“See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.”
– Matthew 6:28

I spent Monday with a friend whom I don’t see as often as I’d like. We sat outside in the shade while our daughters splashed in the last shimmers of summer. It’s been a busy season for her: always steering one child here or there, another starting behind the wheel, the eldest packed and gone for the first year of college. “This is the only time all summer I’ve sat down,” my friend said, sinking deep and slow into the weave of a warm lounge chair. I said little, and yet she relaxed into my every word, even into the pauses between the words.

This long weekend we welcome another friend and her daughter from the Midwest. She told me that since I saw her last in May she’s sold her home, moved into another and transitioned her father into a retirement center. I’m plumping up the sofa bed so she can sink into the quiet of this simple house and not lift another thing, at least for four days.

We have an enormous capacity to love one another simply by showing up. Really, that’s all I ever do! If you grant yourself the time to show up here in return, I have two things for you to relish over this Labor Day Weekend. They are the unlabors of my love, and they will bring you rest.

7 Tips Inspired by Monasteries to De-Stress Your Home – My latest column on the Huffington Post will convince you that you don’t need to escape to a nunnery (just yet). This article started as a short interview in the September issue of Whole Living magazine when I realized that the same devotional practices that turn monasteries into bastions of serenity can relieve the mindless stress that infiltrates our home lives. Please read it over and over; share and circulate; take it to heart and let it work in mysterious ways.

Zen in a Basket of Laundry – Click on “Listen Now” and relax into this hour-long conversation on New Dimensions Radio. It’s my new, very favorite of so many interviews I’ve had in the last several months, because it’s like a conversation between you and me about life, love, happiness, meditation, teachers and time. You can stream it for free as often as you like over the next two weeks. Listen and see if you don’t become unlabored in its soothing sound. Listen because I asked you to and because you’ll hear me say, “Being asked to do something is a very good reason to do it.”

Return. Rest. Refresh. Happy Unlabor Day.

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We often think that if we had the chance we would go back in time to illuminate our younger selves with mature insights, to foreshorten expectations and prevent cruel disappointments. Drop the notion that you’re wiser now than you were then. What did your 16-year-old self know that you’ve forgotten? Before your last hour, can you remember again?

My Last Wish
by Karen Tate
English III
October 23, 1972

My life is a collection of small occurrences. In looking back over sixteen years, I remember incidents which, when they happened, seemed quite forgettable. A handshake with a friendly dog, a gift of bubble gum from my father, and a playground chase are a few of the scenes that come to mind.

When confronted with the possibility of only one more day of life, I immediately respond with a desire to experience all of the thrills our earth has to offer. But, after considering further, I reject that idea as a way to conclude my life.

What experiences, after all, has my memory chosen to include in its vast enclosures? The everyday happenings remain most clearly in my mind’s eye. They have influenced and molded me into the complex person that I am.

If I had one day left to live, I wouldn’t want to circle the world or sail the seas. I might wash my hair, play cards, clear the dinner table, fight with my sister, say my prayers and go to sleep.

We must become the ones we always were. How else to explain the sublime recognition when we meet ourselves again.

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When I was leading walking meditation in the chapel at Seattle’s Bastyr University in June, I asked the people with me what turned the ground under their feet into a pathway. Was it the terrazzo tile?

When I was at a yoga studio in suburban Milwaukee last Saturday, I asked the group in front of me to notice the change that occurred in the room from the time we convened at 2 p.m. until the hour we dispersed at 4 p.m. What turned the mildly restless, self-conscious discomfort at the start of our time together into the vast, settled calm at the end? Into a still and quiet ease so deep that no one cared to move? So satisfying that no one rose to leave?

The answer is you. The secret is yours. The power of your own nonjudgmental attention is what transforms space into spaciousness. It turns your wandering into the way. It transforms your life into love.

And now we’ll do the same in Boston when we gather for the Mother’s Plunge on Saturday, Sept. 18.  I’m so pleased that we’ll be meeting at the Seaport Academy, a therapeutic day school for adolescents who need extra attention to navigate the perils of growing up. The students will not be there the day we are, but your attention will, and your attention will transform our humble gathering into the spaciousness of infinite potential. Come see for yourself what the power of your love can do. We’ll leave some of it behind, and you can take the rest home with you.

And if you’re not on the East Coast on Sept. 18, come to the one-day meditation retreat I’m leading in LA on Sept. 12. We’ll turn our attention onto a bare white wall and unleash the wild blue yonder. You don’t have to believe it; you just have to see it.

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“Driver error caused Toyota’s ‘runaway’ cars.” That was the indisputable conclusion from the government’s initial probe into the unintended acceleration scare that convulsed the country and crippled the company earlier this year.

If there wasn’t some mysterious electronic flaw, what caused all those incident reports that triggered the massive recalls and indignant congressional investigations? Sixty percent of the time, the report showed, cars kept going because there was a complete absence of braking. In another 25 percent of cases, brakes were only partially applied. We can deduce that the cars kept going because drivers kept pressing the accelerators.

Does that make you want to stop for a minute?

I’m on a roll! Read the rest of this rant and comment at The Smartly LA.

Class over, we slide off the bikes and she says to me “I should read your book.”
I wish you would, I say, because there’s just one life and I want you to know.
It’s not over yet.

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Whenever Roso saw a monk coming, he immediately sat facing the wall. Hearing of this, Nansen said, “I usually tell my people to realize what has existed before the kalpa of emptiness, or to understand what has been before Buddhas appeared in the world. Still, I haven’t acknowledged one disciple or even a half. If he continues that way, he will go on endlessly.”

I hate it when people talk about koans. I’m going to Wisconsin next weekend. This gives me a chance to talk about koans.

First, Wisconsin:
Extraordinary Ordinary: How to Fall in Love with the Life You Already Have
Sat., August 21, 2-4 p.m.
YogAsylum, Brookfield WI
Register by clicking here or arrive at the door
A wisdom teaching and book signing

Just this morning at the yoga class I teach in my dinky little hometown 2,042 miles from Wisconsin, someone told me his sister was coming to see me next Saturday in Brookfield. Then I heard from the venue manager, and the kitchen table tour host, one after the other, with last-minute details and well-wishes. All of that and I immediately sat up straighter and faced the trip before me with enthusiasm: “I love Wisconsin!”

Come see me so I can tell you in person.

Now, koans.

What is a koan? Nothing like what you’ve probably heard tell. Take this for instance, a perfectly reasonable and popular definition of koan as “a paradoxical anecdote or a riddle that has no solution.” It’s perfectly reasonable to define koan that way and it is completely wrong. Every koan has a solution; otherwise we wouldn’t train with koans as we do in my Zen lineage. We train with a collection of 750 koans including the one above. By train, I mean that when a teacher directs you to a koan, you meditate with it and then present the depth of your realization of the koan to your teacher in a private meeting. Most of the time, the depth of your realization isn’t deep at all: you just grasp at the meaning off the top of your head. You try to tease out some kind of explanation. At those times, the teacher tells you kindly and straightforwardly to keep working on it, and you are relieved of at least one of your erroneous concepts.

The way you work on your koan is not by working on it. Not by analyzing and postulating, figuring and deducing. You work on it as a process of digestion. Instead of putting your koan into your head and fooling around with it, you put it in your mouth and swallow it. You put it in your belly and digest it. You absorb it into your system and forget about it.

A koan is nothing like a riddle you untangle in your brain, and everything like a piece of cheese, as long as it is a piece of cheese you do not wear on your head.

You won’t hear me talk much more about koans. After I eat a piece of cheese, I for one, do not spit it back up and wear it on my head. I would suggest you tread lightly around people who talk about koans the same way you would avoid people who regurgitate cheese and adorn themselves with it. (Except maybe in Wisconsin.)

And hey! If you are in Brookfield on Saturday, I will offer a personally inscribed book to everyone who comes up to me, sticks out a hand and answers this koan.

You are all of 11.

And though I’ll never miss a thing, I miss you just the same. Happy birthday, daughter. It’s the time of year to put old clothes away, and party.

My girl was a big girl, her own girl, with her own loves and her own life. I was a spectator, but the show was splendid and I still had the best seat in the house. If I were forever looking forward or lingering too long looking backward, I would miss too much. I would miss it all. – Momma Zen

I am inspired by questions I get about practice. That tells me that you’ve heard the most important thing I can tell you. That tells me that you’re trying.

I am inspired by posts like this.

I am inspired by the talks I’ve been listening to and transcribing every day. Old dharma talks on dusty cassette tapes, in which Maezumi Roshi tells me loud and clear, “This life you are encountering is nothing but the life of the Buddha.” And his question, “How are you living your life as the practice of Buddha Dharma?”

So here I show you what my practice looks like most days, and I snare you into seeing through my eyes. Where is your practice? Only you know; only you can answer. I hope you will.

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Luckily for me, my teacher Nyogen Roshi keeps repeating the same thing over and over again. (I’m beginning to realize that’s what teachers do.) In nearly every one of his weekly dharma talks he ends up reciting a set of instructions given to him by his teacher Maezumi Roshi in the early days of his training.

Wisdom teachings are fascinating things. They may not appear to be special. They are never complicated. They can sound so ordinary that we don’t even hear them or grant them consideration. But like seeds, they burrow into us and one day surface in full bloom. Only then are we ready to appreciate them. Here are Maezumi’s Three Teachings, which you’re not likely to find elsewhere.

1. Don’t deceive yourself. In the Ten Grave Precepts we vow to “refrain from lying” and yet in the early stages of our practice we might interpret this admonition dualistically to mean not lying to others. In truth, every time we lie we lie to ourselves, and we’re the only one we consistently fool! Others are seldom conned by us for as long as we con ourselves. At its most profound level, my greatest self-deceit is the deceit of self, with all my ego-reinforcing views. In daily life, this teaching reminds me that unless I practice consistently and devotedly on a cushion, I cannot practice at the kitchen sink. Without practice, my views devolve into either self-congratulation or self-criticism, and both are deceptions. Practice starts with me. And never ends.

2. Don’t make excuses for yourself. The list of all the people and things I can, and do, blame is endless. Don’t get me started! Blaming external, or even internal, conditions for what I do or don’t do is dualistic. As long as I’m casting blame elsewhere, I am reinforcing my own wrong-headed view as separate. Taking this teaching at its most profound level, I must begin to see that any excuse for myself is a self-deception. The power to change is only mine. The power to practice is only mine. Waking up is up to me. The responsibility for my life begins and ends with me, and only when I stop excusing myself does my life benefit everyone and everything.

3. Take responsibility for yourself. If you’re like me, you might imagine yourself to be the most responsible human being on the planet! But that’s not responsible enough. To take complete responsibility for yourself is to no longer deceive yourself, no longer make excuses for yourself, and thereby serve the entire world by waking up. At its most profound level, taking responsibility for yourself means taking responsibility for everything. In these three little instructions we thus find both the seed and the fruit of continuous practice.

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Al, all joking aside, you really oughtta be yourself.

And that reminded me of so much else, the whole of it, really, the beginning and the end, and so I spoke it out to share it with you here, the last chapter of Momma Zen. Listen and lose yourself in the story, the marvel, and then look up. See if you can’t crack a smile.

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