Quality

“Or if he takes whatever dull job he’s stuck with – and they are all, sooner or later, dull – and, just to keep himself amused, starts to look for options of Quality, and secretly pursues these options, just for their own sake, thus making an art out of what he is doing, he’s likely to discover that he becomes a much more interesting person and much less of an object to the people around him, because his Quality decisions change him too.”

~Robert M. Pirsig
from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“Let the good times be where you are!”

This was the message inside a birthday card I got when I was 13.  Cheesy, sure, but just the right thing to say to a teenager who, like most teenagers, was always worried about what others were doing and whether he was missing out.  It slowly sunk in over the years, resulting in a calmness and “centering” from which most good things tend to spring.  The “here”.

It strikes me that much unhappiness results from allowing the mind to be somewhere other than where you are.  You worry about what they’re saying about you (colleagues, customers, friends) or if there’s a happier, richer, sexier, greener-grass life for you somewhere else.

Even more unhappiness seems to result from allowing the mind be someTIME other than WHEN you are, as opposed to the “now”.  You dwell on bad (or good) moments from years ago, or you worry that you’ll lose your job or never have enough to retire or never achieve your dreams.  “It isn’t the burdens of today that drive men made, but rather the regret over yesterday and the fear of tomorrow.” (Robert J. Hastings)

I don’t mean to oversimplify.  Certainly, if you’re being tortured, or if you’ve just been shot in the face with birdshot from a hunting rifle, you won’t be considering the present to be the gift that Master Oogway claims it is in Kung Fu Panda.

But, in general, if we can extricate our minds from other places and other times, we might be pleasantly surprised.

Patience

Ten years' searching in
   the deep forest
Today great laughter at
   the edge of the lake.

~Soen Nakagawa

Letting Go

You sit before a single candle in a quiet room.  With each inward breath, you feel the light of the flame resonate in every particle of your body.

With each outward breath, you exhale whatever unruly thought is tugging at the surface of your mind, any distraction – good, bad, trivial or fundamental – that keeps you from focusing entirely on the subtle movement of the flame.  Each thought burns in the fire and is gone.

Then a new thought strikes you – that these vigorous little thoughts were keeping you company, were staving off the silence, the loneliness.  And you exhale that thought into the flame as well, until at last you are left with just the loneliness itself.

So you take that loneliness and send it on the back of your breath into the bright fire, until it too burns away and is gone.

No HPS required

There is no way to happiness.  Happiness is the way.

~Buddha

Everything old is new again

The secret to eternal wonderment is to release our tight grip on what we think we know, to look at all of the familiar old faces, the worn surroundings and predictable vistas, and see that they are as utterly unique as the moment we first encountered them, that they are not fully captured by our mental categorizations and ersatz memories.  (Though if you start getting lost on your way to the shower, you may have gone too far.)

“The map is not the territory.”  Look up and see, not the “mountain,” but the mountain.

Thinking makes it so

The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character.

As we think, so we become.

~Buddha

All together now

“An elementary particle is not an independently existing, unanalyzable entity. It is, in essence, a set of relationships that reach outward to other things.” – Henry Stapp, atomic physicist

“Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves.” – Nargarjuna, Buddhist philosopher

Happy Valentine’s Day. Love the one you’re with.

Your last words

Recently read an article about the new manager of the Yankees, whose mother died some time ago. According to the article, her last words to her son were, “Don’t forget me.” Somehow this is painful to the heart even though it seems likely that every one of us will feel the same way at our death.

Likely there will be many, many things we want to say in our final moment. But how to prioritize? And what to finish with? I don’t judge this man’s mother, as I may place the exact same burden (gift?) on anyone still hanging around when I go. But I hope that I will finish as the Zen master did (can’t recall which one. Basho?), that I will be fortunate and content enough to simply say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”