As many of you are already aware, June 4, Wind-in-Grass will be presenting its 5th full day meditation workshop.
The theme will be Career and Meditation ("Zen and the art of making a living"?). Broadly, we will be exploring the seeming contradiction between a meaningful career and its responsibilities, and a spiritual practice and discussing how to navigate, and combine the two. But I thought it would be an interesting experiment to give the Sangha the opportunity to shape the talk that affects us all (well, not you trust fund babies): What interests you about this subject?
This has been sent around internally. Some of the initial responses have been: "At the end of the work day, I am all worked up, mind moving a mile a minute. Its a high, its stressful, its exhausting. After a day of meditation, its like the opposite- I feel calm, centered, relaxed. The obvious answer to resolving the contradiction seems to be "make work your practice", but how can really do that?" "Things that come to mind are: -Are my life [work] and my practice two different things?- Obviously that is a stacked question, because my experience is that they're not. But I do still watch my mind create that distinction. and from here are all the little assumptions that arise from making that distinction: I need time to have a spiritual practice Practice is what I do on the pillow Wanting to make a living is somehow wrong This should look different blah blah blah...." "Does awakening mean I am going to have to leave my corporate job?" "Should I chase my passion or be happy with 'just a job'? Where's the balance?" PLEASE use the comment section to build the discussion, even if you are not thinking of attending, your experiences and questions are what this practice is all about
9 Comments
Leah
5/4/2011 07:00:14 am
IWork and zen connected for me this sesshin. I was dealing with a difficult management situation while driving to Santa Rosa. Wrestling with how to deal with it. My first response: irritation...employee requires a stern reply...situation and leadership here means being hard. Not my usual style, but I thought it might be something to practice. Was all prepared to go with that. But then, as it does, sitting changed things around. Didn't plan for it to. It just did. I had to have my conversation while at sesshin. (One of the teachers gave up her room to give me a quiet place.) And, interestingly, what came out wasn't a lecture or discipline but a conversation...trying to understand where the employee was coming from...trying to work toward a solution...showing my biggest motivation--which was concern...
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Leah
5/4/2011 07:24:59 am
Also...
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Jesse
5/4/2011 08:36:49 am
I've found that often work is the place where my practice is most alive. Trouble at work provides great grist for the mill in many ways. I struggle with coming in to work with a silent mind and not being able to ramp up my cognitive engine fast enough to keep up.
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Leah
5/4/2011 09:31:34 am
Apparently, this is a more important topic and stirring topic to me than I thought.
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jesse
5/4/2011 11:31:46 am
Leah, I especially like your first post about the difficult conversation. I love that part about thinking you need to be a certain person in an upcoming situation but doing something different instead. It's like, Well, I think I'm going to need This Self for this thing I've got going on later...but Selfs expire, so I can never count on them to still be around and be available when I think I need them--like I'm constantly shedding skin. And whatever Self I have when that moment arrives (or doesn't arrive, as the case often is), well, that's the Self I've got at my disposal right then. Grand! Fantastic! (To me that points to where Zhao Zhou, in response to "Does a dog have Buddha nature," replies alternately "no" and "yes" on two separate occasions) I'm so glad you said that :) And I think your story points to the most fabulous thing about all this: zen is at the very bottom of everything for me. It's bigger than any one thing like work, school, relationships, etc. So it's a great tool for everything.
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Leah
5/5/2011 04:21:20 am
Jesse, okay--good points. It IS interesting that meditation is not the same in a meeting. Also interesting that, apparently, I am valuing the experience of calm/clarity over all others. My frizzy frazzled self...when that one shows when my eyes open for the morning, I generally do everything I can to tamp it down before I get to the office. No one is fooled, though, are they? Or, maybe the frizzy frazzled is actually more interesting.
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Jesse
5/6/2011 12:18:09 am
*waving hello*
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Leah
5/8/2011 08:54:53 am
Jesse, I read this earlier in the week. Thought of you and success...
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Leah
5/8/2011 09:04:13 am
Most of my of my postings here make me laugh. They’re all about looking all puffy and important. “Employee”…sets up hierarchy. Which there isn’t. And all week I've kept trying to remember the koan about that… Kept thinking it was something about no titles. I finally remembered, late last night, that It's "trued person of no rank." Then I promptly forgot again. *Wry laughter here*
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Author(s)“A Course on Koans” is the delusion-riddled work of Chris Kufu (“Wind in the Void”) Wilson, who began practicing Zen in 1967. He regards Taizan Maezumi, Robert Aitken, and David Weinstein as his root teachers. Each of them pecked at his shell until he “completed” the never-ending koan curriculum of the Harada-Yasutani lineage. Get posts as they are published:
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