The Art of Zen Living

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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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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