CrankyBuddhist   the learning never ends …

Folks who take their role as an artist seriously don’t just scribble in sketchbooks all day. Nope. We’re thinkers, tinkerers, and creative problem solvers. Everything we do, no matter how mundane, has something to do with how our brains work in the creative process. We don’t stop with creating pretty pictures, or sculptures, or other works of art. We tend to daydream about other things too.

As I was walking the dog today I thought about my perfect community. Now, don’t let images of butterflys flittering around the hydrangeas come into your head … I began to create a list of things that I would need to consider a community a perfect place to live. Here are some of them:

- Gardeners that do not use electric or gas powered tools.
- Strangers that say Hi back when I say Hi to them.
- Neighbors that don’t necessarily know everything about me, but can at least remember my name after being told it off and on for two years.
- Everyone walks their dogs on leash
- A nice mix of young, older, and old people.
- Some artists to get creative with.
- A Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and a Berkeley Bowl all within walking distance (got this one!).
- A sense of community where people are actually interested in knowing about each other.

I do have a great shopping experience within walking distance of my current residence. But all the rest of the stuff must exist in a community somewhere else … ? This is the first place I’ve ever lived where I didn’t know everyone on the block, let alone anyone. It’s so strange to me.

Anyway, making a list is good. If I ever create my own community, these are the building blocks I would start with.

What would you want in your community?

On Friday night I went to a dharma talk given by Sakyong Mipham in Berkeley. In my coming old age, I haven’t been going out at night as much as I used to, so it was interesting to do something other than walk the dog after dark. That was good in and of itself. I had never been to a Shambhala teaching, although I’ve read a lot of writings from that line, and I read the magazine when I can get a copy. I had never been to a teaching given by, or met Sakyong other than through his writings and the photos of him that I had seen in print.

Friday night’s talk was one of those dharma talks that seemed introductory, but as always, if I am listening, there are new-to-me tidbits and reminders to pick up. It doesn’t hurt to be reminded of things. (And of course I didn’t take notes.)

One of the things he said that I appreciated was that it doesn’t matter what we choose to practice on any given day, whether it is compassion, generosity, whatever, these all hold The Six Perfections of generosity, virtue, patience, effort, contemplation and wisdom. So no matter what we choose to practice, we will in effect be practicing everything.

The other thing he talked about, that I definitely needed to be reminded of, was basically the subject of we are what we think, or what we think makes our mind. Does that make sense? It does to me. My brain tends to magnify whatever I am thinking or feeling. I know that when I get into a negative way of thinking, like I was last week, that I tend to amplify that path and the only way to change it, is to contemplate it, then consciously change my thought processes. Find something good in the negative to focus on. And when I’m thinking in a positive mode, it’s good to recognize the negative, but not dwell on it.

And of course, I was reminded to continue the daily practice.

I’m glad I went. It’s always good to be reminded of things. And I got a red string for my effort. ;)

My life is utter chaos. That’s ok, because I’ve learned to sit and be the calm within the storm, sometimes getting kicks off of watching the swirl of energy around me, but sometimes there is a second level chaos in my life that is so subtle it goes unnoticed for awhile. Kind of like a virus, where it sits replicating and then when given the chance it explodes onto the scene with a big ‘Hey, I’m here!’.

So, right now, now being a rather big now because it’s been a few weeks since this now began, I have had some chaos stirring in my life. Call it itchy feet. Or roots trying take hold. Yes, in my life these two things can both happen simultaneously. The base feeling is being fed up. Fed up with what I’m doing, or rather not doing, and where I am.

I’ve worked on being happy with what I have, or don’t have. I’ve sat in contentment while thinking this is it, this is all my life is about, a VW bus and a couple of web sites. I’ve worked on letting go of my ambition. But these last few weeks I’ve just gotten fed up with all of it. My life should be more, I should be able to live in something larger that a five foot by ten foot tin can, or other people’s houses.

What brought all of this on this morning?

I forgot to pay the bill for my P.O. Box.

I’ve had that P.O. Box for fourteen years. It’s been the one constant thing in my life. I was rumaging around some papers today and found the bill for the annual fee. I remember getting it and thinking I should pay it right away, but then I set it down again and something got put on top of it and then the rest is history.

So I’m thinking about how this is kind of the tipping point for the subtle secondary level of chaos. See how subtle it is? My breaking point is over something so trivial as a post office box.

But, unfortunately the box really isn’t trivial. It’s my lifeline to the three dimensional world. It’s how I connect to folks who aren’t virtual. Though I can’t even count, or even remember, how many places I’ve lived in the last fourteen years, people knew they could always reach me, eventually, through the box.

As I was walking the dog this morning, I thought about changing my thinking on this. The possibility of having lost the P.O. Box may in actuality be a very freeing thing. I’ve been thinking about leaving The Bay Area for so long, that maybe this is one way that my subconscious is telling me to go, git, skedaddle.

Now if it could just tell me where …

Here in Northern California the roses are blooming. I’ve spent months stopping every few feet on our morning and evening walks so that the dog can sniff the grass and mark his trail. Now the dog waits patiently for me as we stop at every other house so that I can smell and inspect the roses in their front yard – buds, blooms, and fading dropping petals in all the colors a rose can be.

Stop and smell the roses isn’t the cliche I once thought it was. Maybe it takes getting a little older to really appreciate, not only the phrase, but the flower itself. And how fleeting the rose is. Sturdy and fragile at the same time. A delicate bitch of a flower. Difficult to grow. High maintenance. But worth it.

Contemplating the rose is a meditation. Take a moment to really focus on the flower and you’ll find that, in that moment, nothing else matters.