Meditation Minder
Being asleep is a part of life. What we call meditation could be described as the process of being awake, or at least being aware of being either awake or asleep. For those of us who have practiced meditation one way or another, we all know that we drift away sometimes from our practice. Life happens and the things that happen often have a way of gravitating us away from our discipline. That’s ok. But a life unobserved, at least from time to time, is a life not fully awoken to. We need sleep and wakefulness.
So how can we enliven our discipline when faced with time-draining modernity? One simple solution I’ve come up with follows. When you happen to catch yourself not making time to open up your awareness of the things you do, order yourself a prescription, a doctor’s order as it were. Sometimes when we have an externally imposed ritual like “Take 2 pills 3 times a day with water” we tend to be more faithful about what we need to do. So order yourself a Z-pack (Zen Pack) from time to time.
When we’re finding it hard to bring forth awareness of the life around us, a little prescription can become a big deal. Sometimes we only need 5 minutes of sitting, worked in 2 or 3 times a day. Saying to yourself “I’ll enjoy a sitting meditation for 5 or 10 minutes before breakfast, lunch, and bedtime for the next 5 days” can be enough to get you back on track. You may find on day 6 that your sessions are more mindfully routine, a bit longer, a bit more focused, and you don’t feel as stressed about all the craziness in you life.
It can also be useful to mark your calendar with mindfulness reminders. Daily minders can be useful–a pop-up or email alert that interrupts you from your web surfing or work can give you the break your mind needs. Also, to break things up and keep your long-term discipline healthy, adding meditation holidays to your schedule can bring about some needed release from your slumber. Quarterly dates can be very effective. A day to more deeply reflect on things: ask yourself how’s your business going or how your perception of others could be more creative and compassionate. A day, or half of one, to re-read an old favorite or attend a community meeting on something you enjoy.
Remember: the best time to meditate is when you don’t have the time. Namaste!
Everything Is Marketing
Talk of marketing may not sound at all Zen; in fact it sounds like the definition of Anti-Zen, Eastern counterpart to the Anti-Christ. But everything is Zen and marketing is Zen. No matter how great an idea, it won’t help anybody if it isn’t marketed successfully. Marketing isn’t about deceptive sales practices to profit from the transfer of goods and services. It can be, but that’s just bad marketing. A market is where people meet, it’s a connection. And the connection is the fundamental unit of the universe, of life.
We are moving, every year, every month, every day, every moment, toward an increasingly business-run world. This process is creating increasing pressures on people’s lives and so there’s a feeling of needing something more than just survival. The idea is that we’re entering a sort of event-horizon which will pull us into strings of linguine, into a vacuum of ever-accelerating gravity, and in order to thrive one has to already be ahead of the curve. It’s easy, then, to conclude that business, and the marketing that’s involved with every step, is an evil, a wrong way.
But Zen is all about business. Specifically, it’s about the business of mindfulness. Mindful sitting. Mindful eating. Mindful breathing. Mindful stepping. Every step is a connection. What we call mindfulness is really a connection with another stream of interconnections. The mind is a market and anytime it does what it does best it’s marketing. It’s a natural-born marketer. Not to market is not to live.
So as we ramp up the curve in the early part of the twenty-first century, we have an incredible opportunity to sync what our minds do effortlessly (market) with the direction that the world seems to be taking (marketing). The changes will be painful, will be demanding, will be challenging, will be dangerous. In other words they will be life. It’s the best opportunity for the practice of Zen in a long time.
If you want to ride a dragon, you’ll just have to climb up its long tail. And it’s a long tail we are facing. Climbing up will take discipline, collaboration, competition, mindfulness, inter-connection, networking. All the things available in our increasingly technology-prone life. The best tool we have is the same tool that is behind all of natural selection: marketing.
Without marketing there would be no me, no you, no us, no they. The peacock feather is brilliant copy for the species, and the species is the vital market for the next generation. Without that market, life has nowhere to flow. Everything is marketing. Practice Zen the natural way. Practice marketing. You’ll wake up to a better world.
