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 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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July 14, 2008 at 1:10 pm (Spirituality, Work)
Tags: luther, tagore
“This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.” -Tagore
Martin Luther speaks of the ‘hidden God,’ Deus absconditus, dwelling silently within the mystery of brokenness, the cross. Doing paperwork at a desk all day, for most of the work week, demands from me an ongoing meditation practice, one that empties me again and again. I dissolve into the paper, the desk, the keyboard. If I had a guru, I would be told, “Become the mouse.”
All sense of will and choice is abandoned. It just is, this work. Constant. Unrelenting. The personality can either be driven into insane preoccupations with what “should” be…or it can go to sleep. In the nondual realm, however, the personality is not even needed, and peace follows upon peace, the gentle filling with fresh life.
I walk in emptiness, yet I am somehow able to keep showing up at this odd party.
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July 11, 2008 at 8:04 pm (Life, Spirituality, Work)
Tags: identity, Work
I’ve been arguing with God today.
It’s one of those phases: my personality ignites and demands, like an impudent child, to know just what the hell is going on here.
God listens.
Sometimes, we find ourselves doing tasks that seem like a waste of our time, skills, gifts, abilities. And yet, we do them for reasons unknown to us at the time, perhaps as ways to teach us who we are. We observe ourselves, alive in these God-breathed contexts, surprised to meet some unexpected layer of identity.
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May 1, 2008 at 1:01 pm (Life, Religion, Spirituality, Work)
Tags: Zen
“As I see it, there isn’t so much to do. Just be ordinary – put on your robes, eat your food, and pass the time doing nothing.” -Master Linji, 9th century, Rinzai Zen Founder
Be ordinary, do nothing.
It’s when I am doing nothing that I seem to get the most done. Even in the midst of brushing my teeth or filing papers, I am often “doing nothing.” The body is acting, the goal is set, the task is being done, but within, nothing is happening.
It’s just ordinary living.
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March 20, 2008 at 7:51 pm (Spirituality, Work)
Tags: contemplation, Work
Fatigue, boredom and a lack of motivation are the shadow elements of my contemplative coin, pieces of the passive posture of listening. In my paper-shuffling work, God asks me to simply listen, to be, and to allow these lazy elements to have their say as surely as the mystic bliss might serenade me into joy. The coin has two sides, and I am asked to value and learn from them both.
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