Observations that dive deep into life and come up with treasures for all

Feel free to comment on these blogs. I am discovering that this new form of communication that as been made available allows me to share my journey as it unfolds. Looking back over these blogs since they began last July I can see how they have wandered from here to there in ever increasing awareness of what is immediately present by the side of the path. It started high up in the head and has now come down the slop into the flat lands of every day life. Instead of abstract concepts about a wedding the focus has turned to the beauty of a tea bag steeping in hot water. Instead of conjuring concepts the writing seems to be trying to just stay with experience. Just as a real walk along the path offers us choices: do we get lost in our thoughts and step on the flowers at our feet, or do we forget our thoughts and observe the life around us.

I know someone is sharing this walk with me because 258 new visitors have stopped at this blog in February, and many have come back because it has received over three thousand hits. So I invite you to share your discoveries as we simplify our lives and pay attention to the beauty that surrounds us.

Imagine that each day is a beautiful walk and every moment is a turn in the path. Faces that we meet are flowers, voices speaking to us are song birds, all the commonplace names and forms are intricate patterns of great beauty, and always there is our gentle breath going in and out like a spring breeze. On a day like this one can’t help but smile.

Posted under General Observations

Just a note on this little game going on between my body and mind. This morning my hands were freezing so I put on my computer gloves, and not long after that my hands put them down somewhere and didn’t tell my mind where it put them. I asked them where they put the gloves but they refused to answer. Stubborn, I thought, maybe you’re just trying to get back at me for slamming a finger in a drawer.

“Ok, then just freeze,” I said after looking all over the house. So, after about an hour, I lifted my blue fingers up and asked it they were ready to tell me where the gloves were. “Look in the bedroom,” I heard this tiny voice say. And they were there, right where my hands had put them when I changed clothes to go out.

I hope this teaches them a lesson.

Posted under General Observations

My practice of late is to become more mindful of my daily activities, such as washing dishes, sweeping, whatever I am doing. Being mindful just means being aware of the present moment and enjoying the patterns and sounds that go unnoticed when our mind is wandering around in the past or future. There is so much to discover, even in our own homes or back yards. And even in our own mouths.

What has helpled be become mindful while I eat is the three tooth gap in my lower front teeth. I’m waiting for a retainer, and while I wait I’ve found that my lower lip likes to stray into the path of the tooth at the edge of the front gap and get caught between it and the upper tooth. Ooch!

If I’m not very mindful of how I’m chewing, my lip reminds me. I’m very fortunate. I don’t have to go to a Zen monastery and have some master whack me on the back when I lose my mindfulness during meditation. All I have to do is eat something.

Posted under General Observations, meditation help

It was 6 am at 21 degrees, and I was locked out of my house in my bathrobe. As is my habit I get in my hot tub at 5:30 and then scoot inside for a shower, but this morning my son was up early to walk his dog, and when he returned locked the door behind him, not realizing that I was in the tub. So there I was, banging on the door and smiling.

Now let me give you some background. Around my house I am the one who shuts anything that is left open, or turns off anything that is left on. I’m like Monk in this way. And my son is my opposite. If there is anything off, he leaves it on, anything shut, he leaves it open. That’s the way fathers and sons are, you know, a pair of opposites.

But this morning the great Taoist truth has been realized in my house: Everything becomes its own opposite, eventually. And “eventually” has finally arrived. I was so happy–after I got into the house, of course.

My son’s worst nightmare was here. He was becoming me! Finally, I can now relax.

Posted under General Observations

Give any girl a hat and she will become a model. This was evident during a pageant shoot the other day when our subject put on this cute hat. Being a model is being able to play, and most girls know how to do that. You just have to let them know that it is ok. The problem with most picture taking is that we try too hard. We want some product that will make our parents proud. You can’t play when you are trying to play.

If the girl can’t play with her mom standing there I tell her that if her mom is a problem I’ll kick her out. This usually gets every one relaxed. Maybe not the mom but it helps the kid.

So being a model is easy if you have a hat and know how to play. Being able to play is not being self conscious. If we can stop being self conscious, we are at play. Play is a state of being that is not thinking about itself. Every thing is ok in play. You can be anything you want, say anything, do anything, as long as you can say, just playing. Play is not being serious, not being real, so to speak.

But maybe, just maybe, being at play is more real than being serious. Not being self conscious may be more conscious than we realize.

Posted under General Observations

While fixing my VW window that got stuck in the down position, my friend recalled an interesting memory association that occurred when he had borrowed the car once. “The heated seat in this car,” he said, “ reminded me of that warm feeling I got as a child when my little brother, who used to sleep with me, peed in the bed. I would feel this nice warmth spreading under me, not realizing exactly what it was until I woke completely up. Then I would scrunch all up trying to get away from that creeping warm spot.”

Wow, how powerful childhood memories are, I thought. All we need is the right set of conditions, and up they sprout like flowers or weeds, just as fresh as if they were just picked.

In the Eastern philosopy these impressions are called samskaras, and they work beneath our consciousness like a hidden puppeteer, making us dance to the tune of all those pleasures and pains that seem to dominate our lives. If something gives us pleasure, it makes an impression like a groove in an old record, and that impression makes us desire the pleasure again. But the pleasure never gives us fulfillment because each time we desire it a new samskara is created. This is why we sometimes feel like a hamster on a wheel, always going faster and faster but never getting anywhere. Everything is just the same old tune.

So the next time we notice a desire pulling on our strings, remember that not all warm feelings are what we think they are.

Posted under General Observations

A friend of ours is leaving today after staying for three weeks. She left Los Angeles for good, a place where the noise and the traffic had made her life unbearable. So she came to Blackstone where the traffic is modest and there is time to enjoy a cup of tea and talk with spaces of silence where one can rest. And there was time to make a stained glass piece for her brother. And there was time to meditate in the morning and read some poetry before breakfast.

We can’t stop the traffic in LA, but we can stop the traffic in our mind. When our mind is racing in huge beltways of thought going nowhere, there is no difference between our mind and the city. Meditation is like parking the car and walking. Suddenly there is time to notice the flowers beside the road, and there is enough silence to hear the birds making spring nests in bushes.

A mind with no traffic is a beautiful place to live.

Posted under General Observations, meditation help

For the last few days we have been watching our 3 DVD box set of the British comedy Mr. Bean, which used to run on BBC in the early 90’s. I watched Mr. Bean then, and now I can revisit him on DVD. Last night we finished the set with a special segment of interviews on how Mr. Bean came about.

I was particularly struck by watching Rowan Atkinson, Mr. Bean’s creator, describe in his very polished restrained Oxford accent how Mr. Bean came into being. Through the clips of Rowan’s early years in comedy one could see Mr. Bean growing like a stalk from the first seed that was planted in his childhood. Even then you could see the young Mr. Bean protesting through his play the suffocating crust of social conformity.

If you have never seen Mr. Bean, briefly he is a Charlie Chapman figure who goes through modern culture like a buzz saw or a devilish god or alien who delights in leaving havoc wherever he goes through his mischievous play. His egocentric behavior makes him a world unto himself and a destructive force in the social world of custom and predictability, but he never gets away with his “wily coyote” attempts to catch the road runner of “one upmanship.” He usually gets just the opposite of what he tries to achieve.

But even when his best efforts brings the balancing weight of justice down on him, Bean rises from the ashes of his destroyed car, for instance, and salvages the clasp lock he used on the door. Happy with himself and his luck, he leaves looking for the next adventure. Bean never learns. Nor do we want him to.

I am thinking that without the rigid social conformity of the English society, there wouldn’t be a Mr. Bean, or for that matter, any of the brilliant British comedies. For in the conformity, the seeds of nonconformity grow. And the humor of Bean needs the backdrop of that very conformity in order to be funny. Bean is British convention, and that social convention is Bean. When we surrender to laughter, we see both at once, and that is enlightening.

Posted under General Observations, reviews

In Buddhism and Quantum physics every point in the universe contains the whole. In the poet’s vision the whole world is contained in a flower or grain of sand. In the act of selfless love the boundaries of the world dissolve. And in the depths of meditation the shores of the little self are inundated with the ocean of the infinite.

Or you can just look into the eye of your cat.

Posted under General Observations, meditation help

I remember taking a picture and writing a newspaper feature story 20 years ago about a Christmas tree that was decorated with lace doilies , and now I found myself again taking a picture of the same tree and the lady who has been making these decorations for her family’s Christmas. She is 90 now and doesn’t make any more decorations, not because she can’t, but because the tree is full. She left it up until this February for her portrait.

Each doily looks like an enlarged snowflake, full of white threads of interralated connections. I was struck by the beauty of these lace stars and the lady who had made them. Even at 90 she seemed as fresh and full of life as a new snow. Crystals hung from her neck as they did from the tree. Her hair was white from winter, and her dress dark blue like a Christmas night, with a belt of tiny jewels that sparkled like the Milky Way.

People who make lace doilies understand family and the love that ties them together. Families are not a collection of isolated threads living in separate rooms and weaving separate things, but a web of interdependences, a web of relatedness that together makes something unique as a snowflake. Each family is different, and each is beautiful. Each family is a Christmas tree with all its members hanging like lace doilies. People who make lace doilies understand this.

Posted under General Observations