You must be a writer!
Seriously, though, you would be in the company of Helene Hanff, Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, Buckminster Fuller and Emily Dickinson, as well as countless notorious bums who turned the world upside down with their avarice and steely wills. So what's an honest upstart supposed to do? How do you know when to keep that shoulder to the wheel and when to let your shoulders slip into a comfortable state of ease?
Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, my first buddhist teacher said, "Try, but don't try try try."
For Westerners, bent to every task imaginable, BENT TO BEING SOMEBODY at any cost, the grace of being simply in the flow is often absent. Signals all around suggest we bark up different, friendlier trees but snouts locked onto a ravening scent, we pursue. (And suffer.)
Seriously, though, you would be in the company of Helene Hanff, Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, Buckminster Fuller and Emily Dickinson, as well as countless notorious bums who turned the world upside down with their avarice and steely wills. So what's an honest upstart supposed to do? How do you know when to keep that shoulder to the wheel and when to let your shoulders slip into a comfortable state of ease?
Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, my first buddhist teacher said, "Try, but don't try try try."
For Westerners, bent to every task imaginable, BENT TO BEING SOMEBODY at any cost, the grace of being simply in the flow is often absent. Signals all around suggest we bark up different, friendlier trees but snouts locked onto a ravening scent, we pursue. (And suffer.)
Whereas the fragrance of a rose in full bloom at Green Gulch Zen Center on a sunny April day sets all counters at zero.
Ah, zero. The whole world waits on thee.
So here's my hope for 2011: I will listen for the sound and relish the fragrance and cultivate the taste of zero.
And send you all into January with Ms. Dickinson's lines—
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us—don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us—don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
An admiring bog of one at Calf Creek Falls.
