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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You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world…

Not too long ago, I got serious about the concept of frugal living. I put together a spreadsheet on which I listed the things I purchase on a regular basis (rice, beans, milk, flour, chicken breasts, etc - it’s an old list, going back to the pre-vegetarian days…), along with their prices at various places.  What I found was that (no surprise) Walmart was almost always the lowest price.  Price, however, is different than cost.

I know a number of people that take a measure of pride in the fact that they don’t shop at Walmart.  They’re Target shoppers. The problem is that Target is as bad or worse than Walmart.  Target does have a major advantage in being the second largest - the microscope isn’t on them.  They also have better marketing and PR.

In the meantime, I’d still like to live in a frugal manner, even if Walmart is trying hard to steal the idea of frugal living for their “save money live better” marketing.  That they’re using it for their marketing is enough to make you reconsider.  In this case, “save money” doesn’t mean “live frugally”, it means “be cheap”.  Have I lost you yet?  Bear with me, I’ll explain:

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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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We had a nice little storm yesterday afternoon.  Nothing too unusual for South West Florida in monsoon season - lots of heavy rain, high winds gusting to 50 miles per hour or so, scattered hail.  We get late afternoon thunderstorms all the time around here in the summer.  This one was perhaps a big stronger than usual, and it was the first really strong one of the season.  Tucked away safe and sound in my house, I enjoyed listening to it.  I was grateful that it had let up a bit by the time I needed to go drive in it.  I enjoyed the drive in the light rain, nice and cool and pleasant.

Today, I went out to assess the damage to the garden.  With the clay soil underneath it, the garden was swimming in water.  No problem, really - the worst of it was the area I’d just dug out and added garden soil to.  I’ll need to dig that good dirt back out, throw some of the older dirt back into the bottom to build it up a little, and that should take care of the problem.  It also made it quite clear to me that I really shouldn’t plant anything out there until fall planting season.  I’ll plant some flowers to get bees used to the area, and then plow them under when the time comes, but as far as food crops, I don’t think it would be a good idea.  I’ll just get frustrated if I lose them to the rain.

While I was out there, I was pulling some of the larger rocks I’d thrown over into a pile and spreading them out to hose off.  I was snagging them with a 4 prong cultivator, yanking them off the pile and then pushing them around with it.  For some reason, when I got to the third rock I was going to pull out, I didn’t use the cultivator.  Instead, I leaned down. to grab it.  As I reached for this rock, it lifted it’s head and looked up at me.

I realized that the storm had not been pleasant for everyone.

UPDATE: As of this afternoon, the little storm tossed bird is doing much better. I called the C.R.O.W. and they said that as long as she was able to move around and strong enough to call, the best thing to do is put her back out where mom and dad can find her. Looks like all she needed was a few hours out of the sun, a little water, and a chance to get some rest!

I’ve kept and eye out this afternoon, and mom and dad did find her, and have been (I assume) bringing her goodies to snack on.  She’d been making her way across the yard, but I can’t find her anywhere now.  Mom and dad are still around, so I’m sure she’s safe.  Most cool.

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Ever wonder where your stuff comes from? You shouldn’t have to. I know that I spent a lot of years actively avoiding even thinking about where my stuff comes from. I also avoided thinking about what happens to it when I throw it away. We all know it just isn’t a very pretty picture. So we think to ourselves “Oh, my stuff comes from the store!” and we leave it at that. I suppose because it’s too hard to face the idea that “Oh, my stuff comes from the rape of our planet and the horrific exploitation of human beings!”. Thinking about it that way would sure smash the joy of buying that new TV, wouldn’t it? Well, shouldn’t it?

The system we have today isn’t the way it always was. In fact, it isn’t the way things would have progressed naturally, by themselves. The change happened in the 50’s, right after World War Two. America led the way, by inventing a new way of life - consumerism. We weren’t selfish about it - we happily exported it all over the world. There’s a problem with that. Here in America, we have about 5% of the world’s population. In order to live in a state of consumerism, Americans use 30% of the world’s resources. So what happens when the rest of the world starts trying to live in consumerism?

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About two weeks ago, I received a package from Amazon.com containing the following:

• 1 “Merkur Long Handled Safety Razor-#180- Made in Germany” $29.49
• 1 “Merkur Double Edge Razor Blades- Pack of 10 Blades- Made in Germany” $5.29
• 1 “Col. Conk World’s Famous Super Bar Shaving Soap - 3.75 oz., Almond” $5.50

Subtotal of Items: $40.28
Shipping & Handling: $8.00
Total for this Order: $48.28

It’s worth noting that I already had the (I assume) boar’s hair brush pictured.  It ran me about $4 or $5 at Walmart a while back, and works just fine.  If you have to buy one, everything I’ve read suggests that buying a badger hair brush is the way to go.

So other than being able to take really cool old-timey looking black and white pictures at the sink in my bathroom, why would I decide to buy a piece of technology that, while revolutionary in it’s time, is clearly outdated now?  I mean, the thing does have TWO blades, but you can’t USE them both on your face at the same time!  Clearly that makes it inferior to the Bladezilla shaver I’d been using, with it’s 64 blades designed to cut the fur on my face so far below the skin I’m practically shaving my skull, right?

For those of you thinking that the possibility exists that this is a trick question, I’ll save you the suspense - it is.  I’m going to share with you how I came to this decision, my impressions, and point you to a few excellent resources for learning how to shave with one of these old-fangled contraptions!

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“The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.”
Leonardo da Vinci, artist and scientist

I love meat.  I really do - as in “What?  If I can eat the entire 5 pound Porterhouse it’s free?  Bring me TWO of ‘em, medium rare!”  So no one is more surprized than I am that I’m even thinking about this, let alone dipping my toe into the waters.  Here lately, it seems like I’m eating less and less meat, partly because I’m enjoying trying out new bean recipes and lentils and other healthy alternatives, but also partly because my beliefs have started to shift.  It doesn’t take much research to find out that the animals we rely on for meat are treated really badly, and go through a tremendous amount of suffering.  I’d heard about it before - we all have, really.  Hearing about it and seeing the pictures, or the video, are very different things.  When the video of workers using a forklift to torment and torture the “downer” cows came to light earlier this year, it became very difficult for me to continue to ignore what goes on in our nation’s meat factories (let’s face it, these animals aren’t raised on farms anymore).  Between eating less meat and not wanting to support big agri-business, I’ve decided to try and live as a vegetarian for 2 weeks, and see how it effects my health, happiness and lifestyle. This isn’t the only option out there. You can have your meat and support sustainable non-industrial farming, too. If I don’t like the vegetarian life, that’s my fallback plan.

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There’s an old proverb, it goes something like this.  A Zen Master was asked how his life changed when he became enlightened.  He replied “Well, before enlightenment, I would carry water and chop wood.  After I became enlightened, I carry water, and chop wood.”

It’s an interesting statement to meditate upon.  What I’m going to write next is just my take on this, I don’t claim that I’m right or wrong, just that my conclusions means something to me.

The subtle subtext is that before he became enlightened, he did those things because he was told to, without understanding why.  Once he became enlightened, he understood that those were the things that needed to be done.  Buddhism is both straight forward and convoluted.  It’s this duality, perhaps, that I find appealing.  Buddhism asks us to accept and embrace our own duality in order to transcend our duality.  The irony is that once we do transcend our duality, what we do is what we’ve always done.  We just do it differently.  I think I’m more confused now than when I started writing this, so I hope I’m not being too convoluted.

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