Photo: A Break in the Clouds

In the beginning of 2009, when things were just starting to look really grim, I started taking lots of photos of the sky.

I’m not really sure why I suddenly had this facination with clouds and color; maybe it was an expression of understanding how things are impermanent, that even the best (and worst) of times come and go.

Filed under: Art, Zen , iPhone, photography

Goodnight and Good Riddance

It was with some relief that I read Time’s piece entitled, “The 00’s: A Decade from Hell” – all this time I, true to form, thought it was just me having a bad day, over and over.

The parallel is that up until 2000(ish), things were looking pretty good: I was making a good living, I had plans for the future and, in a way, it was like my life was just starting. I’d been struggling for years — in my career and with persistent anxiety that had become a big obstacle — but by the end of the rather banal ’90s it seemed like I’d come out the other side, ready for whatever I thought I’d been preparing for all that time.

Not to minimize the huge impact of the events mentioned in the article, I’ll turn to the events in my own life over the past decade, which have been… unexpected.

Filed under: Culture, Money, Working, Zeitgeist , 2009, depression, life, recession

The Decade (so far) in Seven Minutes

And this is only from the past 10 years!

Filed under: Culture, Internet, Money, Zeitgeist , Newsweek

The Reader

I’ve always been an avid reader, but when I was a kid scholastic assignments felt like unwarranted punishment: you were told to, essentially, memorize some (ultimately) useless chunk of carefully-worded factoids from a school textbook, then regurgitate — on command and within a set time limit — only the most incidental details (e.g. names and dates rather than motivations or ideals) of said assignment. If you were lucky you were offered the chance to evade pontification about, say, the involvement of American corporations with Nazi Germany during World War II or  Columbus’ big “discovery”, with a list of multiple choices that could allow you to pick an answer based on the process of elimination.

Then, there was the summer reading assignment to kick off the end of the school year with the issuance of a tome that served to remind you that summer vacation — the Holy Trinity of the calendar year — wouldn’t, in fact, last forever and soon enough you’d be back at your desk, learning about all kinds of stuff you’ll never use later in life.

All that time reading all that stuff, spitting it back out just the way you’re told so you can finish school and get a good job, right?

Flash forward 20 or so years and maybe you feel like you did learn something in school, after all.

Filed under: Art, Culture, Internet, Working, Zeitgeist

Tom Cruise Talking about Dragonfly

Man, I can’t get enough of this. “Why are there no clocks in here?” Hahahaha…

Filed under: Movies , comedy, tom cruise

You

Other than what’s displayed in the pic above, can anyone tell me that everything else that you think is you isn’t created in your mind?

Filed under: Zeitgeist, Zen , meditation, philosophy

The Brick Wall

I admit, there is a part of me that envies people who have created an area of their house/apartment exclusively for meditation, complete with a Buddha statue, a cushion (or three), candles, etc. I can almost hear the sound of a koto as I imagine this serene area devoted to the practice of taming the restless mind.

I’m not jealous, mind you; my current living arrangement simply does not allow me to devote such a space solely to meditation. Instead, I go down to my garage and sit on a cushion — my one luxury when it comes to meditation — and face a brick wall. I chose to do this because I thought it would be neutral, without distraction and, frankly, as boring as meditaion can be.

And it is all of those.

I mention the brick wall as an analogy to my practice as of late: for the past few weeks it’s been increasingly difficult to simply observe my restless thoughts, to detach from the emotions that might arise from simply thinking. I find that, in the posture of meditation, I am imagining the day ahead, or replaying an experience from the past. After 30 minutes or so I feel that I’m “not getting anywhere” and surrender to falling into the routine that starts my day.

On the upside, I realize that I’m aware that I’m listening to the chatter of monkey mind, that I know it’s like a child in a playground — jumping from one amusement to the next.

Keep breathing, keep sitting.

Filed under: Zen , meditation, monkey mind

Zen Koans

I love the enigmatic nature of koans. Like a sumi-e painting, they are structured to defy reasoning and conceptual thinking with what is essentially a riddle. The reader may interpret them as nonsensical stories with no inherent meaning, or they might be understood as the key that unlocks a door that leads to greater understanding to one’s truer nature.

As usual, the Zennist offers a great explanation:

Koans are set up in such a way that for those who have realized Mind to some degree it is easily seen at work in koans while for those who are ignorant of Mind it is not seen at all.  What confronts the latter is paradoxical and will remain such until they eradicate the false thinking which prevents them from seeing what koans are meant to reveal.

Filed under: Zen , koan, sumi-e