One Thing Doesn't Stand Against Another

I have been painting, not on canvas, not on cradled panels, no paper involved. No Buddhas, no abstract marks, just swaths of green paint, the colour of Martha Stewart's fancy chicken eggs. Painting walls, struggling with the application of eco friendly paint that doesn't quite cover like that old toxic stuff. But it's done now, the zendo painted, from it's deep purply brown that stole light from the room, to a gentle green that calls the forest in at the windows.

I like the feeling of small accomplishments, a room painted, a meal prepared for visiting friends, a feeling somehow of making this place home, cleaning, tidying, bringing order, becoming the caretakers and grateful dwellers of this place.

We have been working to get the inside things done in the hope that the sun will soon shine and call us out to spend whole days in the great outdoors, the dream of pale sun deprived northerners before summer arrives. We burned that last of some old branches, paying attention to the burn ban that took effect today even though the ground still sucks at your boots at the far end of the pond. Other branches will get composted in piles in the woods. Always honest work to do in the country, work that employs muscles and organs and quiets the mind. An opportunity to hear the towhees screech, see an eagle fly overhead, watch a deer loaf in the meadow.

And while all the work and pretty making is fine, it is important to know, I remind myself, that I can never really control life, by creating a facade of order. I can never stop the movement of the shifting and changing nature of life by trying to arrange things in ways that please me. Trees fall, roofs leak, muscles get pulled. And yet this doesn't negate me working to create beauty or enjoying the pleasing look of a pile of brush removed from a grassy knoll. One thing does not stand against the other. In fact knowing that things will change, that things can turn in ways that may not please me, helps me when the inevitable happens. I am not so surprised. I may still be rattled, but I don't ask, why me, why now?

I am reading a wonderful little book on karma called "Kamma and the End of Kamma" (kamma is the Pali for the Sanskrit, karma) by Ajahn Sucitto. Here's a nice little quote from the book as I head off to read some more of it. I am filling it with underlines and undoubtedly I will share more wise bits as the days go on: "... Because I can't hold onto what I want and can't get away from what I don't want, the underlying mood of self is restless and unfulfilled. I keep trying to find the good state... but this one isn't quite it. Thus there is dis-ease. Liberation from this dis-ease and stress is thus synonymous with Awakening out of the dissatisfied self."

How Do You Work?

This is a picture of me in my flowered gumboots and my daughter's old down vest, working down by the pond. There is no shortage of things to be done around here and I have to be careful not to work with the grim determination of "there's so much to do around here". You know that crunched brow, shoulder to the grindstone body posture, it completely sucks all the fun out of the beauty of the day. I can get way too goal oriented when I decide there are things to be done and forget the value of the process. I can get so absorbed in this position that I see the landscape as "something to do" rather than something to enjoy.

The fall has been so amazing here, tipping back and forth between warm, misty days and brilliant sunshine and blue sky. It is truly a joy to be outside. Yesterday I reminded myself to enjoy the walk around the pond as I surveyed it for what needed pruning and assessed what dead and living wood required hauling out of the water. I liberated a curly willow from a tangle of salmon berry and pulled out the many little holly volunteers along the path. I pulled some fallen alder branches from the water and reminded myself that the ducks and I have different opinions of what makes a beautiful pond. Sometimes when I look down on the pond from the sunroom I think of Thoreau and Walden Pond. I will have to scour my packed books. I think of Mary Oliver and her poems of simply being with the land. I think of "The Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold, a delightful listen or read introduced to me by an American friend many years ago. I highly recommend it

Later in the day an email came in from my old Sangha that included a little blurb I'd written years ago on working meditation and it reminded me of what a morning's work at the pond could look like. Ah to remember to approach each precious task with this view:


Working meditation can be a valuable addition to our sitting and walking meditation. Essentially we are doing the same thing, cultivating our awareness. In working meditation this takes a more active form. We attempt to be fully present with what we are doing, be it sweeping the floor or trimming a hedge. We are aware of the sights, sounds, our movements in a light and focused way. We are not rushing to complete our task but experiencing it as fully as possible, bringing our mind back when it drifts. We speak when necessary about the work at hand, but strive to maintain a quiet, contemplative atmosphere. While we work we can develop and notice our gratitude for the things we are caring for, in this case the wonderful home for our Sangha, the earth we live on. This working practice gets us in touch with our everyday life in a deeper way. We can carry this practice home with us and with time will find that it complements our other forms of practice and enriches our lives in a profound way. As we do this we can see how we are chipping away at our habitual tendencies of rushing to complete the many small, seemingly inconsequential tasks that make up our days. Our cultivation of being present will give us back our life in small and astonishing ways. It can increase our energy (which is depleted by rushing) and cultivate joy and appreciation that comes from noticing something as small and miraculous as a mote of dust caught in a beam of sunlight.

And how is it when you work?

What Is Your Work?

A Day's Work

Mixed Media on Matte Board

8" x 8" matted, image size 3.75" x 4.5"

$25 includes shipping in North America

"Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it." the Dhammapada.  I bought a card with a beautiful Buddha and this quote on it when I was on my way to a Meditation retreat quite a few years ago.  It spoke to me because my koan at that time was "what am I supposed to be doing?"

Work has a lot of meanings and connotations.  At it's deepest level we talk about our life's work.  What is it?  For me there are two important aspects to our life's work and they aren't necessarily separate.

There is our spiritual work and if we are fortunate our spiritual work and our work in the world have an obvious connection.  They feel integrated somehow.  But if I had to say what the most important work is that we do in our lifetime here I believe without a doubt it is our spiritual work.  Here's a good example. My mother has known for a long time that not having love shown to her as a child resulted in her being unable to communicate love to others.  At 94, through the work we have done together, she has realized with great shock, the impact this has had on others.  When she talks about it I hear the deep regret in her voice and suggested that just having this realization is such a big accomplishment for a lifetime. I told her that this well could be her life's work.  I think it releases a lot of karma and allows for her to move past that position in her next life.  My friend the Buddhist monk suggests that my mother still has the opportunity to change her behaviour now, in this life time, to act on that realization.  While we are alive it is never too late.

Finding our work in the world can be confusing for a lot of us.  Not that long ago I used to quip "I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up."  Many people confessed that this was also true for them.  But it seems in the last couple of years I have committed to my art and writing.  Rather than doing it half heartedly or citing all the reasons it won't work, I have learned to just do it, to quote a running shoe commercial.  I don't ask questions, or tell myself it's foolish.  I don't get too attached to making a great sum of money from it.  I just follow what it seems good to do, stumbling along the way, getting up, dusting myself off and carrying on.  For the most part I have given up trying to understand it with my head.  These are my passions, what I feel called to do and I don't need to ask the unanswerable question, "why?"

Some people have the good fortune to be born knowing what their work is and the rest of us, it seems, need to spend some time being still enough to receive some insight on the question of what to do and then be willing to hear what comes up.  Step number 3 it seems is to just do it and have faith that we are doing what we are supposed to.  This doesn't mean we can't adjust our course or take input from other places, it just means that like so many things in our life, the direction comes from deep inside, from that "still, small voice" as my Zen teacher calls it.  And sometimes we have to be very quiet to hear it over the din of everyday life and all the adverts and mainstream culture that tugs us in different directions.  What are you hearing?

The House of Scribble Moon

The House of  Scribble Moon  

Original Mixed Media On Matte Board

Matted size 8"x8"  Inside window dimension 3.75" x 4.5"

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More little houses.  There is something so lovely and comforting about these little houses for me.  I could think of a thousand reasons why, but I prefer to say it's a mystery why I find these little paper abodes so satisfying, a lovely mysterious puzzle, like so much of life.  And I love the bit of poem that insisted on being the title for this piece ... Scribble Moon.

Tonight I am thinking about faith which for me is a kind of mystery in itself.  It has this bigger than human understanding quality.  It is about letting go and standing back.  Kind of like setting off fireworks, in a way.  You light the wick, stand back and then watch wide eyed to see what happens.  Sometimes there is a fantastic show and sometimes they just go phphphtttt.  We don't know why and yet we know there is a reason.

I am thinking about faith because I was talking to my daughter tonight about some new direction she's taking in her life.  She was looking at a new job, but the trial run didn't work out so well.  It didn't feel right, it didn't stimulate any passion or enthusiasm and then she didn't hear back about it.  As my Zen teacher would say, "A no is as good as a yes."  It moves you closer to an answer by eliminating one option.  So she is on to step 2, checking out some schooling options.  And oddly some money has appeared as if from nowhere that will make this possible if she decides her heart is there.  

So I reminded her about faith when I spoke to her, that the direction is making itself known.  And it is just interesting to watch things unfold as she finds her way.  She was stumped for a long time, and just working, happily enough.  Now some less than satisfactory circumstances in the work place have been her call to action, her motivation to move to the next stage.  It is fun to watch when you have faith.  I don't feel disappointed that she didn't get the kitchen job she had applied for.  I am not worried that things won't turn out for her.  I am not attached to having her do a particular thing.  It has taken me a while to get to this place.  But I have faith that life is taking her where she needs to be.  I suspect things will unfold in a way that leads her away from working in a traditional kitchen environment to a job with more dimension but that is only my hunch.   I have faith that she will find her place in this world, a place where she can make a contribution (where as she puts it she can be part of the solution, not part of the problem).

I have faith that the moon will continue to rise and that I will continue to scribble.