Category Archives: zen

resolutions

New Years resolutions. That annual routine where we take an arbitrary measure of time and assign personal goals and measures of achievement.

Except it’s not really arbitrary, is it? The planet we live on has four seasons, the result of a not-perfectly-circular orbit and axial tilt. Spring, summer, winter, fall, fitting within one orbit, one year. So how else would we mark time? It’s not an accident, but an adaptation. We live in cycles because our home does. We still mark the passing of these cycles, no matter how modernized and successful our attempts at a civilization, because their steady rhythm gives us a sense of connection to something larger.

A New Year’s resolution, by definition, usually includes at least one way in which you think you failed at something last year. There wasn’t enough time. Or maybe there wasn’t enough you. Or maybe there would have been enough you, if you only had a little more time. We are bound to earthly time and often see it as our nemesis, but there is no need to think this way. We are more dependent on time for our existence than we are oxygen. A fish being mad at the water would make more sense. And now 2012 is gone. To paraphrase Sam Harris in Free Will, to say that you could/should have done more/better/different is to merely think you could have done so after doing whatever you in fact did. It’s an empty affirmation. You had exactly as much drive, ambition, purpose, motivation, just plain luck, and most of all time, as you had. No more and no less. So give yourself a break. You’ve made your resolutions for 2013, and I’ll bet that regret isn’t one of them. So do with them what you can.

My own resolutions have been a little slow to congeal. I hadn’t really given them much more than vague thought before now. Hey, it was Christmas. I was busy. So here they are, more or less…

More

Good, consistent sleep

Focused attention- what one thing do I want to accomplish this evening? This weekend? This month?

Slow thinking

Less

Trying to squeeze two days into one

Spreading efforts around so thin as to make real results unattainable

Absorbing more information than I can realistically use, in bites too small to provide any depth

More

Being home

Discarding, recycling, donating

Spending my time on purpose… doesn’t have to be “productive”, just not flittered away

Less

Being busy

Keeping, piling, cluttering

Wondering where the last hour went, what I spent it doing

More

Hearing the relaxing tick of the clock that hangs in our kitchen

Less

Dreading the advancing hands on my watch

Here’s to 2013. I hope this one comes at us just a little slower. I suspect, however, that it’s largely up to us. So here’s to you, too.

Radnor Lake

36 deg, 3 min, 48 secs north, by 86 deg, 48 min 25 secs west. 6:39 am

For a (sub)urban dweller and modern office worker, being out in nature is a retraining of the eyes, of the visual decoding areas of the brain, and of the body’s response to surface.

Not quite the black forest...

click any image for a larger version

In our everyday modern existence, we are exposed to a pharmacopoeia of defined forms. Everything is rectilinear, orthogonal, and squared. Buildings, counter tops, stairwells, doors, shutters, windows, beds. One rectangle to rule them all. Walking along a dirt and gravel trail in a nature preserve is an unlearning. Nature doesn’t care about Platonic solids and the basic shapes that make up our constructed world. You are now faced with a near infinity of forms that don’t fit into any geometric define.

assembly not required

It awakens a different part of your seeing brain, something that was forgotten but never quite left. The first time or two that you walk within ten feet of a deer before you even see her, it occurs to you- I’m seeing things that my mind is literally having to remember how to interpret.

Oh hi, I really almost didn't see you there

Oh hi, I really almost didn’t see you there

But the mind is fluid and adaptable, despite the best attempts of the ego to lock it into a familiar, safe mode. It doesn’t take long before you start to remember. The terrain aids you, going up that ridge, as you have to recall a natural sure-footedness, something you had as a kid, something that muscles and tendons never quite forgot. Like so many things, they’ll work if you can get out of the way and just let them. Perhaps this is really why we preserve places such as this. Not for the ecology, but so that we can remember.

36 deg, 3 min, 48 secs north, by 86 deg, 48 min 25 secs west. 6:39 am

36 deg, 3 min, 48 secs north, by 86 deg, 48 min 25 secs west. 6:39 am

Foglifter

——–

I pause at the top of Ganier Ridge, looking at the downward curvature of terrain in every direction. Standing here it’s as if I can feel the spinning of the Earth, a dizzying sensation. I know it’s just an illusion likely brought on by a slight oxygen high; heavy breathing that continues after a rapid steep hike, filling my lungs, overcompensating for the exertion and saturating my blood. Even so, I enjoy it as long as it lasts before continuing down the trail, to an eventual terminus that is firmly embedded in the now.

What goes up the ridge must come down.

What goes up the ridge must come down.

outernational

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A few nights ago I was listening to BBC World Service Radio. Broadcast from the UK, of course. And then relayed to me through a satellite radio service. This was while driving a Korean-made car through Nashville, heart of the bible belt, on my way to a Zen Buddhist service inherited from Japanese traditions.

Afterwards I joined a few friends at a locally-owned eatery, had pita bread and hummus (both of Middle Eastern origin), and an oatmeal stout from a North Carolina brewery. Oatmeal stouts are a style of beer that, like the BBC, originate from the UK. Only a good bit further back in time.

On the drive home I was able to queue up, on demand, Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports, originally released in 1978. This took no more effort than finding music released last year or last month.

Finally, once home I was able to pull up the most recent images beamed back by the Curiosity Rover, from the surface of another planet.

None of this was due to any great effort on my part. It was possible simply because I am alive now, at this time.

We have increasingly connected, immediate-access, globally-sourced lives. There has been much critique and concern over the effect this is having in terms of quality-of-life, attention spans, competition for resources, etc. Where this is ultimately taking us remains to be seen. But in the moments when we can stop and notice how amazing it is, a feeling of ‘wow’ becomes undeniable. We are living in the future.