.  My preference is not for small rocks, either, but for hand sized and larger.

Collections also go against the grain of living simply - even if it’s a simple collection of simple items.  So while I found the article and ideas interesting, something had to change if I was going to be able to participate in collecting anything.

Then I had an idea:

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Today I received a really cool e-mail from a friend and reader (thanks Mair!) that had a long list of tips for living.  We spend so much of our time living, but so little of our time learning how to do it better.  So I got to thinking, what’s some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten over the years, what am I doing that’s working, what have I done in the past that’s worked, and what do I need to get back to.  I ended up with a list of 18 things to focus in on over the summer, and I thought I’d share them with all of you.

With no further ado, I give you the Summer of Love ‘08 Happy Living Manifesto!  Well, the manifesto and a cool picture of a bunny I took at Disney…

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I saw an amazing thing tonight.  Perhaps that’s more a commentary on our “culture” than anything.

I try to walk every day - some weeks I do better than others.  I’ve been off my stride lately, so I made an extra effort to make sure I got off of my butt tonight and got out there.  My route takes me 3 tenths of a mile out to a semi-main road, which offers a nice, straight patch of sidewalk and a variety of large trees and interesting vegetation.  I’ve learned to appreciate the lack of litter along this stretch of road.  I’d never really stopped to think much about it, other than to observe there wasn’t much of it.  I sort of vaguely attributed it to the neighborhood.  I was only partially right.

I walk at a pretty brisk pace - somewhere around 4 and a half miles per hour - and I wear 5 pound ankle weights and carry 5 pound hand weights.  I end up working a good amount of momentum and there’s a “swish-swish-swish” of the sand in the ankle weights that makes it hard to sneak up on anyone.  While I usually give a wave and a smile, I’m always wearing my ear buds and usually listening to Ven. Kusala Bhikshu, It takes something truly out of the ordinary to pull my focus.

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For a Buddhist, one of the things we have to consider is the concept of “right livelihood”.  It’s part of the eight fold path.  I think it applies to most people, not just Buddhists.  How many times have you heard someone say “How do they sleep at night?”?  At least a few.  That’s really what “right livelihood” is all about - making sure that you choose a way to make a living that lets you sleep at night.  Well, as a start, anyway.  What you really want is a way to earn a living that both lets you live comfortably, and also allows you to reduce the suffering in the world.  Or, if you prefer the “glass half full” version, then you want a way to earn a living that both lets you live comfortably and also allows you to increase the happiness in the world.  I don’t think many westerners make the connection that reduce suffering means the same as increase happiness.

Now I’ve gone and wandered off topic - what I really want to know is are you a bee, or are you a mosquito?

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There’s an interesting article up over at Zen Habits, and the discussion in the comments has been really interesting.  As a result, I wanted to share it with you.  With no further introduction:

Questions and Answers on Compassion with the Dalai Lama.

“Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.”

-Mary Schmich

I know I should be nice to people.  I know I feel better, they feel better and my day goes better when I am.  I’m calmer, more relaxed, and better able to deal with whatever comes my way.  I find I do better when I’ve had a chance to meditate.  I do 2 different kinds of meditation right now.  The first kind is the more traditional, sitting cross legged on the floor with my eyes closed kind, which I tend to think of as “back to one”.  The reason I think of it that way is simple.  I sit, I clear my mind, and I begin counting my breaths.  I feel the inhale of air, and as I exhale I count “one”.  The idea is that I count my breaths up to ten, and then back down to one.  If at any point in time my mind wanders, I start back at one.  I’m still a beginner, so all too often my meditation practice goes something like this:

“One….”

“Two….”

“What should I have for dinner tonigh…awww, crap.  One….”

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“Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.”

- Shunryu Suzuki

We set goals every day.  Some small (I’ve got to run to the store and get milk today) and some big (I’m going to go back to school and learn how to write).  I’ve read a lot about how to set goals, how to achieve goals, and the importance of setting specific goals.  I’ve seen very little written on the topic of setting good goals.  What is a good goal, anyway?  Goals are as different as the people that set them.  If you want to be rich, then your goals are likely to be very different from the goals set by someone that wants to be raise a large family.  But what is a “good” goal?  From a Buddhist view, a “good” or skillful goal would be one that, when achieved, reduced the suffering (or, if you prefer, enhanced the happiness) in the world.  The tricky part is in looking at all the ways we’re connected, and making sure that you aren’t enhancing your happiness at the expense of enhancing someone else’s suffering. So how do you do that?

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People must realize that even with all these comforts, all this money and a GNP that increases every year, they are still not happy. They need to understand that the real culprits are our unceasing desires. Our wants have no end.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama

If you turn your light inwardly, you will find what is esoteric within you.

-The Sutra of Hui Neng
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