This is the best video I’ve ever seen on how to meditate, and it was produced at my practice home, the Hazy Moon Zen Center in Los Angeles. It depicts the precise instructions given in our beginner’s class and our one-day beginner’s retreats, and reiterates the teaching carried down through all 81 generations of our Zen ancestry. Now you have everything you need to begin, and to begin again. Our next Beginner’s Mind One-Day Retreat is Sunday, June 10.
finding you in France
May 22nd, 2012 - 50 Comments
Somewhere in the deep trench of what I call my “first life,” a friend gave me the book, A Year in Provence. The happy misadventures of an English novelist and his wife in the French countryside was a megaseller. It went on to spawn a TV miniseries, several sequels and the undying flattery of imitators—an entire genre of nonfiction pretenders that persists to this day. You know, books like A Year of Doing This, A Year of Doing That. They appeal to us because we all want to ditch our lives and end up somewhere other than a ditch. Makes for pleasant tripping, if only in our dreams.
My friend inscribed the book with ebullience, “Savor the taste of life!” She clearly knew something I didn’t, like why in the world you would ever use an exclamation point.
These were the days when I didn’t make time to read books or take trips and couldn’t conceive that life had a taste other than the bone-dry dread of worry, work, hurry, and sleeplessness. My life had no flavor because I had no appetite for it. Eventually, of course, I turned myself around, and glory be.
It only takes a flutter of your lids to open your eyes to a wider world.
First, I nibbled books like the one I’d been given. Then I took my first trip to France. (It wasn’t fancy, just four days piggybacking on my roommate’s airline buddy pass, sleeping on a stranger’s floor, eating on the streets. In other words, it was heaven.) I learned, and I’m learning still, that life has many flavors, not all savored, and not all sweet. I don’t live in France, but my plate is full. I’m never hungry, and I don’t want for more.
I’ve just finished a delicious book along these lines, Finding Me in France. Here’s why I liked it. Bobbi French (real name) wasn’t another writer with a book meme. She was a stressed out psychiatrist with a terribly important life in Halifax who did the unthinkable: she sat back, wised up and clocked out, selling nearly everything to give herself a flying start at saving her own life. Her infectious memoir, drawn from her hilarious blog, recounts the comedic first year of living (with her agreeably nimble husband) in a medieval town in Burgundy. It sounds fancy, but it’s not. It’s humble and endearing. She fumbles with the language, the customs, the personal hygiene, and the plumbing. Her new life required, as all heavens do, a face-first landing in a ditch or two. Interesting strangers put roofs over her very tall head and floors under her bad back; she ends up overeating quite nicely on the streets.
You can taste it all through her scrumptious stories and sumptuous photos. The taste is fresh and original: the freedom to find yourself.
Everyone has reasons to love France, but Bobbi gives you the best reason to love the French: herself, even if she’s really Canadian. I fell in love with this book. I’m giving away my coffee-stained pristine copy (each page turned only once!) at random, on Friday, to a lucky traveler who leaves a comment on this post. If you’ve been looking for something to bite into, come and get your life! This means you.
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my favorite book of all time
May 15th, 2012 - 17 Comments
Because it is utterly, totally true.
Yesterday someone sent me a gift that proves it: wildflowers grow in profusion where you least expect them. And that brought me back to this treasure book, one that is so intimately meaningful that if I could, I would plant it in everyone’s home with a carefree toss from my open hand.
A gift to my baby when she was barely born, from a faithful and nearly lifelong friend, this book delivered a set of emphatic instructions for my own life.
Miss Rumphius
Story and Pictures by Barbara Cooney
“When I grow up, I too will go to faraway places and come home to live by the sea.”
“That is all very well, little Alice,” says my aunt, “but there is a third thing you must do.”
“What is that?” I ask.
“You must do something to make the world more beautiful.”
“All right,” I say.
But I do not know yet what that can be.
My goodness! All the passion and discovery, all the trial and error, all the heart and truth and promise in that simple “I do not know.” It is my wish and recommendation for you.
This post originally ran as part of a series on children’s books. Other recommendations are found here, here, and here.
the end of mother’s day
May 13th, 2012 - 6 Comments
Someone sent me something that renders me mute with gratitude.
Blackbirds
by Susan Mitchell
Because it is windy, a woman
finds her clothesline bare, and without rancor
unpins the light, folding it into her basket.
The light is still wet. So she irons it.
The iron hisses and hums. It knows how to make the best of things.
The woman’s hands smell clean. When she shakes them out,
they are voluminous, white.
All night my hands weep in gratitude
for little things. That feet are not shoes.
That blackbirds are eating the raspberries. That parsley
does not taste like bread.
From now on I want to live
only by grace. In other words, not to deserve things.
Without rancor, the light dives down
among the turnips. I eat it with my stew.
Today the woman’s hands smell like roots. When she
shakes them out, they are voluminous, green.
All day they shade me
from the sun. The blackbirds have come to sit in them.
Since this morning, the wind has been enough.
Image above is “Clothesline,” a painting by Heather Horton.
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first, you fall apart
May 7th, 2012 - 2 Comments
I was about 36, which I think of as my youth, but I had ended my first marriage and I had built a business that I’d invested a lot of time in. I was a workaholic. I had no family and no interest in a spiritual pursuit. My religion was capitalism. I had a rising level of disillusionment and despair with everything in my life. I was in a relationship that began and ended very quickly and the fellow that I was involved with had a Zen practice, which I was really disturbed by. I thought it was absurd and grim and an inexplicable waste of time. I was really scared, to tell you the truth, at the thought that someone would turn their back to me and be more absorbed in a blank wall than in my own charming self. That was a warning sign for me.
In any event, after that fell apart, I was in sad shape. I couldn’t sleep; I was very depressed and had a hard time making it through the day. One night I picked up a book that was on a shelf in my own home that, apparently, he had left behind. It was the Tao Te Ching, and I picked it up because it was red and it caught my attention. I was at that point in my life where I didn’t have time for anything. I didn’t have time for people (friends or family). I didn’t read books. I didn’t have any pleasure, but I read it that night and it was just the most beautiful thing I had ever read. I had never read anything so true. Then I was curious about all of those things that I had dismissed before. I folded up a cushion and tried to sit in meditation. I read the next book on the shelf and so forth and so on, and that’s how I started, just sitting in my own room.
This is an old story, a universal story, and one you may have read or even lived before. I share it here today because it might the right time for you. It comes from a longer interview with me posted on the Sweeping Zen website. It may be the right time for you to read it, and it may be the right time for you to see what comes next, how you start your own Zen practice, sitting side-by-side with me in the same room.
Beginner’s Mind One-Day Meditation Retreat
Sunday, June 10, 2012
9 am-3 pm
Hazy Moon Zen Center
Los Angeles
Information and registration here.
Affordable dormitory housing available.
encryption for a new society
April 22nd, 2012 - 12 Comments
friend: no one you know
community: no place you live
connect: disconnect
interact: isolate
engage: distract
like: click
click: touch
touch: screen
screen: reality
stream: data
streaming: live data
live: not living
comment: type
chat: read
follow: ignore
social: alone
Last week my landline rang. You have to be of a certain age to even have a landline. I almost never pick it up. But I saw the name on ID. It was a friend—someone I’ve seen in my small town every week for 15 years. We have a sentimental history but don’t talk much anymore. Seeing her name I thought the worst.
That’s how it is these days. The phone rings and you think the worst.
She was calling to ask me to have lunch with her. For no reason. Just lunch. An hour sitting face-to-face, chatting. The whole event was such a shock that it made me realize how far we’ve drifted from what words used to mean: words like friend, face, and chat.
We have a new society, and it has corrupted the vocabulary of the old. A society that isn’t social, with a language that is completely silent. I write this here so that one day the archeologists will be able to decode the encryption, and imagine what it used to mean to be alive.
This is why I will never stop inviting you to meet me face-to-face, and why one day you will.
The Art of Non-Parenting, Central School, Belmont, CA May 31.
Beginner’s Mind One-Day Meditation Retreat, Los Angeles, June 10.
a dr. pepper mom
April 15th, 2012 - 13 Comments
I drank two Dr. Peppers last week. I just might have another before today is through. When I reach for one on the lower shelf of the refrigerator case of Happy’s corner convenience store, I think of my mother. My mother drank Dr. Pepper. It’s one of the things I couldn’t stand about her, so when I do it now, it’s the atonement of a fully grown daughter. It tastes pretty damn good.
I wince when people tell me they could be more forgiving if they’d had a mother like mine (or even me), a different family, a more enlightened upbringing, better genes or geography. Every mother is the mother you wish she wasn’t.
My mother drank Dr. Pepper because she was a Texas farm girl and Dr. Pepper was the state’s own peculiar brand of soda. When she still drank Dr. Pepper in the middle of the ‘60s Pepsi Generation in beachside Southern California, I was mortified. There were other things that offended me about her then. Her clothes weren’t particularly cool. She never put on much makeup. I wished she would do something about her hair. And she had big hips. She seemed considerably wider and rounder then the other moms. These other moms were the ones at home in their split-level houses when school was out, for another thing, while my mother wasn’t because she worked. She worked because she had to and because she wanted to, her work as a teacher adding both dignity and indignity to her life. She had to endure the insults of her own family for becoming the first girl-child to go to college; she had to become better educated and work longer and harder every day and night to make and save the pittance that kept my family afloat. It was less money for harder work than my father was paid, but she did it for 40 years. Only rarely did she buy herself a Dr. Pepper as a ten-ounce consolation. I can’t believe I begrudged her that.
She gave me the chance to choose a different kind of education, job and beverage, those of my own generation. Those choices weren’t much better, but they were mine. It’s taken me this long to respect her point of view on most things.
Mom, I’m buying.
What brings this to mind is the recent, ridiculous, overblown and entirely artificial discussion of mothers, (again) their work, (again) and whether we value it (of course we don’t.) When these kinds of political fabrications get conjured up, I can’t stand it. They are never about real mothers with real lives, but always about some idealized mother. We only protect and defend idealized mothers. Only imaginary mothers are served by political campaigns. Real mothers are never served by anyone, anytime. If you don’t know who the idealized mother is I’ll give you a hint. It’s not you, and it’s not your mother. It’s the one that wasn’t.
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what parents want
April 9th, 2012 - 8 Comments
Speaking only for myself, of course.
When our children are infants, we want them to be normal.
When they are toddlers, we want them to be competent.
When they are preschoolers, we want them to be geniuses.
When they are kindergarteners, we want them to have friends.
When they are first graders, we want them to be polite.
When they are third graders, we want them to be gifted.
When they are fifth graders, we want them to be talented.
When they are middle schoolers, we want them to be competitive.
When they are high schoolers, we want them to be ambitious.
When they are in college, we want them to be elite.
When they are adults, we want them to be normal.
If you’re near San Francisco, join me for “The Art of Non-Parenting,” a public presentation at Central Elementary School in Belmont on Thurs., May 31.
spring bloom
April 7th, 2012 - 5 Comments
Seeing her right now reminds me of my mother back then which reminds me to see her as she is right now.
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faded letters
April 2nd, 2012 - 12 Comments
If you really want to change, live by someone’s last words. These are with me this week.
Be yourself, and take good care of your family. — Mom
I can’t wait until then. — Dad
It’s very beautiful over there. — Thomas Edison
Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow. — Steve Jobs
I am being shown the most amazing things. — Dominique de Menil
This is all an elaborate hoax. — Roger Ebert
Does nobody understand? — James Joyce
It’s all been very interesting. — Lady Montagu
You are wonderful. — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Don’t make a great commotion over nothing. — Zen master Tozan
Today you will be with me in paradise. — Jesus
Such secrets have been revealed to me that all I have written now appears as so much straw. — Thomas Aquinas
For all eternity, I love you. — President James Polk
Good night my darlings, I’ll see you tomorrow. — Noel Coward
a little light
March 26th, 2012 - 18 Comments
Reading my friend Dan Barden’s new book wasn’t altogether pleasant. It was a lot like trying to get around the borderless sprawl of Los Angeles. A contradiction, to say the least. Here you are, cruising under the blinding sunshine of an earthly paradise, and over there is a body under a blanket. Watch out for that sofa thrown onto the street. There’s a mattress in the middle of the freeway. The high-speed lane is stalled, and the off ramp is closed. Beautiful people drive by plumped up on collagen and hair extensions, and under the overpass is an invisible underclass. We must be in the wrong neighborhood. Let’s not get out of the car. I love it.
In the soft hills behind the beaches, everyone is hurting, and hurting each other, and trying to keep from hurting.
Barden wrote about that, in the form of a noir thriller, set in a place I know — Orange County — with people like us, people who have totally messed up and now are trying to do The Next Right Thing. You might think it’s strange for me to read a mystery, at least one with a lot of flying fists and f-words, but it’s no stranger than my real life. I love it.
The Next Right Thing gives us a most unlikable kind of love. It ranges through the blight of addiction, anger, graft, betrayal and decomposing bodies in the basement, all to prove that the ugly underside is the incubator of goodness.
It’s thrilling, for real, and deeply wise, and I’m giving away a brand new copy. Leave a comment by this Friday to enter my giveaway. I’d love it.
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the empty bento
March 19th, 2012 - 15 Comments
Sometimes when something unexpected happens — which is nearly always — I think these kinds of thoughts:
Oh no!
How will that work out?
How will I fit that in?
How can I make that OK?
I don’t know how.
What about the rest of everything?
What about the plan?
Stop!
Not something else!
I can’t handle any more!
It’s all falling apart.
I feel as if I am holding a box where I’ve given everything a place, a turn, and a time. A box I can’t ever drop. I like to think I’m good at not dropping the box. But then I remember:
There is no box.
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routine and ritual
March 15th, 2012 - 13 Comments
String enough good days together, like a macaroni necklace, and you’ve made a priceless treasure out of what you already have on hand.
This is a transcript of a talk on parenting wisdom that I gave at the local library. We all live at such a distance from one other I thought I’d just put it all up here. It’s geared to parents of children under age three, but the lessons are forever. Please share.
——
Often we approach our job as parents like this:
“I don’t know what I’m doing!”
“I’m over my head!”
“I’m lost!”
“I’m ruining my kid.”
So we seek more information, come to workshops, and pick up new tips. We want to give our children a solid advantage and even a head start. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I take a different approach. I like to help you find the wisdom you already possess, help you find your own way, and help you feel more secure in your everyday life so that you can say:
“We made it through. We did OK. It was a good day.”
String enough good days together, like a macaroni necklace, and you’ve made a piece of art, a priceless treasure out of what you already have on hand.
They say that children don’t come with instructions, so I’m not going to give you any new instructions. I want to talk about two tools that you already have, but that you may not be using enough. read more
