Category Archives: simple living

Death Meditation

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Yesterday I talked about the obstacles to spiritual growth or the blocks to achieving anything we really want.  One of the most common roadblocks is simply “not wanting to do it”.  Sometimes this concept is translated as laziness.  In certain cultures, procrastination might be a good single word to describe it.

Skullclose.jpgI mentioned yesterday some of the antidotes to not wanting to do what needs to be done to get the results you want.

A traditional practice for this problem is a death meditation.  This may seem kind of odd.  How is thinking about death going to motivate one to action?!

Try it and see.  Here is one of my favorite death meditations inspired by Geshe Michael Roach:  DEATH MEDITATION (16 minutes)

Another simple practice is to live each day as if it were your last.  If this was the last day of your life, what would you be doing?

Death meditations, put everything into a more true perspective.  After all, today may be the last day of your life.  Death meditation practice is about connecting to what is really important to us and putting our energy in that place.  It is about taking our energy away from fretting about the past or worrying about the future.  If we are dying today there is not much future to worry about.

Remember, death meditation is a practice in living life fully.  Blessings to you and your practice.

 

Hitchhiking

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I was driving to the post-office yesterday when a gentleman, nearly in the middle of the road, stood with his thumb out.  He seemed determined to get a ride.  I stopped, lowered my window and asked where he was wanting to go.  I thought I could not be much help since I was only going a couple miles, but it turned out he was also going to 7th street.

circulator bus stop

The Neighborhood Circulator Bus Stop

I told him to get in.  He rushed back to the curb to get his bag, while I removed the extra items off the passenger seat and secured my valuables.

Although many people are wary of hitchhikers I don’t let irrational fear hinder me from picking up people that need a ride or hitching a ride myself.  There are a couple of rules of thumb that I rely on.

First – always trust one’s intuition.  I don’t enter into situation that make me feel uneasy.  Acting from the gut and not rationalizing away uneasiness is the best way to proceed.

Second, always ask where the other person is going without giving away your information.  For instance, if I’d decided the gentleman I provided a lift for was “off” during our conversation, I could have simply said I’m not going where he wants to go and then driven off alone.

Now, I’m a little paranoid and always expect a threat.  This is a result of childhood trauma.  I don’t want to live my life from a paranoid place, but I do indulge myself a little.  Once the person is my car I make sure my purse or other valuables is not within their reach.  I also use my peripheral vision to keep an eye on them.

In this case, I picked up a man that I could easily overpower (assuming he did not have the same martial arts training I’ve got).  And, although I’ve gotten the intuitive assessment that he is just an old guy that needs a ride to the drug store, missed the free neighborhood circulator bus, and is burning up in the heat, I am still casually watching to see if he produces a weapon.  (I laugh at myself.)

This ride ended uneventfully at Walgreens, where he told me, “love ya” and gratefully exited my car.  I guess I am just an extension of the neighborhood circulator.  Feels good.

 

Minted values

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In 1999 the US Mint launched the 50 State Quarters Program.  My daughter was eight.  Something about having a young child and the excitement of a new look to our old quarters got me to start saving the different states.

state quartersAfter several years, when I started shopping for a case to put my “daughter’s” collection in, I came to my senses.

My daughter is blessed with a complete disinterest in material things.  The special collectible coins meant nothing to her.  When she was eight she did not place inherent value on things for sentimental reasons.  It was actually quite refreshing.  Such a value, must be a learned behavior and I had failed to impart it.

If I was going to get a case, I would need to get my daughter to buy into the idea.  But, why would I do that?  I took a moment and moved my mind forward fifty years.  I imagined the entire coin collection in the future and its value.  It wasn’t hard to do.  I had coins that my parents and grandparents had given me.  They were simply a burden.  Something that I had to lug around every time I moved.

Why did I hang onto them?  They were valuable – that is what my relatives had told me.  In truth they were not worth very much at all.  The reality is that my relatives had passed them on to me and I was carrying them in order to pass them onto the next generation.  It is as if they had passed their values and hopes onto me and I had mindlessly accepted their burden.

There are countless values and beliefs that my relatives passed on to me.  Some have had more damaging effects than the value of collectable coins.  When I confronted myself, I found I really didn’t think saving coins was a worthwhile activity.  I was merely holding that value as a way to honor my grandparents.

What I have found invaluable is to constantly question my motives for acting.  It is amazing how much lighter I am now that I am getting rid of other people’s values and my habitual ways of acting.  I am able to honor my grandparents without carrying their values, beliefs or things.

Those quarters are long gone.  I stopped even looking at the new states as they came out.  I no longer had a motive to spend my energy that way.  My personal insight had set me free of an activity that did not really serve me.