Zenmind/Puppymind

Stay. Sit.  That is what I tell my mind this early foggy California morning as I sit zazen before the long window in my office.  Some of the great masters of meditation have rightly called the continual singsong of our minds, Monkey Mind.  I call mine Puppy Mind, tugging and wanting to run in any direction but those of silence and breath.  And today I am also contending with a very insistent Muse. 

Puppy:  Hey, hey is it time to stop yet?   Hey, there’s a lotta stuff I gotta do.  Hey, look at that bird over there.  Look at the color of that hanging thing in the window.  What is that thing?  Hey, pet me!  Let’s play!

Muse: Ignore the dog, Darling, you have more important things to attend to, i mean just listen to these fabulous ideas!  I know how stubborn you are about these twenty minutes but I must tell you that twenty minutes is a lifetime, my dear, an entire lifetime to a muse.   Really just give your attention to these words, they might fly away at any second.  Uh, what’s that?  Is that a pad of paper over on your desk?  How handy!  Why don’t you just reach over and . . . what?  You won’t?  Even if this is the best idea ever?

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Elegance

Elegance is refusal.   Coco Chanel, 1945

Elegance is refusal.  The Buddha, not in those exact words, about 400 B.C.

Coco meant the elegance of Less is More in the wordly sense – to refuse the second croissant, second (or third) glass of champagne, the over-the-top outfit that takes fashion into fashion victimhood.

The Buddha refused the ways of the world, literally lost the world as he sat beneath the bodhi tree and found enlightenment.  Now that is elegance.