The Art of Zen Living

Back in March, I spent a few weekends on reducing the amount of stuff that owns me. Yes, you read that right. The further along in this project I get, the more I feel like I was the one that was owned.

The first part of this journey came to be when I decided I wanted to know if I could live in a one bedroom apartment, or if I need a 2 bedroom.  I’d been living in a one bedroom only because I have a garage I paid extra for.  Lots of my stuff lived in that garage so that I could have room to live in the apartment.

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Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle,
And the life of the candle will not be shortened.
Happiness never decreases by being shared

A good friend of mine made the observation that I’d been a very difficult person to buy a gift for even before I started changing my attitude towards material things. It’s an excellent question - what DO you get someone that is living simply? I put together a list of suggestions.

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*Note: this is a re-post (updated slightly to reflect that I’m moving at the end of the month) of an article originally posted on my old blog on March 18th, 2008

I was reading over at ZenHabits.net about the 100 things challenge, thinking to myself “how in the world could I possibly ever do this???”.  In fact, the first comment was along the lines of “this is insane and stupid!”.  I agreed, at first.  Then I went back and re-read.

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