I’ve come to see this as a sweet and sexy love song. Honest and intimate in a way that I aspire to. Thank you Jikan.

“Hallelujah” Leonard Cohen

Journal entry for today.
http://www.tompeters.com/entries.php?note=006635.php

Tom Peters on “The Single Most Important Thing” turns out to be two. Meditation and 4 item to-do list EVERY MORNING! Got the first part down, now on to the second.

Note to Will, start a 4 item todo list and put it in front of you each day. Things to include are important work commitments, blogging, relationship stuff, woodworking goals, technology, life work. Things to exclude, time wasters, shopping lists, frivolous Internet distractions, appointments, etc. Seems like two lists are called for. The 4 item “Single Most Important Thing” list and a combo appointment/shopping/errand list. Mixing these two list has been my method and now I see that may be my problem with consistency. If the list doesn’t have important things on it or too many items from the appointment/shopping/errand category, the list losses its power.

Even just the process of setting the todo list and setting the priorities will be skillful. As Tom Peters says, what is left off of the list list is just as important as what is included. That helps in understanding the importance of culling dead, negative and unhelpful activities from the list. Onward!

Wordle image of Shodoka 

Sad news. Feb. 2, 2009 Chan Master Sheng-Yen passed from this life. I never met him yet was deeply touched by his teaching. Last year I spent many weeks with good friends, looking at the Chan text called “Shodoka” or variously “Song of Freedom” or “Song of Enlightenment”. Master Sheng-yen’s commentary in his book “The Sword of Freedom” illuminated the text clearly. Below is his “death poem”.

without busy affairs, I grow old
empty within, i have both laughter and tears
originally, there was no I,
therefore, both life and death can be cast aside.

Snake River Canyon

Water Music        
by Robert Creeley

The words are a beautiful music.
The words bounce like in water.

Water music,
loud in the clearing

off the boats,
birds, leaves.

They look for a place
to sit and eat–

no meaning,
no point.

To be moved by simple thing is the greatest blessing. To have good health is the greatest blessing. To share life’s journey with the ones you love, is the greatest blessing.

Cutting Boards and Wooden Spoons

There is a lot to be thankful for. Here is a short list.

• My sweetheart’s companionship
• Boykan the wonder dog
• A warm (in many ways) home
• Work that is interesting, challenging and contributes
• Health and well being
• A rich spiritual life
• The time to work with wood
• Living in a technological age
• Woods to walk in
• Friends to meet with

These quotes came from “How to Cook Your Life : Dogen’s classic Instructions  for the Zen Cook with commentary by Kosho Ucyiyama Roshi”. They really bowled me over.

In Zen, “…we learn to live out completely that Self that settles upon itself… When I usethe term Self, I am not referring to some fixed entity; the Self is life and life is functioning. Functioning means activity which works toward the world in which the Self lives. When I talk of a “Self settling upon itself,” do not interpret this to mean a withdrawing and escaping from society. On the contrary, this expression means that your life manifests itself as life. It is a Self that works to settle or bring composure to everything you encounter in our life. ”

“Merely to study Buddhist thought and philosophy through books, or to do zazen only to become entranced by satori as some rapturous and esoteric state of mind without actually putting our bodies to work in our day-to-day lives as taught in (Tenzo Kyokun), leaves grave doubts as to whether we have any idea at all of live out the what it means to truly buddhadharma.”

Dungeon

     
He whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon.
I am ever busy building this wall all around; and as this wall goes up into
the sky day by day I lose sight of my true being in its dark shadow.

I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand
lest a least hole should be left in this name;
and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being.

Rabindranath Tagore

Serendipitously, flow or the notion of being lost in ones passion has brought two wonderful tidbits into view. The first is a short 18min video of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Feb 2004 talk at TED. View it if you have any interest in creativity and how to develop it. Csikszentmihalyi is an author and researcher that pioneered the work that lead to our current understand of creativity, fulfillment and coined the term “flow” to discribe the experience of immersion one has when lost in ones passion. Csikszentmihalyi states the it takes about ten years of study, practice or immersion in a field before flow is possible. I see it a little different. Little practice equals little flow, great practice equals great flow. Maybe ten years is magic maybe not. We’ll see. I’m developing a new skill of carving wooden spoons. Some how I got it in my head that I’ll have to make 400 before I’ll get any good. Yet already I’ve created some wonderful spoons and I’m only on 23. (21, 22 & 23 are being worked on at the same time.)

The second tidbit is via “The Writers Bag”, a blog on writing from which I continue to learn from a lot. Cool stuff indeed.

The Hindu sage named Patanjali wrote this in his Yoga Sutras ::

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations. Your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than what you ever dreamed yourself to be.”

Fall is here.
The rains have started.
The days are much shorter now.
The winter wheat planting has started.
Mr. Moose has been around looking for Mrs. Moose.

 
As Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes said, day by day nothing seems to change, but pretty soon everything’s different.
Including us.

Clearly we are living in troubled times. How we are is a reflection of how we act. The last part in the Buddha’s teaching called The Five Remembrances is “my actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.”  Finding a way to act that is helpful can be a challenge. I don’t have any answers. Silence is my teacher.

“It has been a troubling week. People keep asking me what they should be doing. My advice is still the same: get out of debt … and invest in learning — spend your time and money learning essential capacities that will make you resilient no matter what … Learn how to grow and make and fix and maintain your own stuff, and do so in community with people you love and trust (contrary to the old western movies, loners perish, while people with strong caring networks do well). Buy goods that are more durable, even if they cost more. Buy less. Value your money less and your time and relationships more. And pace yourself … the Long Emergency has clearly, now, begun.”

Dave Pollard How to Save the World

Confluence of the Grande Ronde and the Snake Rivers
Oregon, Washington and Idaho

I’ve become more and more aware that the quality of life is a reflection of the focus of attention. Also, attention and intention seem to be deeply related. When an intention is expressed, attention is naturally directed towards it. Clarifying intentions focuses attention. Focused attention is quality of life. From a Zen perspective, attention doesn’t lead to a good life — attention is life!
 
Dave Pollard is a creative being who, by sharing his intentions, has motivated me to look closer at my intentions. Dave has put aside the notion of “the resolution” and taken up expressing his intentions, ten every 6 months. He has developed a three step process for clarifying and stating these intentions.  
 

So preparing the Intention List becomes a three step exercise:
 
   1. What is your intention, in order to become who you really are, and be and do what you were intended to?
   2. What’s holding you back? What obstacle is blocking you from realizing that intention?
   3. What One Thing will you do remove or work around that obstacle?
 
So, for example:
 
   1. I intend to learn to be present, live in the moment, be aware, attentive, appreciative.
   2. I am blocked from doing this by my inability to quiet my mind and avoid distractions.
   3. The One Thing I will do to remove that obstacle is to study and practice meditation, regularly and diligently.

 
Dave’s experience with this has pointed him to the notion of the “One Thing”. Often our intentions are a bit nebulous in just how we are going to actualize them. Identifying just one thing that is an obstacle to success then putting attention on the obstacle’s antidote creates movement. Don’t get hung up on “The One Thing”. It can be a trap where we feel we have to come up with the best or right one thing.  There can be lots of blocks and each has an antidote. The idea is to pick one block and focus on the antidote. If the first one doesn’t work pick something another.  
 
So enough jabbering about the process and here are my intentions.  
 

• Evolve to become more attentive to the present moment, more attuned with those around me, more expressive of gratitude, more aware of where my attention is focused, and more conversational.
• Move more.
• Live simpler by owning less, consuming less, desiring less, doing less, and having more fun.
• Develop my creativity by playing in the woodshop.
• Reduce ‘screen time’ — increase ‘nature time’. With what screen time remains, focus on sharing by + blogging, + posting photography, + help on #ubuntu, + Zen shanga website support, and + raven communication.
• Mentor myself at work to apply professional development techniques including improved delegation, improved training, improved documentation and practice “one kind thing”.

 
Well, there you have it. My attempt to bare myself a little more nakedly. I’ve ordered these intentions by relative importance to me and I have been vague about how I’ll actualize them.  
 
Now I can start the process of looking at each one and see if I can identify ‘one thing’ that blocks these intentions from existence and coming up with an antidote.
 
I’m not worried that I only have six intentions. I feel I’ve thought pretty big here. What a ride this would be if the blocks for my six little intentions where dissolved.  I feel free to modify, add or drop any intention at any time. I’m not stuck on reviewing these in 6 months or a year, in fact, a much more frequent, even weekly, review and reset will keep my intention in the focus of my attention.

1968                                                                     2008