August 26, 2008 at 3:47 pm (Life, Spirituality, Work)
Tags: Gump, zazen
I’ve come to a rather sobering realization lately: considering my skills, talents and abilities, I am fortunate to be employed at all.
Really.
I have no marketable skills. Perhaps even more disturbing, I lack any interest or motivation in developing my skillset. How is it that I have managed to avoid being fired all these years?
I am good at one thing: sitting like an idiot. I am sure that Forest Gump and I are twin brothers separated at birth.
Of course, Forest Gump is an enlightened master, so maybe there is hope for me afterall.
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August 7, 2008 at 11:05 am (Spirituality)
Tags: old geezer, zazen
With increasing frequency I find myself approaching my meditation chair. It sits in the corner, by a window, a firm, upright piece that was given to me by some nuns I know.
Sometimes I am not sure what to do with the next 15 minutes. So I sit in the chair.
My eyes remain open, my mind becomes a blank table.
I look around, seeing everything that is contained in that moment. I call it ‘toothless old geezer training.’
I don’t know for sure, but at the end of an aged life, I may find that I am a toothless old geezer. In an odd way, I kind of look forward to it.
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August 4, 2008 at 1:52 pm (Life)
Tags: memory, senior moments
My friend greets me with the surprise, delight and wonder of a 5year old, amazed yet again that I am, apparently, alive and still walking the earth. Of course, a couple of days ago I told her I would be dropping by to see her. She is 86 and does not remember things. I have not, in the last 11 years, seen her so child-like, contented, free from grasping. Like a Zen Master, she sits, completely in the moment, in perfect harmony with what is.
And me? Now in my mid-forties, I aspire to have a few such senior moments, moments of wisdom and tranquility.
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August 1, 2008 at 11:47 am (Life, Work)
Tags: Boredom
I am learning how to be bored. I go to work and sit and do nothing, even as I am doing something. I shuffle papers, I stare out the window, make a phone call.
I listen to silence from a place of stillness.
Nothing is happening; everything is happening.
I’m bored, but not bored.
What is boredom but a name for an experience? Boredom does not exist.
Who lives down there, below the state of what is called ‘boredom’? I live and breathe underneath it, a soul-presence who does not know the meaning of the word boredom, entirely at peace.
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