To Enjoy Life When Young, Honor What It Means to Get Older: To Value Aging Is to Value Life, To Value Ourselves, and Human Life In All Its Stages

Yesterday, I was going to a local movie theatre and a younger person held the door for me. I was surprised. I had the same questioning response when someone gave up a seat for me on a bus or called me “Sir.” I am in my mid-seventies and in apparently good physical shape. Were these gestures just politeness? Or was it an assumption or a stereotype of the physical capabilities of those with gray hair and wrinkles?

 

Or was it respect? How do people see me? Do younger people see me in any way like I see myself? Does my age make me seem dignified? Knowledgeable? Or fragile?

 

It’s difficult to believe, to really feel and acknowledge, we’re getting old or older. In my mind, like almost everyone I know who’s near my age, I’m 30 or 40 years younger than I am. Our psyche hasn’t caught up with our body. To ourselves, on the inside, we might feel young. Vibrant. But others see us from the outside.

 

We’re always aging, and we’re always aging together. So, if we don’t value all phases of life, even being old, even being sick, we cut ourselves off from ourselves and others.

 

In the 1960s, I remember the talk about not trusting anyone over thirty. As a sixteen to twenty-year-old, I couldn’t imagine being thirty, let alone sixty. Sixty was a time of frailty. I’m constantly astonished that I’m now not anything like I once imagined a person of seventy-plus years to be.

 

And it’s not because we’re boring that older people talk so frequently about their medical conditions, pains, and doctor visits. It’s partly a way of us saying, “Can you believe I’m going through this? Me?” We might suddenly feel we’re becoming the parents we’ve lost.

 

And we don’t want to waste time faking the reality of our lives. We want to speak of meaningful things. We want to share and feel in sync with others. And one thing most of us share is pain and wanting to know how to deal with it. How to deal with life and face change and dying.

 

As we get older, we realize the deep meaning of change and impermanence, but it’s a difficult lesson and can be hard to accept. After a heart procedure, I was told I had to temporarily stop intense or long periods of exercise. So, I did. I cut back drastically, taking only moderate walks on flatter ground. That lasted one day. Then I started counting steps again, or imagining long walks up steep hills and the views I could get. Or imagining exercises I could do.

 

Imagining I could die from exercise (or at all) was just too difficult. I mean, I could feel all this life around me⎼ the crickets, birds, wind, friends⎼ things, and places I enjoy. I mean, consciousness, except for when sleep (and somewhat even then), has always been there; luckily, no pain or illness has dimmed it for me. Slowed, maybe. But how do we imagine it ceasing, permanently?

 

We all need to learn, and schools to teach, the psychology of human development and aging. Larger public schools especially are islands of youth and as such are highly artificial and developmentally problematical. Children need to be around people of various ages, who can serve as models and provide care and support. It’s so easy for them, or anyone, when so isolated from other age groups to over-value youth, the example of their peers, and of what’s new and popular. And we can carry this isolation over to our later years….

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

How to Be Who We Truly Are: Sometimes, Our Dreams, And Those Closest to Us, Can Show Us Exactly What We Need to See

When I was in college, I was totally engrossed in learning, studying philosophy, psychology, etc. Equally I was involved in demonstrating for everything from stopping a war to getting funds to feed and clothe children. I felt that the life of the world and my life shared the same stream.

 

But right now, in this time in history, the link between most of us and those in power has grown too distant. The sense that what I do influences world events or that life has meaning in and of itself is getting lost. Sometimes, I can feel like one overwhelming cloud is darkening all our lives.

 

But other times⎼ for example, last night. I don’t know why, but even something little can change everything. I went to bed, did a short meditation, said goodnight to my wife and cats. And when I turned out the lights, like usual, the darkness surrounded me. But it was a different sort of darkness, amazingly quiet, except for the soft purring of the cats, and so much like an embrace. The anxiety and worry disappeared. No thoughts were anywhere.

 

And right there, while resting my head on the pillow, I felt in the middle of everything. The quiet of that specific moment encompassed everything. I can barely describe it now, other than to say the night seemed to open to me. All that was needed was to let myself in. And a sense of peace would be waiting for me. And then it was.

 

We so benefit from better understanding ourselves. I’d been having a painful and possibly serious health issue. And last week, I needed to undergo a medical procedure to help heal it. The night before the procedure, I was anxious. Since I had to wake up earlier than normal to get to the hospital, and my condition often interfered with sleep, I was worried about how much sleep I would get.

 

But I fell asleep just fine. And soon entered a dream. Without going into too much detail, my dream-self heard, and then saw through a window, someone outside our house. There was snow on the ground. The person was walking away from me and suddenly fell into the snow. I got up to go out after them. But before I could, the dream changed location.

 

I was in a huge barnlike structure occupied by a group of maybe ten, maybe twenty people. I couldn’t see any of them clearly. And someone was just out of sight, partially hidden. But I could clearly feel this mystery person was important and was getting ready to lead the group in an activity.

 

However, one person in the group, who I felt to be an outlier, an independent sort, started chanting Ooommm. Or AUM. On their own. A few others joined in. I joined in. This was a simple OM, very natural. It’s a practice I first learned in a college improvisational theatre group. Just taking a breath in; and as we breathed out, we let the air pass through the vocal cords and naturally vibrate out the sound. Concentrating on the feel of the sound, we then heard the silence we created in and around us….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

When Fear and Hate Burns in One of Us, It Could Ignite Any of Us: What Kind of Human Being Will Emerge from The Flames?

 

It’s gray and raining. Raining as if the earth itself were crying. As if the gray “inside” me and the gray “outside” were one and the same. As if the very light of the world was going out.

 

We’ve had so many gray, shattering moments over the last seven or so years. The election of a wanna-be dictator, who put his own darkness as more important than the life of anyone else. Luckily, we also had some relief, some sunshine, as he, despite his lies, was voted out of office and now faces prosecutions for some of his most major crimes. We had a life-shattering pandemic. We had all the weather disasters signaling the climate itself was shattering. We had the invasion of Ukraine by another dictator.

 

But this…. Hamas invading Israel and committing such torture, of children and of so many others. And then, the whole world waited to see what horrors would follow in retribution, as Israel attempts to free the hostages and end Hamas forever. A whole world seemingly brought to the edge. And then the violence continued.

 

However, as many have said, an idea can’t be killed. Many of us are acting to limit or control the violence. But the killing, maiming, torture, and displacement continues. It must somehow stop.

 

What kind of humanity will emerge from these flames? Who will we, we individuals, and we as a species, show ourselves to be? This moment is all we have.

 

What face will we see as ourselves? What will we do? Will we lay blame, or will we model compassion? Will we care more for securing our assumptions and beliefs than perceiving the reality of the whole⎼ the reality of ourselves, of all humanity, all life? After 70-80 years of such grief, and historic trauma going back before that for years and years, of fear, anger, and horror, compassion is not the first response that might come to us. But what about those of us not in Israel and Palestine?

 

Whenever we feel tempted to believe we know the one and only truth, we must look more carefully. Many of us focus on Israel oppressing the Palestinians for years, keeping millions locked into a tiny space under inhumane conditions. And this, I think, is part of the truth. Or we might see that Hamas has been secretly plotting for years for this moment; planning to utterly destroy the Jewish state, maybe destroy all Jewish people they find. And this, too, is part of the truth. Or maybe other nations in the area have been contributing to keeping Palestinians locked up in Gaza, to serve their own purposes? The situation is so complex; so much I don’t know.

 

But why close our minds with blame, and justify it with hate, instead of feeling our shared humanity? Why must we demonize one person or group? Why must blame come first? Too often, blame paves the road for violence to travel on. Can’t our pain unite us? We need to quickly recognize what or who is dangerous to us. But can’t we use less distorted distinctions than those based solely on race, nationality, religion, gender, etc. to do so?

 

Many claim it’s just human nature to create in and out groups. But whatever we say about human nature we can find factual evidence for the opposite….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

It’s Too Easy to Be Judgmental: Finding the Communion Beyond Calamity

It’s so easy to judge ourselves, isn’t it? ‘Judge’ in the sense of putting ourselves down. We do something we think is wrong and we suffer regret. Or we wonder: am I a good person?

 

Is this self-judging a flaw in our character? Something conditioned by culture? Maybe, a way we hurt ourselves? Or something entirely different?

 

Maybe we’re judgmental of others. We might feel another person is too blind to see the truth. Or they’re trying to undermine us. Or that they think they’re “better” than us.

 

Or maybe we sometimes feel we’ve wasted time, or our lives. When it seems we’re wasting time, what’s wasting away? It’s wonderful we don’t want our lives to be meaningless. But maybe we know this yearning not to be meaningless because we thankfully know meaning; we know moments when we’ve done something that feels glorious, that make a difference.

 

Or we feel vulnerable. Being alive means we’re vulnerable. When we love, we’re vulnerable. But our vulnerability, although frightening, is a life-giving gift. Because we’re vulnerable we can learn; we can feel. We can act. Vulnerability can reveal our need for and our essential connection to others. It can reveal our sincere presence right here and now.

 

Sometimes, we get competitive with our ideas and turn a discussion into an argument we feel we must win. But what is it we think we lose if we don’t get the other person to accept our viewpoint? Underlying the passion of this competition is often a feeling we could be mistaken. The more insecure or wrong we feel, the more vigorously we might defend our position. When I was still teaching, I noticed the more experienced and comfortable I was in my profession, the more open I was to a diversity of ideas⎼ and more capable at helping students be themselves.

 

Or we see ourselves as “bad” because we so want to be “good.” Or, when we judge others, or ourselves, it could be because we feel, deep down, there’s something more to us; there’s such a wonderful possibility in us of living more deeply and kindly.

 

Recently, I became anxious about a medical procedure I needed to undergo. One doctor reminded me of a mindfulness teaching I thought I already knew: we often feel anxious because we know calm and want to live. This was a helpful reminder.

 

Right now, we’re all suffering from a divisive world, and from wars and other unbelievable horrors. But our understanding of how threatening divisiveness is to our survival is aided by knowing the need for cooperation and peace. We might know, somewhere inside us, a communion sits waiting beyond the calamity.

 

Because what’s not often seen in our perception of division, competition, duality, self-judgment is there’s something distorting our thinking process or conclusions about the world, about life….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

Studying the Space-Time Continuum: Maybe Time Can Reveal the Timeless, Our Limits Can Reveal the Limitless

Traveling can do so much for us. So many people have written about how much they learned from other cultures, and themselves, by leaving behind the known, the culture they grew up with, and immersing themselves in another place. I love listening to Travel with Rick Steves on NPR, or reading travel books by Pico Iyer. When I was in College, I took 4 months to hitch-hike through Europe. It was one of the most formative times in my life. Same with being in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, hitch-hiking across the US, traveling with my wife for a month in Greece. But since COVID, I haven’t traveled very much.

 

And it’s not just that we learn from where we arrive. We can learn from the mere fact of moving from place to place with awareness.

 

We frequently get caught up in one place or way of doing things. We look out the window of our home, maybe into a garden, street, or city. Maybe we enjoy it, maybe not. But we create a momentary identity space. And then we might lose touch with how the yard or garden spreads to the hills beyond it, or to the street and the city, or neighboring nations.

 

I walk almost every day and pick a route, places to go and see, but really, I could go almost anywhere. I’m limited only by my concept of what the walk should be. Our ideas about what we’ll meet on the road can limit how and what we greet.

 

There’s space, miles, and there’s time. We might want to go someplace. Go to a doctor, visit a friend. And we want to be there now. We want to “cheat” space by speeding through time, by driving faster, or diverting ourselves with music and podcasts as we move, so we don’t feel “are we there yet?” Driving can be a good time for music and such. But time and space, as Einstein and others have shown, cannot be separated.

 

Buddhism and other spiritual and philosophical approaches share a similar perspective yet turn it in an engaging direction. They remind us change is constant and everything impermanent. Dogen Zenji, a Japanese Zen teacher, poet, and philosopher said we, all things, are time. “Time itself is being.” “The time we call spring blossoms directly as an existence called flowers.” In this moment, I am dependent upon and enmeshed with all beings in all time.

 

Driving, or that time in the airport or those minutes in a subway, can be a great opportunity to learn from others. By being mindful of our feelings, we learn an important lesson about ourselves and how we experience time. Of course, what we learn traveling we can learn anytime we pause to study ourselves. But traveling makes time and change so obvious.

 

Dogen said, “Do not think that time merely flies away…If time merely flies away, you would be separate from time.” Imagine driving a long distance. Just a few weeks ago, my wife and I drove 8 hours to visit my brother and sister-in-law. And I noticed the obvious⎼ when we’re driving, we’re always moving. Then we stop, get out to pump gas or go to the bathroom. And internally, we’re still on the road; or still focused on a destination other than where we are. So, when we stop, it takes effort to feel that moment in that space. We’re not fully alive to where we are.

 

We often mentally limit ourselves to what’s within our skin or conceptual border, so everything else is considered outside us. Our culture trains us in such limitation. It also trains us to think of time as moving in a linear fashion abstracted from us and the rest of existence. This exaggerates the borders or spaces between us, and between here and there. Yet the universe is open. We have to re-train ourselves, so even the limits are ways to touch the limitless….

 

*To read the whole piece, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

 

**The photo is from Delphi. Greece.

A New Kind of Dream: Maybe A New Form of Reality

Over the last two weeks, I’ve been having a new kind of dream, or one that’s new for me; one that clearly changes its plot over a night but not its trajectory or theme.

 

The first one I remember occurred last week. It involved being asked to come back to the alternative secondary school where I taught for 27 years and teach one of my old classes. Maybe there was a shortage of teachers, or one would be out sick for a while. In one version, it was a philosophy course called Questions. In another, it was a history course, The Historical Development of Human Ideas.

 

The first course, Questions, was just that. It was built around what the students and I chose as the deepest questions in our lives. It always started with different versions of the same question: How do we face death? It always ended with what is an ethical life. In between, it could be about love, meaning, reality and truth. Or do we have free will, and what is mind?

 

The history class began by asking who are we? What, if anything, can we say is characteristic of us humans? And what are the biggest problems you are concerned about in the world today? We spent the first and second day analyzing which of these problems are most basic and underlie the others. Then, the rest of the year, answering: from the ancient beginnings of humanity, what do you think are the roots of these problems? The final exam would be following a strand through pre-history and history of how that problem changed and developed.

 

But in the dream, I questioned whether I knew enough to teach the history, or either course. Not only because so much of what we know about human history and pre-history has changed over the years, or been clarified. But because we, human society, has changed so much since I retired in 2012. The students are now in a far different place and are suffering so much. We’ve been facing the threats of DJT and covid and more clearly recognize the threat posed by the climate emergency.

 

We’ve gone through so many assaults on public education since President Reagan; but lately even more so, on what books can be allowed in a school library, and what courses can be taught. Whether the most accurate information on who we are as a species and who we are as a nation could be shared with students.

 

One question that was often asked by students then was: what are the roots of racism, sexism, antisemitism, etc.? That question is now outlawed in some states. Maybe the asking of all real, sincere questions will be outlawed next.

 

There’s been so much trauma over the last 6 or 7 years. Could the philosophy course even ask about death when we’ve seen so much violence and death? Or would it be even more important? In history class, would the teaching of the roots of hate be allowed? And what new questions would students have? One of the most frequently asked questions back then was How has our relationship to the environment changed over the years? And would the question today be, can we survive?

 

The more recent dream was even more dramatic….

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to The Good Men Project.

Webs of Communities: Make Being With Others Our Practice

Last week, on NPR’s Science Friday, the host, Ira Flatow interviewed U. S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on the National Youth Mental Health Crisis and the Loneliness Crisis in our nation. These crises not only greatly affect our nation, but much of the world.

 

And they’re not due just to the pandemic. As much research has revealed, social media is also deeply responsible. Murthy describes how it often targets young people; over 1/3 of children say they feel addicted. Many are focused on their phones and computers over 3 hours a day. Social media can be great for several reasons, including helping underrepresented communities get and keep in touch with others. But it fosters unwelcome comparisons between people that leads to an increase in negative self-image, depression, anxiety, violence, and bullying, and a decrease in sleep and eye to eye, real time friendship.

 

One recommendation made by Murthy is to create safety standards regulating how companies target groups and requiring they disclose research data they’ve accumulated on the effects of the media. Another recommendation is fostering in-person communities.

 

Recently, I was lucky enough to be part of an unusual event. 50 years ago, 3 groups plus additional friends interested in different aspects of social change came together to buy a piece of property and establish a community. One was based around a free school, another around economic change, the third was about social-personal change, and creating a safe place for people who are LGBTQ+. For a few years, around 40-50 people lived on the land in separate but friendly groups.

 

Now, only about 6 of us from the groups remain here, in separate homes, living alone or as a couple.

 

So, we had a reunion. And besides being fun, it reminded me, us, of why we had originally come together and the values which, at that time, shaped our lives. And I realized that, since DJT and the pandemic, our need for such communities has only increased and become more apparent.

 

And we’ve joined a new group. Last spring, many neighbors on the road where we live or nearby formed a group to get to better know and help each other. We have potlucks every month and a newsletter. Last winter, the rented home of a neighbor burned down, and they didn’t have enough money to rebuild. Some gave financial donations. One gave them a small piece of land to build a new home. Another helped organize the building and provided a room to temporarily live in. Several people helped move the firewood from the old home site to the new one.

 

In addition to the neighborhood group, retired K-12 teachers, and administrators from the school district where I taught came together to lobby the school district to get a better health care policy and share information. We had realized the insurance we had from the school district was not doing what it promised to do.

 

We live in interlocking nets or webs of communities….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

Should the Name of the GOP Be Changed to the DTP, the Domestic Terrorism Party? Or is Creating the Sense of a Nation Divided in Two the Biggest Threat?

No political party in any democracy should make domestic terrorism or undermining democracy a large part of its governing method, but that just might be the best description of what we’re experiencing now. On the other hand, maybe the country is less polarized than we’ve been led to believe we are, by DJT, the GOP, etc. and the way different media have been covering violent events and politics?

 

According to Reuters, the level of political violence has been drastically on the rise since DJT’s run for President in 2016. Some of these threats were subtle and not recognized for what they were. Others were grossly obvious, like Jan 6, when DJT worked the crowd with statements like, “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Maybe the rhetoric of DJT, and several other members of the GOP, that has inspired violence should be considered a form of domestic terrorism?

 

The latest example are his threats against judges, probable witnesses, and possible jury members in the Jack Smith Jan 6 case, which have led to a request for a narrow gag order to stop “inflammatory” and “intimidating” comments. DJT also said, in another of the cases he now faces for alleged crimes against the nation, “If you go after me, I will go after you.” He has a history of threatening judges, threatening the rule of law, democracy itself, over and over again.

 

What fueled his power was pushing hate, fear, and grievance. Creating in our nation a sense that everything was about to tip over. Or that there were two sides, his and the sinners against him. And these “others,” mostly non-white, non-Christian people, or “left-wing extremists,” must be stopped at any cost.

 

He added to this by making extreme, shocking statements that were either untrue or exaggerated. Ones that fit his purposes and narrow perspective in that moment, to promote himself above all others. According to Slate, lying about the actual threat posed by COVID, not so much to protect us from panicking but more to avoid rattling the stock market. Suggesting injecting bleach might be a helpful treatment for COVID. Lying that “caravans of immigrants” of hardened criminals were invading our nation, when no such thing was happening. He continuously lied about and attacked President Obama.

 

This shock doctrine activity is a threat to all of us. On 9/11/2023 I was listening to MSNBC Deadline Whitehouse. This program was frightening in making this threat clear. The host, Nicole Wallace, posed the question, “If 9/11 happened today, would the nation come together as it did back in 2001? Are we capable of national unity today?”

 

The guests on MSNBC talked about the May DHS bulletin saying the US remains in a heightened threat environment, and that threat is not from foreign terrorists but domestic ones. News analyst Mary McCord discussed how 9/11 was an attack on national infrastructure to sow fear and discord. And the political violence happening today has this same goal. To increase the fear and division, to increase doubts about the government and ourselves, and democracy.

 

Politico reports 60 incidents of attacks on major grid infrastructure happened just this year. And these attacks are mostly inspired by hate and politics. For example, the recent attacks on the power grid in Baltimore, a majority black population, were carried out by people aiming their virulence at black people. How do we deal with this threat?…

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

**Photo from Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Reading, and Sensing an Immense World: It Takes a Universe

A wonderful friend and former colleague recommended a book to me that I found fascinating. It’s called An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, by Ed Yong. It speaks to so many issues and concerns of our world today.

 

We both live the truth, and an illusion. The world we perceive can be so clear, immediate, and vital to us. Yet it sits imbedded in innumerable other worlds, universes, though we don’t and can’t perceive almost any of them. We mistake what we see for all that is there. What we perceive is not the world but one our human brain and body have evolved to perceive.

 

For example, Yong points out that we humans “cannot sense the faint electric fields that sharks and platypuses can…[nor] the magnetic fields that robins and sea turtles detect.” Our ears can’t hear the ultrasonic calls of hummingbirds or the infrasonic speech of elephants and whales. We can’t perceive the infrared radiation that is the heart of what snakes detect or the ultraviolet light birds and bees sense every moment.

 

Each species has what Yong, borrowing from Baltic-German zoologist Jakob von Uexkull, called an umwelt or perceptual world. A tick does not perceive a tree, green leaves, blue skies. It doesn’t ignore them. It simply is incapable of sensing or knowing them; they are outside its umwelt. Likewise, we can’t sense the tick’s world.

 

Too often we ignore, or are ignorant of these co-existing realties, and we harm other species by imposing our perceptual system bias on them. For example, our submarines use underwater noises that confuse whales and drown out their calls. The glass panes in our homes appear as bodies of water to a bat’s sonar. We hurt our cats and dogs by interfering in their use of their primary sense activity, sniffing, and unknowingly impose our human visual bias on them.

 

If we can’t understand what the other worlds are like to live in, Yong points out maybe we can use our reason and imagination to honor and recognize them. For example, we can imaginatively enter the world of a dog, or even more so, an elephant. Scents, unlike light, do not move in straight lines. They go around corners, up and down, swirl, and twist in all directions. Humans have fine noses. But a dog not only has more sense receptors, a larger olfactory bulb and scent-brain than we do, but a more complicated nasal structure.

 

When we humans exhale, we purge odors from our nose. But each nostril of a dog is divided in two so it can exhale carbon dioxide while inhaling more aromas. This is one reason they can detect low blood sugar levels or tumors in humans or discern a single fingerprint on a microscopic slide even after it was outdoors for a week. They can smell in the air an oncoming storm.

 

For dogs, everything around them includes the scent not only of what’s here, now, but the past and future. And smell has the most direct link to the brain of any sense. And since that link goes right to the brain’s emotional center, I imagine their world is dominated by emotions. Some might doubt the rich emotional lives of many animals but this science argues otherwise….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

 

A New Way to See Ourselves and Our Culture: Fall, and A New School Year, A New Possibility

How do we meet a new season? How do we get our children or ourselves ready for a new school year, or for any moment? Especially this moment. Our world today faces so many threats. It’s changing at a rate none of us can keep pace with. So, besides keeping informed of news and the health of our planet and democracy, what more can we do?

 

It’s almost the end of August. When I was working, and the end of August was upon me, and night was settling around me⎼ I’d sit on my porch and just listen to crickets and other end of summer sounds. I’d often feel that somehow the summer had passed too quickly and wonder if I was ready for the new semester. And I promised myself I would not waste these last moments. I would make sure I missed none of it. By sitting there with the crickets, letting their song settle inside me, somehow, I felt more prepared for what lay ahead. If I could sit with this moment, I could sit or race with another.

 

And I’m doing just that even now. It’s 11 years since I retired from teaching secondary school, and I still feel this tension in my belly every year at this time, this dread mixed with excitement. There’s an extra chill in the air today, an extra gentle movement in the leaves, trees, and bushes. Even the sound of cars passing on the road has an unusual quality to it. The colors are sharp. My face, shoulders, and belly quivers. My jaw, the back of my mouth, is tense until I notice a cardinal calling very faintly in an apple tree. Then I relax. And I so love the soft touch of the wind and how it wakes trees and leaves into speech.

 

We can do all we can to keep informed about the news, but even more we have to stay in touch with our own changes, our inner state, and to those closest to us. And with this powerful strength, we can do so much good.

 

A Basic Practice:

This is one thing we can do. We can stand or sit still, in a safe place; a place we can remain calm and attentive for a few minutes. And take a breath. We might notice if we will: Are we comfortable where we are, with the weight of our body evenly distributed? How does it feel to simply be right here? Do we want to let our eyes rest and take in what’s around us? Or close them partly or fully?

 

If we open our mouth or take a breath through our nose, we might notice the taste of the air, how it feels on our tongue? Maybe notice what it is we hear right now? What sounds? What stands out or calls to us? Or what is it we see? What colors? And maybe, where on our body do we respond to these sounds or sights or tastes? In our shoulders, belly, back, legs? How deep is the response? Or maybe, what is the quality of feeling, sharp, heavy, light, like a cloud or a wind? Strong or mild?

 

If there’s a wind, do we feel the pressure of it on our skin? On our hands? On our belly? Do we hear any bird calls or car sounds only with our ears, or also our face, our toes?

 

And maybe, if we want, we can notice any thoughts that arise in this moment? How do we feel right now, about a new day, or a new school year? And then we can let the thought go and return to the sound or feel of the wind. The sense of being right here, now, present. The sense that this, this moment⎼ this, I can do.

 

I was reading a short article in the Fall, 2023 Tricycle by Venerable Jissai Prince-Cherry, about a classic on meditation practice, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice, by the Japanese Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki. I first read it probably 50 years ago. It is a beloved book of several friends and two of my most respected teachers. Suzuki speaks to us in a manner that makes ignored aspects and possibilities in our lives and values obvious to us. It reveals the intimate reality of our experience. And it gifts us, and our culture, with a new way to see ourselves….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.