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24 minutes ...
So far, it is easiest to "schedule" my daily meditation if I wake up at the house before T does, which is my norm. He usually sets his alarm for 6am, so all I have to do if I wake up early is wait until around 5:30am and then do my meditation before T's alarm goes off.
It is also easy if I'm at the condo by myself on a weekend.
A bit more difficult to schedule if I wake after T, or if I'm not by myself at the condo.
This morning's meditation revealed that I'm not currently anxious about work, I was more likely to slip off into dreamland for a minute than to worry about my upcoming day. The one thing I'm not sure of, is when I'll be able to quit working for the day.
-----
This morning I also had time to tally up all my monthly charitable contributions. I've got a lot more of them than I used to, earlier this year I was adding a bunch of them to help with the Pandemic Recession, stuff like food banks. Personally I wasn't spending as much as I'd planned on things like travel and restaurants, Dax day care or the commute, so I was looking for other ways to spend money, and giving it away was one method.
I was surprised by the tally -- I'm giving away more than 6% of my take-home pay. So ... I'm already meeting my reduced consumption goal for 2022 ... but not all of these contributions qualify as carbon-offsets. Over the next several months I will swap some non-offset charities for offset charities and then I'll be good until January 2023, when I'll have to increase my overall giving to 10%.
One thing I'm learning from this -- if as a nation we gave ourselves 30 years to achieve something like a New Green Deal, it would not be so disruptive. Changing behaviors by a few percentage points per year --> at first the changes would feel relatively easy, we could congratulate ourselves on making good progress, and we'd have time to plan for the more difficult aspects coming later. But, of course, first we'd have to agree as a nation to set goals like these. We can't even agree on what precautions to take during the worst pandemic in 100 years. We can't even agree on how much aid to give an economy as it tries to recover from the worst recession in 90 years.
-----
An approach informed by Zen wouldn't expect anything other than the current reality -- that we aren't going to fix our problems. Zen focuses on that 53rd problem -- the problem of wanting to have no problems.
If I became a Zen monk and relied on the kindness of contributors for food, clothing, and shelter, and spent my days teaching people to stare at the wall while focusing on their breath ...
The founder of the Soto Zen school, Eihei Dōgen, lived during the first half of the 13th Century, in Feudal Japan. He was my current age when he died. During the midpoint of his life, Japan fell into a civil war between a "retired" Emperor and the Shogunate. There was no such thing as democracy in Feudal Japan.
Daily life in Feudal Japan was, for most people, the age-old struggle to put food on the table, build a family, stay healthy, and try to enjoy the finer things in life whenever possible. The upper classes had better and more colourful clothes, used expensive foreign porcelain, were entertained by Noh theatre and could afford to travel to other parts of Japan while the lower classes had to make do with plain cotton, ate rice and fish, and were mostly preoccupied with surviving the occasional famine, outbreaks of disease, and the civil wars that blighted the country.
They didn't have the Industrial Revolution, computers, or social media. They weren't worried about global warming, species extinction, or President Trump. Before the rise of democracy, the average person had zero say in who ran the country, and it would've been a spectacularly ridiculous idea to suggest they should have any. You just kept your head down and hoped neither the ruling class nor the bandits would wreck your life.
In the midst of this world, Dōgen simply taught Zazen to everybody who wanted to learn:
For zazen, a quiet room is suitable. Eat and drink moderately. Cast aside all involvements and cease all affairs. Do not think good or bad. Do not administer pros and cons. Cease all the movements of the conscious mind, the gauging of all thoughts and views. Have no designs on becoming a Buddha.
He gave sermons, what Buddhists call "dharma talks". A set of these were collected and published as the Shōbōgenzō, which has since been translated into modern English. I own the first volume of one of these translations, although I've never read it. I just now pulled it down from the shelf of my desk in my bedroom to stare at it momentarily.
A much more accessible treatment of Dogen's teachings is provided by Soto Zen teacher Brad Warner in his book, "Don't be a Jerk", LOL.
So, I'll allow that title to stand in for any additional Zen philosophy that goes beyond "just sitting".
Sit in meditation for 24++ minutes each day, and don't be a jerk :-)
It is also easy if I'm at the condo by myself on a weekend.
A bit more difficult to schedule if I wake after T, or if I'm not by myself at the condo.
This morning's meditation revealed that I'm not currently anxious about work, I was more likely to slip off into dreamland for a minute than to worry about my upcoming day. The one thing I'm not sure of, is when I'll be able to quit working for the day.
-----
This morning I also had time to tally up all my monthly charitable contributions. I've got a lot more of them than I used to, earlier this year I was adding a bunch of them to help with the Pandemic Recession, stuff like food banks. Personally I wasn't spending as much as I'd planned on things like travel and restaurants, Dax day care or the commute, so I was looking for other ways to spend money, and giving it away was one method.
I was surprised by the tally -- I'm giving away more than 6% of my take-home pay. So ... I'm already meeting my reduced consumption goal for 2022 ... but not all of these contributions qualify as carbon-offsets. Over the next several months I will swap some non-offset charities for offset charities and then I'll be good until January 2023, when I'll have to increase my overall giving to 10%.
One thing I'm learning from this -- if as a nation we gave ourselves 30 years to achieve something like a New Green Deal, it would not be so disruptive. Changing behaviors by a few percentage points per year --> at first the changes would feel relatively easy, we could congratulate ourselves on making good progress, and we'd have time to plan for the more difficult aspects coming later. But, of course, first we'd have to agree as a nation to set goals like these. We can't even agree on what precautions to take during the worst pandemic in 100 years. We can't even agree on how much aid to give an economy as it tries to recover from the worst recession in 90 years.
-----
An approach informed by Zen wouldn't expect anything other than the current reality -- that we aren't going to fix our problems. Zen focuses on that 53rd problem -- the problem of wanting to have no problems.
If I became a Zen monk and relied on the kindness of contributors for food, clothing, and shelter, and spent my days teaching people to stare at the wall while focusing on their breath ...
The founder of the Soto Zen school, Eihei Dōgen, lived during the first half of the 13th Century, in Feudal Japan. He was my current age when he died. During the midpoint of his life, Japan fell into a civil war between a "retired" Emperor and the Shogunate. There was no such thing as democracy in Feudal Japan.
Daily life in Feudal Japan was, for most people, the age-old struggle to put food on the table, build a family, stay healthy, and try to enjoy the finer things in life whenever possible. The upper classes had better and more colourful clothes, used expensive foreign porcelain, were entertained by Noh theatre and could afford to travel to other parts of Japan while the lower classes had to make do with plain cotton, ate rice and fish, and were mostly preoccupied with surviving the occasional famine, outbreaks of disease, and the civil wars that blighted the country.
They didn't have the Industrial Revolution, computers, or social media. They weren't worried about global warming, species extinction, or President Trump. Before the rise of democracy, the average person had zero say in who ran the country, and it would've been a spectacularly ridiculous idea to suggest they should have any. You just kept your head down and hoped neither the ruling class nor the bandits would wreck your life.
In the midst of this world, Dōgen simply taught Zazen to everybody who wanted to learn:
For zazen, a quiet room is suitable. Eat and drink moderately. Cast aside all involvements and cease all affairs. Do not think good or bad. Do not administer pros and cons. Cease all the movements of the conscious mind, the gauging of all thoughts and views. Have no designs on becoming a Buddha.
He gave sermons, what Buddhists call "dharma talks". A set of these were collected and published as the Shōbōgenzō, which has since been translated into modern English. I own the first volume of one of these translations, although I've never read it. I just now pulled it down from the shelf of my desk in my bedroom to stare at it momentarily.
A much more accessible treatment of Dogen's teachings is provided by Soto Zen teacher Brad Warner in his book, "Don't be a Jerk", LOL.
So, I'll allow that title to stand in for any additional Zen philosophy that goes beyond "just sitting".
Sit in meditation for 24++ minutes each day, and don't be a jerk :-)