path of peace | Armchair Zen

Treading lightly the path to enlightenment.

Posts tagged ‘path of peace’

Galleries

If I could teach you anything, if I could wish for you to grasp one concept, it would be this:

During those fleeting and routine moments that occupy our every day, as our subconscious drives us to keep moving like a moth around the flame, take time to notice. To notice just this. This now. These seemingly innocuous surroundings. These most common and ordinary things.

Spirit

You must expend no effort for the greatest memories of your lifetime to be retained in your mind’s eye.

Graduation.

Weddings.

The birth of your children.

The passing of dear ones.

These events shine like diamonds on the beach. You could not forget them if you tried.

Add now, to that gallery.

Trail Time

A moment on a trail as the rain falls on Chuy and me.

A silent night on an isolated island, as peace fell on the moon and me.

The Harrier hanging suspended over the hay field on a summer breeze.

Moonrise

You must stop and look and record these snapshot memories.

Daughter’s face in the rear view mirror, which I mistook for her mother.

That quiet summer morning, coffee in the cabana with my dearest friend, waiting for the sun.

The dark, sacred night, lovers locked in embrace.

Mists of morning

These pictures will be meaningless to others, so I shan’t go on.

They are not major events, accomplishments, achievements, setbacks or tragedies.

All can relate to those.

These are just for me (as yours will be just for you).

I am filling the walls of the gallery of my mind, so as to be surrounded by the simple beauty of my life.

The patter of rain on my slicker.

The sting of wind-driven snow.

This warm sun on my face.

Sumac Sunrise

Seek peace,

Paz

Category:

Observations from the soft chair

Tagged with:

Courtesies

Liberty is at the core, the very founding of this nation.

We failed, as a species, for many years in this area.

Enslaving humans, treating women as second-class citizens that could not own property or vote.

Segregating children by the color of their skin, not seeing the content of their character, as Dr. King admonished.

Mistreating and abusing people because of their religious affiliation or gender orientation.

Times changed. No more slavery. No more second-class genders. Free to be me.

Somewhere in the fight for “me”, it seems we forgot about “you”.

In our quests to be our best and truest selves, focus turned inward. I can do this, and no one can stop me. I can believe this. I can say that.

Hip-hooray for all this embracing liberty, but can’t we bring civility along?

There was a time when people took pride in their appearance. They didn’t come to work looking like they are ready to go to the rodeo, the gym, or the beach. We dress down, “because I can”. But how about dressing nicely just ’cause it’s…well, nice?

There was a time when people kept their opinions to themselves sometimes. To avoid offense. To show respect. I will be the first in line to defend your right to free speech. But can’t we sometimes exercise our right to be quiet?

There was a time when rudeness was considered rude. When apologies were in vogue. There was a time when an apology was so serious it took on the words “I beg your pardon.“.

There was a time when people could see beyond their own skin. When people realized we are all cut from the same cloth. We are kindred. We are the same inside. We all feel and wish and dream the same. We can all be hurt and insulted. We all wish for happiness and comfort.

“Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.”

Let the other guy go ahead of you in the checkout or on the on ramp.

Hold the door for someone.

How about “May I have a cheeseburger, please?” instead of “Gimme a cheeseburger and a super-sized Coke.”

How about waiting patiently, like your mother taught you, when the person in line counts change or buys lottery tickets or does whatever else they do while we wait in line behind them?

Suppose young people treated adults with respect? Suppose adults showed the same respect for young people?

Suppose, instead of tolerance, we could teach the generations to come to move beyond that?

Beyond “mainstreaming” and “inclusion”. Beyond mandates that command us to treat one another with respect.

A long time ago, a wise man gave us this entire lesson wrapped in a single sentence.

“So as you do unto these, the least of my brethren, you do unto me.”

So here’s to liberty. Here’s to freedom. Here’s to celebrating your own uniqueness in the world. You celebrate you, and I will celebrate you.

I ask only that you don’t forget about him and her and the other one and me. We’re out here. Outside your skin.

Wouldn’t you love to celebrate being the most courteous person you know? I sure would!

One last thing. There are instructions for this respect and consideration stuff. Write it down if you need to.

“Love one another.”.

Evan Defies Gravity

Seek peace (and manners),

Paz

Category:

Pursuit of identity

Tagged with:

Metamorphosis

I meandered from this plastic world,

Of silicone charlatans,

Paper tigers in cardboard cages.

This well-trod path toward Wonder curled.

With heightened every faculty,

Around each turn another yet,

And the trail it rises higher still,

Each crest a broader world to see.

And hence do these two worlds collide,

Of the past and the present Me.

Of true and false, of mystery,

Contrasted boldly. Inside, outside.

Now I fold and gently knead,

And loaf this new Me, let to rise.

A crusty crust, yet soft within,

Warm and whole in thought and deed.

Please do not think me unkind,

Must you remain in this land of mimes

And brightly backlit images of

This phony world I leave behind.

For all the colored flags unfurled

And shiny things to catch the eye,

The tin machines and mounds of gold

Are good for naught in Nature’s world.

My voice I’ve joined with nightingales’,

With eagles I have flown on high,

Held up my gaze to seek the joy

Of blue skies where the storm cloud sails.

I felt compelled to let you know,

As I blend into the trees,

Am borne aloft upon the breeze,

In case you wonder “Where’d he go?”

Seek peace,

Paz

Category:

Observations from the soft chair

Tagged with:

Three Q’s

Wedding Dancers

Could I really be this happy?

Or am I crazy?

Does it matter?

Seek peace,

Paz

Category:

Pursuit of identity

Tagged with:

Moon and Star

Capricious Moon

Moon and Star, my guideposts, my lifelong journey-mates.

Each evening I look into the vast Cosmos, and there stands my Star.

Constant. Vigilant. Unmoving, unwavering. True and final as fate.

This giant fireball, just a speck from here, is my lighthouse. No matter what life brings to me on this tiny blue ball, Star remains steadfast. It is comfort and security. All else not in my control, all things that may seek and befall me, fall away before the great, silent, faithful friend.

One day, Star will carry me home.

My Moon is capricious. One day she’s up, and another she is not. Her gamesmanship at hide and seek is second to none. Trickster and magician and muse. Today she is a big, round ball, bringing “the luster of mid-day to objects below”. Tomorrow she will be a sliver, rising in the morning, setting in the afternoon. As upside down as she can be. Each day is a challenge, as the seeker, to find Moon, “Tag!”.

Star is my anchor, reassuring me always that this little life, this tiny speck, is but a part of The Great Wonder. Never to die, but to return to the Cosmos from which I came.

And Moon? Moon is much younger, spritely, lively. Moon is on the move, and she always reminds me that I am, too.

Star and Moon and Earth ever constant in motion, I follow their leads wherever they may take me.

Always Home.

Seek peace,

Paz

Category:

Pursuit of identity

Tagged with:

Welcome the New Year!

Solstice Sun

A circle is one of the most common shapes in our Great Cosmos (silica-based crystal chain structures right behind), and it is today our New Circle begins. In my view, today begins the new year. As our almost-perfect circle planet revolves around its perfect-circle sun in a far-from-perfect ellipse of an orbit, the Winter Solstice marks the top of the curve. Now days begin to lengthen incrementally for the next six moons until we reach the opposite end of our rolling year, and the longest day of Summer Solstice.

This marks a point on my journey. Like returning to home port, or passing the same old oak on a favorite trail. It is an ending and beginning in a single stroke. It is a benchmark, a touchstone, a point along a very long line when I make a hash mark as I hurtle past. There’s a slight thrill seeing the 57 past hash marks, and a certain excitement as I reach out, take a swing, and hang on for another orbit, another grand circle in the concentric and overlapping circles that make up the life of an old Armchair Zen master.

Not only is the New Year commenced, but also the “official” season of winter. Life in a Northern Town takes winter in stride. Not only passively, but in tangible and active ways. The Yankee winter is an integral part of our lives. It serves a great purpose for those of us that will undertake the understanding of it. It’s a trial and a test and a testament to our spirits. Not just surviving winter, bit thriving within and through it.

Each year, our Earth sort of throws down a gauntlet. Each year, we rise to the challenge and pick it up. It’s not all about active young people oblivious to cold and snow, skiing the High Peaks and snowmobiling 27 miles up the frozen Sacandaga Lake. It’s about the everyday and the mundane. Firing furnaces, sealing up drafts, shoveling the steps. Getting out the “Let It Snow” box filled with hats and gloves and scarves and mittens. It’s about getting to work when it’s 18 degrees and there’s four inches of snow on the road and it’s forecast to fall all day. It’s about walking the dog and fetching the mail from the box, checking the car’s oil and unloading the wood pellets while frigid air tries to sneak in around your collar, while your fingers grow numb with cold.

And when winter is done, there’s more reward than the flowers of spring and the return of American Robins. Even for those that may be unaware, surviving and thriving through a Yankee winter reminds us of just how strong we are. A reminder that gives us the strength to carry on for another year, another wonder-filled lap around our atomic anchor.

I have a covenant with winter. A vow to honor and cherish and forsake all other seasons when she comes to call, all gleaming and silver. I welcome and embrace her with open arms. Revere her. Laud her beauty. In return, she brings me gifts.

A quadrillion snowflakes. Vast tracts of ice-covered ponds and lakes.

Glazed hoarfrost dawns and golden ice-ringed sunsets.

Birds, the color of summer flowers, blue and red, black and white and yellow.

Like the migrations of fall or tulips of spring, she returns faithfully each year to me. She covers me with her downy quilt and beckons me to slumber.

Yet within each hour are wonders, joys and beauties to behold. Adventures to seek as only Dear Winter can oblige.

She calls me forth from my den, to drink it all in.

Before it is gone.

Happy New Year, and Merry Christmas to those that observe it.

May the peace of the Cosmos find you and keep you throughout the year.

Paz

Category:

Pursuit of identity

Tagged with:

Tree Attitude

“Getting back to the roots” of Armchair Zen, so to speak. This post was originally published in May, 2011.The mighty oak from the tiny acorn grows.

This old adage seems to reflect a wonder and reverence for this amazing feat.

I love trees, I really do. I could easily personify them, impune them with human attributes, worship them as spirits. Something about a tree, standing firm and tall in the same place, day in, day out, year ’round…it brings a sense of stability, longevity, solidity, groundedness.

I like to subscribe to what I call Tree Philosophy, or Tree Attitude. So many things in our lives appear to be a conspiracy of circumstances, the times we live in, where we live, the way we live, with whom we live. Choices we made back in…when? Things we shoulda woulda or coulda done.

My grandfather always told me “Take shoulda, woulda and coulda in one hand, and a nickel in the other, and see which one will buy you a donut.”

Trees waste no time on such worries. A little tree seed plants its first tendrils into the soil—and is committed! From day one, that tree is going to live or die, stand or fall, right on that very same spot.

I like to imagine trees thinking about that. “I’m going to be the best tree I can right here, where I am, working with what I have.”

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, from President Theodore Roosevelt: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” That is, after all, a description of our entire lives, really, isn’t it? We are where we are, there’s no denying that. We must work with what we have, be it employment, a dwelling, our people, money, transportation, brain power, energy or spirit. And doing the best we can within these parameters is all we can do.

For philosophers such as President Roosevelt and myself, this means we don’t throw in the towel just because the odds are stacked against us, the task is overwhelming, or we’re short on assets, even if tasked with great challenges or the seemingly impossible. It also means recognizing that there are limits to what we can do, and we shouldn’t punish ourselves for being unable to do more.

I imagine a tree’s life is similar, but to the greatest extent. Tree doesn’t agonize over location. Perhaps prospects for success might be better elsewhere. Perhaps the climate is something humans would want to escape. Perhaps the very home of Tree is in a precarious place, on the side of a cliff, at the edge of an eroding riverbank, or at the last edge of the tree line, far up a tall mountain. Tree can’t move, but can only hang on and throw all of its efforts into the present.

Neither can Tree do anything about the changes in its life. Perhaps it’s struck by lightning, maybe loses a limb or suffers damage to its trunk. Perhaps humans come along and saw pieces off. Maybe its roots are immersed “knee-deep” in water during a flood season, or a drought season makes survival difficult.

If Tree is an evergreen, it will keep it’s needles as it goes into a dormant season. Granted, I have wished more than once that I could have a dormant season for myself, to rest and recuperate from the rigors of my own seasons, storms, lightning, chain saws, floods and blizzards. If Tree is deciduous, it will awaken, depending where Tree lives, sometime between February and May. As it stretches its limbs to the sky, it gets down to the business at hand: budding, developing and flowering. Sounds a bit like our lives again, doesn’t it? For its season, however long it may be (and without groaning that it is either too short or too long) Tree will produce thousands of leaves, each one a near-perfect copy of the others. For pines, tens of thousands, maybe millions of needles. Year one, year 50, year 200, Tree goes right on doing what it is born to do, producing those leaves or needles, growing when the conditions are right, and resting when it is necessary.

Tree will keep up the good fight, no matter what, and will try until defeat and death. As it is with all living things (and, in fact all things in the universe on its grand scale), eventually there is an end. I like to imagine Tree retiring. “I’m going to lay down, right here, next to the rest of you.” At that time, Tree is okay with this end, whether it is after 5 years or 500. Call it destiny, call it nature, call it the randomness of the universe, the circle of all things.

Saplings can be heard all around “Good job, Tree, and thank you for your silent service. You have been a fine example of patience and perseverance. A great neighbor in our community, shading the tender shoots and plants at your base, welcoming, with open limbs, the wildlife; squirrels, chipmunks, woodpeckers, sapsuckers, wasps, and anything else that came to you seeking refuge, a home, safety, security, something meaningful and solid that we can know and understand and rely on.”

Even after death, Tree remains an influence. Flora and fauna of certain types will flourish thanks to Tree’s legacy. The many generations growing around Tree will look on, seeking and seeing the testimony to its determination, learning and benefiting from the example, and the knowledge that Tree stood by them, and gave selflessly whenever called upon to do so.

I don’t need riches, recognition or immortality. If my life, and its own end, can be to any degree worthy of Tree’s example, I too will be able to lay down in peace, and return to the earth from which I came.

Be at peace.

Paz

Category:

Observations from the soft chair, Pursuit of identity

Tagged with:

Kind Words versus Critical

Rerun: This post was originally published in 2011. – Paz

I was reading a thing recently about a crew demolishing a building. Someone asks the foreman how long it would take to knock the building down, and what sort of skills were required by the crew. To sum it up, the guy replies that they should be able to knock the whole thing down within a week, and aside from knowing how to work safely, no special skills were required. The observation concludes that it would take many weeks or months, maybe a year or more, to construct the building, and the construction would require many people with well-developed skills. Masons for foundations, welders for steel, electricians & plumbers, painters & roofers, and perhaps consultants for interior design.

In short, it takes longer and requires more skills to build something up than to tear it down.

This is also true of people, and the words we use with one another.

Like the unskilled demolition crew, anyone can speak words of criticism. Complaints, judgement, even derision. These words are pretty easy to come by in the human brain, especially when motivated by aggravation, frustration or anger.

By contrast, it requires greater effort to hold one’s tongue, keep one’s opinions to one’s self, to avoid getting on the band wagon with others complaining or condemning, and especially to keep hurtful things from spitting out of our mouths in the course of an argument, particularly an angry one.

So too, it requires a different and perhaps greater skill to look for the good in situations, to compliment people on the degree to which they got things right, not criticize them for the degree of wrong.

In the heat of battle or when someone is railing or ranting, the conversational side of the brain will feed you many thoughts that it wants you to speak. Maybe it’s the way you feel, or maybe you want to defend a position, or maybe you want to agree with a condemnation being offered.

The sage will understand the old adage “less said the better”. With concentrated effort, one can express that one understands or at least hears the other’s point of view without agreeing or arguing.

In any situation, look for the positive. With any person, look for the chance to share a kind word, and watch for those verbal grenades your automated-language-based brain tries to toss past your teeth.

We went to see an apartment into which someone had recently moved. The street was not well-to-do, or of the newest part of town. The houses were mostly multi-family rentals, and were generally well-worn. One could not describe the sidewalks or alleys as neat or clean. The apartment was at the top of a steep, narrow, windowless staircase. The windows could have used cleaning, and with some effort one could see above the dormers of the house next door, and catch a sliver of the sky and the city beyond. The kitchen floor was from the last century. It looked, in many places, exactly like what is was: a medium-sized second story apartment in an older house, whose tenants probably never stayed more than a year or two. A few marks showed on the walls and woodwork, where families had probably raised rambunctious children, and the landlord probably repainted only when needed.

When asked, I described it thusly:

“It’s quite spacious, with good-sized rooms. It has a brand new carpet in the living room, and a brand new space heater, like the ones I have in my house. A Big kitchen! The windows are big. Tall, old-fashioned windows that let in the light. On sort of a side street, where the traffic seemed pretty light. And cozy! Probably quite efficient to heat!”

Next time you have a chance to describe something or someone, an apartment or even adversary, put your effort into the use of the skills of “craftsmen of the human spirit”, “masters of language”, developed by being practitioners and tradesmen in the arts of compassion and empathy, and build with the materials of positivity, hope, caring and dignity.

Be at peace,

Paz

Category:

Pursuit of identity

Tagged with: