The Kōan

The Next Right Thing

2014-01-12T00:00:00-08:00

Suzuki Roshi once said, “This is the ultimate fact: I am here.” Indeed, one can rely upon perhaps little else. Life changes.

Like most people, in the past nine years I have seen plenty of change: I have lived in five different cities, gotten married, then divorced, went to graduate school, then graduated, worked on two entrepreneurial ventures (neither succeeded), and had at least four different jobs. One of the only constants through all this change has been Zen practice — sitting, staring at the wall, counting breaths.

By this description, it sounds crazy. But Zen is, in one sense, the scientific study of Suzuki Roshi’s “ultimate fact.” It provides a set of tools and methodologies for its careful dissection. Who am I? What is here? But it also provides more than this. After all, every good scientist needs a lab coat, and in the Zen tradition, receiving a rakusu through the ceremony of Jukai is like earning a lab coat with your name embroidered on it.

For some students of Zen, waiting nine years to receive Jukai might seem like an eternity, because it is not until having completed the ceremony Jukai that one can officially call oneself a “Zen Buddhist.” But I have always been a bit of a late-bloomer. I also have a tendency to squirm a bit when confronted with lofty titles and ill-defined labels. Receiving Jukai after eight years of admittedly half-assed practice and one year of truly sincere practice doesn’t seem so bad. And so, as of this week, rakusu in hand, I can now officially say that I am a Zen Buddhist, with all rights and privileges thereto pertaining. And it feels good.

A sizable part of the Jukai ceremony involves the receiving of the what are known as the Bodhisattva Precepts, of which there are sixteen in total divided into three categories: the Three Jewels, the Three Pure Precepts, and the Ten Grave Precepts. We say “receive the precepts” because in a way they are truly a kind of gift. To the uninitiated, however, they may just look like a boring list of commandments. The Ten Grave Precepts, for instance, can be written in hyper-abbreviated form as:

Not killing.
Not stealing.
Not engaging in sexual misconduct.
Not lying.
Not taking intoxicants.
Not speaking of others’ faults.
Not blaming others.
Not being greedy.
Not indulging in anger.
Not defiling the Three Treasures (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha).

Again, on the surface this may seem like not much of a gift — nothing more than a bunch of rules to follow. But looking more deeply we may see them for what they truly are: guidelines for living compassionately, ethically, responsibly. In short, they are tools to help you live life well.

One of my favorite poems by poet Gary Snyder is his piece on the Buddha Dharma entitled “Avocado.” In it, he likens the Dharma to an avocado, calling the “great big round seed” in the middle your “Original Nature:”

Pure and smooth,
Almost nobody ever splits it open
Or tries to see
If it will grow.

Hard and slippery,
It looks like
You should plant it — but then
It shoots out thru the
fingers —

gets away.

As Dharma, the Precepts are like this. Grab them too tightly and they slip through your fingers. Better not adhere to them unquestioningly, or follow them too hard or too fast because you may lose sight of their true meaning. So instead, during Jukai, we vow to “uphold” the Precepts, which I take to mean judiciously apply and study, but also question.

We often think of Zen practice as simply the practice of “doing the next thing.” When we walk, we walk. When we eat, we eat. Then we wash our bowl. I like to think of Zen not as simply “doing the next thing,” but instead as “doing the next right thing.” How do we know what is right? Mindfulness helps us pay attention to what must be done next; the Precepts help us see how to do it ethically, sincerely, skillfully. They help us to see what is right. This is what you advertise when you wear a rakusu: that you vow to do the next right thing, saving all sentient beings.

Dawn at the zendo,
coyotes howl, stomachs groan —
hungry samadhi.

We Achieve

2013-05-24T00:00:00-07:00

When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners. Then we can really learn something. The beginner’s mind is the mind of compassion. When our mind is compassionate, it is boundless. – Shunryu Suzuki, “Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind”

Like many people, when I was younger I focused much of my life on achievement. Excelling in school, graduating from college, starting a business, speaking at professional conferences – these were the things I thought to be important to a life well-lived. I spent many a waking hour studying, working and planning for the future. As I’ve gotten older, however, I’ve started to move away from this type of “goal-oriented” living. I am not opposed to achievement and I still work hard, but I no longer pursue it with that singular point of focus I once had. I think that this, too, is a common pattern for many of us as we get older. If we pay close attention, we start to really see what life is all about outside of our conditioning.

Today, I still achieve things. But I see my achievements not so much as something “I” do; instead I see them instead as the by-products of acts of reciprocal giving. Everything “I” achieve is a gift to the world, built upon the gifts of myriad others. This is not forced humility; it is simply radical honesty. I could not do anything were it not for my parents and their achievements in their careers, in building a loving home, in earning enough money to provide for me and my brother, in supporting our health and our education, and so on. Similarly, they could not have done what they did for us without their parents – or their parents' parents – doing likewise. Furthermore, I would not be writing this today if it were not for the achievements of all those people who grew my food, built my home, maintained my city's infrastructure, designed my computer, programmed its software, kept me alive in times of illness, and on and on and on and on. This has been something of a liberating realization. “I” do not achieve anything. Together, ”we“ achieve everything. This is Indra's net reflected in its infinite jewels.

In Zen practice, we are often told to have no thought of attainment. Suzuki Roshi said: “… as long as you think ‘I am doing this’ or ‘I have to do this,’ or ‘I must attain something special,’ you are actually not doing anything.” In the Heart Sutra we read: “There is no attainment of wisdom, and no wisdom to attain.” On the surface, this is very paradoxical. On the one hand, in Buddhism we strive for enlightenment. On the other hand, we should have no thought of striving. Looking deeper, I think this is simply a suggestion to “let go“ and trust that Indra’s net will “catch you.” That is to say, “you” do not achieve enlightenment. Rather, just like every other achievement in life, we all do it … together.

Staying Vegetarian

2013-03-23T00:00:00-07:00

One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;” and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough along in spite of every obstacle. – from Walden, by Henry David Thoreau

Over the years, many friends (and some strangers) have asked me why I am a vegetarian. Because I’ve been asked so many times, and because I have become somewhat weary of the ensuing conversation, I typically deliver a canned response: health reasons. Unfortunately, this is only a half-truth. I became a vegetarian for health reasons, but this is not the primary reason that I continue to remain a vegetarian today. If it were, I probably would have quit many years ago.

A good friend of mine, who is also a vegetarian, was once asked: “Don’t you ever crave a hamburger?” His response: “I’m a vegetarian, not a carnivore who does not eat meat.” Pithy, if slightly sarcastic, his words get to the heart of the matter.

Sustainable vegetarianism requires a fundamental shift in being, not just behavior. Being a vegetarian means more than simply not eating meat in the name of good health. It means shifting to a life-long practice of compassion. I know more people today who once were vegetarians than are vegetarians, and I think it is for this very reason. Health does not provide the motivational stick-to-itiveness that only compassion can.

When asked why he was a vegetarian, philosopher Alan Watts famously quipped, “because cows scream louder than carrots.” All eating involves killing, but it pays to be mindful of it, and Watts knew it. This is what true vegetarianism is all about. The first person to teach this to me was John Robbins.

I first met John Robbins in November, 2002, a month after my leukemia diagnosis. It was a rainy Saturday in San Francisco, and I’d flown up from Los Angeles to attend the Green Festival with my dad. Pale, anemic, and tired – I had just started my first trials of the leukemia medication Gleevec – I found a random seat in the conference hall and sat down to rest. Conferences can quickly wear you out, even more so when you already feel worn out to begin with. And at the time I sat down – only a few hours into the conference – I was more than ready to go home. Today, I’m glad that I didn't. Taking that seat dramatically changed my life.

Five minutes after I sat down, John Robbins, a vegan lifestyle advocate once heir to the ice-cream fortune of Baskin-Robbins, took the stage to talk about his latest book The Food Revolution. Robbins was eloquent, but even more than that, he was energetic and passionate. I quickly perked up. The Food Revolution was Robbins' second book; his classic Diet For a New America being his first. It was immediately clear that he had been studying, researching, and living the vegetarian lifestyle for a long time.

Within fifteen minutes I heard everything I needed to hear to convince me that I needed to become a vegetarian. Longer life-span. Lower incidence of cancer. More energy and better overall health. Only a month earlier, I had been knocking on death’s door. I knew I needed to make some changes, and felt that simply following “doctor’s orders” would not suffice. I needed something more, and Robbins was the first person to show me the way. I bought a signed copy of his book and never looked back. Much to the chagrin of my meat-eating relatives, I became a vegetarian only a few days before Thanksgiving. I’ve been a vegetarian for over ten years now, and have honestly never felt better.

But selfishness will only get one so far. One thing I quickly came to realize after finishing The Food Revolution was how intimately my health was tied to the health of my environment. This should have been obvious to me beforehand. My leukemia was caused by environmental factors – perhaps chemical, perhaps radiative – that to this day neither I nor my doctor cannot pinpoint. Good health is interdependent.

When I began studying Zen, I suddenly saw my vegetarian diet from a whole new perspective, deepening my understanding of this interdependence. The first of the Four Bodhisattva Vows espouses “saving all sentient beings.” The first of Ten Bodhisattva Precepts says “no killing.” As firsts, these promises are foundational and primary to all other Zen practice. It should come as no surprise, then, that most Zen Buddhists, particularly in Asia, are vegetarian. Perhaps nowhere in our lives do the effects of our decisions and our behavior have more impact on other living beings than in our diet. Vegetarianism is simply mindful recognition of this fact.

The recent wave of health-related documentaries – Super Size Me, Food, Inc., Forks Over Knives, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, etc. – that have streamed their way into thousands of homes courtesy of Netflix has done a fantastic job of educating Americans about the many perils of their diet. More and more people are “trying out” vegetarianism than every before. But, in a few years, we’ll have a great many more “used-to-be” vegetarians unless we can shift the public perception of vegetarianism from being about health to being about compassion. This is the only way to get people to stay vegetarian for the long term.

As for my part, I’ll stop saying that I’ll take a pass on the hamburger for “health reasons.” The real truth is that Alan Watts was right: cows really do scream louder than carrots.

Zen and the Art Of

2013-03-05T00:00:00-08:00

The term “Zen” has become something of a marketing buzzword. Everywhere we look we are treated to “Zen” this and the “Zen of” that. Where once we had only Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, we now have Zen MP3 players and Zen tea kettles and Zen vacuum cleaners and Zen hair treatments and the Zen of Fundraising and even the Zen of Social Media Marketing. That’s a lot of Zen!

The saying in Zen is that the “Zen that can be spoken is not the true Zen.” So what is all this Zen, then?

Zen is just a word. But what it means – what it points to – is a tradition, a practice and a heritage.

Popular culture has extracted only a small part of this heritage and rolled it into the prevailing Zeitgeist. What “pop culture Zen” implies – and by extension, what marketers mean when they say “Zen” – is a kind of boiled-down aesthetic: simple, pure, fresh and clean. This is the Zen of “being in the zone” or what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “the flow.”

Presumedly – if you believe the marketing – a Zen vacuum cleaner will allow you to get in the “flow of vacuuming” so that housecleaning becomes simple, easy and effortless. Of course, this is laughable, and we all know that work is work and unless your vacuum is a robot, vacuuming your house will inevitably require some sweat and effort on your part. Nevertheless, this idea of “being in the zone” (even while vacuuming!) tugs at a deep-seated emotional desire, and subconsciously we may be swayed to buy a Zen vacuum cleaner anyway. After all, who wouldn't like something as mundane as cleaning the carpet to feel rewarding and fulfilling?

The truth is: any vacuum cleaner can allow you to get into the flow of vacuuming. You don’t need a special version emblazoned with the word “Zen” on it to do it. But this isn’t the point. The point is that all this Zen-branded paraphernalia is missing the point when it comes to what Zen is all about. Zen is about more than just “being in the zone.”

During a recent talk, my teacher – Jiyu Roshi – brought up the Lance Armstrong doping scandal to illustrate the kind of problems that simply “being in the zone” can bring. In his television interviews, Armstrong used the fact that he was “in the zone” as a kind of excuse for continuing to dope. In fact, during his interview with Oprah Winfrey, he said:

At the time, it was easy, it just flowed. I was in the zone like athletes get. It wasn’t exactly a perfect world, that wasn’t the happiest time of my life. I can tell you today that I am happier today than all those times. [Emphasis mine.]

Is this the “Zen of Cycling?” If so, it is not the true Zen. The true Zen has ethics.

Zen is a practice with a heritage. It is a form of Buddhism and cannot stand separate from Buddhism. The rich heritage of compassion and the strong ethical foundations of Buddhism are what delineate true Zen practice from mere “Zen marketing.” This is what makes Zen more than just about simplicity or “being in the zone.”

At the core of this heritage stands what are known as the Ten Grave Precepts. These Precepts serve as principles and guidelines to Zen practitioners on how to live an ethical life. In order, they are:

To not intentionally or maliciously kill
To not steal
To not misuse sex
To not intentionally deceive
To not “cloud the mind” through drugs or alcohol
To not speak of others’ faults
To not praise oneself while criticizing others
To not withhold spiritual or material aid
To not indulge in anger
To not speak ill of the Three Treasures (the core of Buddhist tradition)

In recent weeks it has become quite clear that Lance Armstrong failed to engage himself professionally in accordance with precept #4. The result has been catastrophic.

Zen practice doesn’t require anything special, but it does require more than simple, mindless, unquestioning “zoning out.” And it does require more than austere aesthetics or the raking of sand around some arbitrarily placed rocks. Real Zen asks for compassion, forgiveness and unending work in the building one’s character.

Perhaps “being in the zone“ is necessary at times, but it’s far from sufficient.

Killing the Network

2013-02-19T00:00:00-08:00

If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill the Buddha.

Facebook pervades modern social discourse. With over 1 billion active users, it has achieved near ubiquity, and it has become near impossible to talk about what it means to be a modern human without mentioning it. It has become synonymous with social networking almost to the extent that Google has become synonymous with search. And the Facebook network continues to grow daily, though admittedly not at the rates it previously enjoyed. Some have recently asked: Will this trend ever stop? Will we ever reach “peak Facebook?” With over 7 billion people on the planet, and more and more of them joining the Internet each and every day, perhaps not any time soon. But there is something peculiar going on. In December of last year, the network lost nearly 1.4 million active U.S. users. And it has become something of a fad for bloggers and journalists alike to write about life without Facebook. What is this all about?

A popular Zen kōan, attributed to the Chinese master Lin-chi I-hsüan reads:

If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill the Buddha; if you meet the patriarchs, kill the patriarchs; if you meet an Arhat, kill the Arhat; if you meet your parents, kill your parents … in this way, you attain liberation.

Like all Zen kōans, the jarring literality of the phrasing belies a series of hidden teachings – messages nested like Russian dolls waiting to be unlocked by the diligent student. By no means did Lin-chi intend for his students to engage in murder. The first of the Ten Essential Buddhist Precepts specifically advocates “not killing.” Instead, the message is one of not worshipping false idols, of not fetishizing that which you do not understand, of recognizing that which is true, of being a “light unto thyself.” Any Buddha you meet on the road is not the true Buddha. You and the true Buddha are one.

These kōans are centuries old, and as we begin to popularize them in the modern West, they could probably use some refreshing. The language has become obtuse; the references outdated. For the purposes of this writing, here’s a proposed amendment to the one above: “If you join a social network online, kill the network.”

I am not a “Facebook hater,” but I deactivated my account over a year and a half ago. As a technologist and as a practitioner of Zen trying to live mindfully, I struggle regularly with integrating the two. Technology introduces significant amounts of psychological noise; mindful living seeks to eliminate it. The challenge lies in finding a middle way without becoming a complete ascetic or a technological hedonist. I still use Twitter and I still use Instagram, but I may go a day or more without checking Twitter and usually look at Instagram at most twice a day. Though far from completely independent, every day I try reduce my addiction.

I am not alone. More and more people have begun to reduce their engagement in online social networking because the noise to signal ratio on all networks has reached an all-time high. We have become disenchanted. We are, in effect, “killing the network.”

Killing the network does not mean destroying it or abandoning it completely. It means appraising it honestly. It means not allowing it to run your life, not fetishizing it, not turning it into a false idol. It means recognizing what it is and what it is not. Any online social network is no substitute for real face-to-face interaction. “Likes” are not the same as hugs. Comments are not the same as intimate conversations over coffee or tea. The online social network is not the same as a network of real human relationships based on shared physical experience, so do not allow yourself to be controlled by it. Give it a rest, turn off notifications, and perhaps only check it once a day or once a week. Yes, you will be missing out, but you’re always missing out on something, so don’t worry about it. As Leo Babauta wrote on Zen Habits, “... if you always worry about what you’re missing out on, you will miss out on what you already have.”

What you already have is right here, right now. Facebook can wait. Kill it.

Haste is a Form of Violence

2013-02-05T00:00:00-08:00

Haste is a form of violence.

I stumbled upon this quote – often attributed to Gandhi – several years ago while reading a book by Thich Nhat Hanh. It has stuck with me ever since. Whenever I find myself acting impatiently or in a hurry to get somewhere, I often think of this quote. Somehow it makes its way forward from the shadowy recesses of my mind, then just hangs out for a while. Perhaps it’s the sheer boldness of the claim, the extreme emotion it evokes. I’m still unsure, but it works.

Haste is a form of violence.

What does it even mean? Years later, I still find myself contemplating this quote, dissecting its language, pondering its intentions.

What is haste? I believe haste to be a kind of rashness, an undue eagerness to act without contemplating ramifications. Haste is mindless speed. We act in haste when we don’t pay attention. And because of this haste can, and often does, lead to recklessness. But does that make it a form of violence?

What is violence? Violence is, in essence, the use of force to cause harm. The term is often associated with physical force, with beatings, with assault, and even with murder. Violence, though, need not be physical. By most standards, verbal abuse qualifies as a form of violence.

Certainly, when we act in haste we can easily cause unintentional physical harm. The most obvious example of this is the speeding driver who, in a hurry to get to an appointment, inadvertently causes an accident. But even those with intentions to help, when acting in a hasty way, can also cause damage. Consider the doctor who, in a hurry to move treat a long line of waiting patients, hastily examines them all, missing important symptoms of life-threatening disease. Or consider the hasty airplane mechanic, who in a hurry to leave for lunch, makes a faulty repair that later leads to a devastating crash.

And certainly, when we act in haste, we can be lead to say harmful things to others we may not have otherwise said. We may hastily judge others and call them names before we have a chance to get to know them. Or, in fits of impatience, we may lash out at those who stand in the way of us getting what we want or doing what we need to do in a timely manner. Pity the slow, inexperienced, newly-hired barista at your local Starbucks. It’s easy to be hasty with a temper.

In Buddhism, there is a set of six virtues, also known as “perfections,” called the Six Paramitas. The third of these virtues is “patience” (in Sanskrit: kshanti). Haste and patience co-exist as oppositional forces. When we lack patience, we use force to bend others against their will to our egotistical needs. This is force causing harm. This is, in a sense, a kind of violence.

Haste is a form of violence.

We can all use a little more practice in cultivating patience. We can all use a little more practice in cultivating mindfulness. For those of us who subscribe to non-violence, remembering this simple quote may help. Certainly, with a little more patience and a little less haste the world would be a more pleasant place.

Quantified Awareness

2013-01-24T00:00:00-08:00

What gets measured gets done.

The term “sousveillance” – the inverse of the more well-known term “surveillance” – describes the act of observing oneself. Whereas surveillance is the act of observation from outside or above, sousveillance is observation from within or below.

Like its counterpart, sousveillance typically involves a wide variety of recording gadgets and gizmos – cameras, audio recorders, sometimes even cybernetic prosthetics – though rather than record others, the observer instead turns these devices on him or herself. Yet also like surveillance, sousveillance sometimes need not require any equipment at all. Instead, one can simply note and observe. In this sense, you could say that meditation is sousveillance in its ultimate form.

The “quantified self” movement purports to provide “self-knowledge through numbers.” It is, at its heart, a movement in sousveillance. Using pedometers, heart rate monitors, electroencephalography, cameras, and various other devices, practitioners of self-quantification track biometrics and measure daily activity in order to both better understand themselves and, more often than not, attempt to change habits and behaviors. As the old saying goes, “what gets measured gets done.” Self-quantifiers believe this whole-heartedly. I’m starting to think I do too.

Perhaps it seems counter to the ethos of meditation to measure your practice. After all, it is the quality, not quantity of meditation, that counts. But you can’t have quality if you don’t have quantity, and measuring your practice turns out to be a great way of ensuring you have both.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve used an iPhone app designed specifically for measuring meditation every time I’ve sat on my cushion. The app is called Insight Timer. And I don’t intend to stop using it any time soon for one simple reason: statistics. Using charts and graphs, Insight Timer provides a detailed look at how often (or how little) you’ve been practicing in the last week, the last month, and the last year.

I still find the cognitive dissonance of statistics and Zen somewhat hard to reconcile. Certainly the Buddha did not measure a path to enlightenment. Certainly Bodhidharma did not count his days in the cave. But perhaps statistics and Zen need not be reconciled. Perhaps the dissonance is a kind of kōan in and of itself – its own path to awakening.

Nevertheless, measuring my practice has assured a consistency of daily meditation more than any other methodology I have tried. And with meditation, consistency is key. As I’ve quoted before, “only a constant drip of water will bore a hole through rock.” Now I can literally see the drips.

Meditation, after all, is ultimately about developing greater awareness, and metrics simply offer another path. Numbers deliver glaring truths we may otherwise easily ignore. Statistics shed light on phenomena we may otherwise never observe. Perhaps the great and ancient sages of Buddhist lore never recommended recording your daily practice down to the minute. But then again, they didn’t have iPhones.

Open Your Eyes

2013-01-18T00:00:00-08:00

Here is a well-known, if somewhat gruesome, Zen parable about meditation, a monk named Bodhidharma and the origin of tea:

While traveling in China, Bodhidharma – the first Chinese patriarch and founder of Ch'an (now Zen) – decided to study with the monks at the Shaolin Monastery. For unknown (or forgotten) reasons, upon reaching Shaolin, Bodhidharma refused to enter the monastery. Instead, he saught shelter elsewhere, and took up residence in a nearby cave, where he sat in meditation for nine long years, staring silently at the back of the cave wall. Seven years into his wall-gazing, he dozed off. Upon awakening, angry about his lack of concentration, he suddenly ripped off his eyelids and threw them on the floor. From his eyelids the first tea plants immediately sprang up, and thereafter tea provided the necessary stimulant to keep all future generations of Ch'an meditators awake.

Though not historically accurate per se, this parable does offer an important lesson: open your eyes.

Unlike Bodhidharma, and despite the urgings of my teachers to the contrary, for years I have meditated with my eyes closed. It simply “felt” right. I came into the practice with the preconception that sitting quietly in a corner with my eyes closed was exactly what meditation was supposed to be. After all, every photo I had ever seen of a practicing meditator showed exactly that. So much for practicing with a “beginner’s mind!”

Recently, I’ve started an experiment: gently opening my eyes.

So far, this small change has proven invaluable. Here’s why:

Perhaps as Bodhidharma already knew, with your eyes closed during practice, meditation can rapidly devolve into “sleepitation.” For several years now, I’ve welcomed the new year in silent meditation at the Zen center, sitting from 11pm until well past the midnight hour. And without fail, every New Year’s Eve I have done this, I have inevitably nodded off at least once. Opening my eyes has helped immensely for meditating when tired. Sleep is fantastic, but it’s not meditation.
Meditation provides a practice for developing increased awareness in daily living. In fact one could argue that this is the primary goal of meditation: to be aware and mindful in day-to-day life. But day-to-day life happens with your eyes open. Why not meditate this way? By practicing with your eyes open you become more aware of daydreaming and other eyes-wide-open mind wanderings.

The key to eyes-open meditation involves keeping a focused, gentle gaze. There is no need to rip out your eyelids, but if you’re feeling drowsy, perhaps a little tea can help.

Curate Your Life

2013-01-13T00:00:00-08:00

“What's new?” is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question “What is best?,” a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream. — Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The ability to curate your life is perhaps one of the most important skills you can cultivate. It’s no secret that modern humans are psychically bombarded. Drowning in seas of information, blasted daily by advertising, stymied by endless decisions on what to do and opportunities to acquire more stuff, thriving in the 21st century requires, perhaps more than anything, the ability to pare down, to remove, to simply say “no” to things.

Curated living is more than living simply or living minimally. It is a process of continually asking: “What is best?” and being able to answer quickly and confidently. It is simplicity guided by awareness of values and purpose.

The word “curation” derives from the Latin “curare,” meaning to “take care.” And it is in this sense of the word that I talk about a curated life. It is taking care of your life by focusing only on what matters most to you. It is, paradoxically, freedom from choice through a refined series of strategic decisions. It is the deliberate act of protecting your most precious resource: time.

Time, Decisions and Acquisitions

Decisions and acquisitions are like debits on your life’s balance sheet. All acquisitions compete for time, energy and resources. It doesn’t matter if the thing you acquire is a new iPad, a new t-shirt, or a new account on a social networking website. If it is in your life, it is taking your time. Similarly, all decisions compete for time, energy and resources. Every decision you make in a given day requires mental energy and time for consideration. The more decisions you have to make, the less energy and time you have to devote to things that matter most.

Time spent on those things that matter most – serving others, enjoying nature, communing with family and friends – are the only credits. These are the things which bring joy, happiness, peace and fulfillment.

The key, then, is to maximize credits and minimize debits. But how?

I believe this comes down to one simple concept: values. What is best – i.e. what matters – is that which aligns most closely with your core values.

The Strange Loop of Values

Most people understand values to be those intrinsic philosophical principles that we believe to be good, beneficial, desirable, important, even beautiful. They are like internal standards of measurement that we employ on a daily basis to determine the worth of things. Often, we often see our values as untouchable internal gems, permanent and unchanging once fully formed, ready to serve us through the remainder of our adult lives. Yet values are largely culturally derived. In a kind of strange loop, our lifestyle and culture shapes our values as much as our values shape our culture and lifestyle. And more importantly, if we pay little attention to our values, one side of that loop quickly comes to dominate the other.

Consider the Amish. They offer perhaps one of the most extreme examples of curated living guided by a strong sense of values. Family, religion, community, discipline, simplicity and hard-work – these are all values commonly associated with the austerity of the Amish way of life. The Amish eschew most modern technology because they believe that it will lead them astray from a life guided by their values. But, they are not complete Luddites. Many Amish, for instance, use telephones. Some even use fax machines or mobile devices. Yet in all cases, the decision to include these modern conveniences in their day-to-day living was not made lightly. Instead, there was a process of curation, of taking care by using their value system to weigh the pros and cons of each tool before approving its adoption. This process both reinforces or alters their current ways of living, and helps shape the value system inherited by future generations. But it does so in a very conscious and deliberate way.

Now consider the average modern human in a capitalist society. If a company – say Apple – introduces a new technology – say the new iPad – most of us will often adopt (or wish to adopt) that new technology automatically. We see technology as an inherent good, and we do not consciously or deliberately consult our system of values.

An iPad is a beautiful tool (I have one), but it does require time and energy. You must remember to charge it. You must spend time choosing from the myriad apps available to install. You must work to pay for those apps. You must keep it clean and out of harm’s way. You must decide whether or not to buy one of the myriad accessories available to do keep it clean and out of harm’s way. You must work to pay for those accessories. Perhaps these sacrifices are worth the time; perhaps they are not. The problem is, many of us (self included) have never stopped to consider the question.

Many of us have never given a second thought about our values. We have never written them down and we do not think about them on a daily basis. Instead we have vague notions based on what we’ve been told is important, often by family, friends, political pundits, the news media, even advertising.

Because of this, everything becomes important. Everything becomes worth having. And by acquiring more and more and by doing more and more the cycle perpetuates itself, and third-party influences continue to dominate our lives and eat away at our time. The values-culture strange loop becomes lopsided towards culture, a culture defined by those not always acting in our best interests. Our lives become an accumulation of time debits.

This is not curated living.

Fixing the Loop

The first step towards curated living involves writing down your values. What is important to you? What brings you happiness, joy, peace and fulfillment? What makes life worth living? At first, don’t sensor yourself – write down everything that comes to mind. Then, ruthlessly prioritize and whittle down your list to the five or ten most important.

Post this list in a visible place. Review it every day.

Every time an opportunity arises for buying something new or participating in a new activity, remember the Amish. Do not automatically buy. Do not automatically say “yes.” Do not listen to others who tell you to say yes. Rigorously consult your values and then decide. Do not allow something in your life simply because it is shiny or new, for in due time the shiny and new will simply be, as Pirsig reminds us, the “silt of tomorrow.”

Curate your life. Every second is precious.

Getting Started with Meditation

2013-01-10T00:00:00-08:00

No matter how long you’ve been practicing meditation, you’re always a beginner.

I came to meditation a desperate skeptic. It was late October, 2002 and I had just been diagnosed with cancer. I was twenty-one years old.

At the time, finding solace in established religion never even crossed my mind. I simply did not grow up with religion. My family stopped attending church when I was six or seven years old, after my father discovered that the pastor had been embezzling funds from the church coffers.

Instead, I grew up with books, and lots of them. Books were my religion. From as far back as I can remember, my dad has had bookshelf after bookshelf lined with tomes of self-help and philosophy and psychology in all varieties. A life-long tinkerer in self-improvement, it was he who recommended that I try meditation as a way to both deal with and possibly cure cancer.

I had browsed many of my dad’s books, and had even read a few of them, but took almost none of them very seriously. Instead, I read science. And as student of science, and as a disbeliever in all things “New Age,” magical, or mystical, I remained reluctant to try something as “out there” as meditation.

It took two months after diagnosis for me to stop letting my ego get the better of me.

Why Meditate?

In the past decade, scientists have studied meditation extensively. It turns out that it was not as “out there” as I may have thought. Discussion of meditation has instead moved well beyond the fringes of popular culture, the topic having even graced the cover of TIME magazine in 2003.

The rise in popularity of meditation coincides, perhaps not surprisingly, with the rise of the Internet, information overload and the entrance of terms like “continuous partial attention” into the common vernacular. Simply put, people are stressed and they are looking for ways to handle it.

I, too, came to meditation as an attempt to handle stress – the stress of the barrage of tests and doctors and treatments, as well as having to face my own mortality at such a young age. I needed help, and after a few months I realized that this was no time to let my pride stand in my way. For this reason, cancer was the greatest gift ever given to me.

Ten years post-cancer, as a tool for coping with and preventing stress, meditation has delivered value beyond that which words can describe. Not only has it has made me more resilient, it has introduced me to life-long friends and teachers I would have never met otherwise. Of course the value of meditation does not end there. Other benefits include:

Improved concentration and mental clarity
Improved awareness and listening ability
Improved memory
Better overall happiness
Lower blood pressure
Improved creative thinking

And so forth and so on. By no means does this represent an exhaustive list. Any quick Google search on “meditation benefits” will return thousands of results extolling its many virtues. Mine is but a single voice in the choir of those singing its praises.

How To Start

My experiments in meditation began haphazardly. At the time, I was reading Living Proof: A Medical Mutiny, Michael Gearin Tosh’s personal account of surviving one of the deadliest forms of cancer – multiple myeloma – through a combination of traditional and alternative treatments. In the book, Tosh described a kind of Chinese “bone breathing” meditation he explored as part of his alternative treatment regimen. I had leukemia, a disease of the bone marrow. I figured Tosh‘s “bone breathing” was as good a place to start as any.

This was how I learned my first great lesson in meditation: The best way to start meditating is simply to start.

As a practice perhaps as old as humanity itself, meditation has a deep and rich history. The subject is vast. Buddhist practitioners often say that there are as many forms of meditation as there are living beings. So there is no harm in simply exploring the space and finding what works best for you – you may soon stumble upon your own unique practice. This is exactly what happened to me.

That said, many friends have often asked me how to start such an exploration. What if you don’t have cancer? What if “bone breathing” simply sounds ridiculous? The following is what I usually recommend:

Read “Mindfulness in Plain English”

Mindfulness in Plain English is the best free how-to book on introductory meditation I’ve ever come across (PDF). It may be the best how-to book on introductory meditation, period.

“Mindfulness in Plain English” offers an in-depth, step-by-step guide to Vipassana, or “insight,” meditation. Though Vipassana has a Buddhist heritage, basic Vipassana offers a simple, easy, no-frills, non-denominational introduction to meditation that works for nearly everyone.

For those looking for more books without an extreme Buddhist bent, I recommend anything by Jon Kabat-Zinn, particularly Wherever You Go, There You Are.

I also like to recommend Living in Balance, a book by my first meditation teachers, Dr. Joel and Michelle Levey. Joel and Michelle have taught meditation at NASA and at West Point to U.S. Army Green Berets. They have decades of practice and serious credentials.

Create Space

Create a small space in your home that you can use for daily meditation. Dedicate that space as your space for meditation practice, and outfit it with a cushion or chair, and perhaps a candle or an altar or an incense burner or whatever works best for you.

People who work from home often find that they require a dedicated workspace in their home that they go to in order to enter the right frame of mind to begin working. The spatial boundary provides a kind of psychological cue for the necessary mental shift.

Meditation is no different. Have a place to go that provides to the cue to shift into “meditation mode.”

Practice Daily

To paraphrase a Chinese proverb, only a constant drip of water will bore a hole through rock.

The best results from meditation arise from consistent daily practice, even if only for five minutes per day. Quality trumps quantity, and it is far better to meditate with great focus for five minutes per day than to allow your mind to wander aimlessly for thirty minutes every few days.

Despite my eight-year history of Zen, I've fallen off the meditation bandwagon several times. Each time, getting back on has consistently proven difficult. Stay regular. Consider using modern tools like the Insight Timer app for iPhone and Android to help track and document your practice.

Find a Sangha

Sangha is the Sanskrit word for community, and in Buddhism it simply refers to a community of like-minded meditation practitioners. I found my sangha through Zen, but you may find yours any number of ways. Perhaps a local Meetup group can serve as your sangha, or simply a group of like-minded family and friends. Even an online social network provided by meditation apps like Insight Timer offers enough to get started.

Sanghas provide support, stability, and accountability. You will meditate more when you have people to meditate with, and you will learn more when you have a teacher or peers who can help you.

Smile

Meditation is not punishment. But I'd be lying if I said it was always fun and exciting. However you may feel at the time, if your mind begins to wander, simply remember your practice and smile.

As Zen master Shunryu Suzuki once said about meditation, “What you are doing is so important, you musn’t take it too seriously.”

Foreword

2013-01-07T00:00:00-08:00

Kōan \ˈkō-ˌän\: A paradoxical question or parable intended to provoke enlightenment or great understanding.

Life is the greatest kōan you will ever receive.

Over ten years ago, I received information that transformed my life forever. In many ways, you could call it a kōan. I was twenty-one years old and, unbeknownst to me, a rare form of chronic leukemia had been ravaging my body, transforming my once-healthy blood into a thick, useless white sludge. Young and stubborn, a senior in my final year of college, I’d ignored the symptoms for months. Night sweats, light-headedness, “white outs” of my vision, a persistent skin infection from an old rock climbing injury – these I nonchalantly attributed to stress or simple misfortune. Little did I know that without immediate medical care I would find myself at the threshold of death’s door within a few months. Doctors delivered the diagnosis on an idle Tuesday afternoon in mid-October. They were incredulous that I was even alive. My world was never again to be the same.

Within a month I became a vegetarian. Within six months I completed my first 100-mile bike ride for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Within a year I adopted a regular practice of meditation. Within two years I found myself practicing at a local Zen Buddhist community. I was willing to try anything and everything that would both keep me healthy and grounded in an attitude of gratitude for every passing moment. Life is precious, and perhaps nobody knows that better than someone who has experienced first-hand its fragility.

But life also has a habit of getting in the way of itself. I got married (then divorced), tried my hand at a few software startups, went to graduate school, took on a job in the corporate world. Regular practices fell by the wayside, new circumstances took precedence, and bad habits seeped back in. Modern medicine has kept me alive physically, but it was a mindful and simple lifestyle that enlivened and sustained my spirit. A decade after diagnosis, I’m still a vegetarian and I still practice Zen, but the roaring fire and passion that drove me to this lifestyle has since faded to the subtle glow of a mere bed of embers.

“The Kōan” is an attempt to rekindle this fire.

An experimental publication, The Kōan aims to grow into a collection of essays and short stories pertinent to anyone interested in cultivating the “small footprint” lifestyle of mindfulness, health and simplicity. In it, I’ll share not only what I’ve learned during the past decade, but also what I hope to learn through future life “experiments.” I’m also hoping that mine will not be the only voice, but that in the near future, other like-minded authors will share their words of wisdom as well.

Like Zen, this site offers no promise or guarantee of enlightenment, but I do hope it may nevertheless prove enlightening, inspiring and useful to those who read it.

With that, there's not much more to say than, “Onegaishimasu.” Let’s begin.