Life is a practice in being.
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Life is a practice in being.
Our daily practice in being is our life.
This introduction was difficult for me to find. How do I introduce myself and my intentions here, while keeping my detachment from my past. The identities that shaped me, who I have been, the versions of me, that are a part of me, but not me. I am me now. now, now.
This has been difficult to write, My neuro divergent brain would like to info-dump. I keep my spirituality to myself. It leaks out into other things, like my flutes, tango, and my silence, but it is not the sort of conversation I have had with many people in my life. Often it seems we just know each other, and nothing needs to be said.
Here in this place, I’d like to share the things I do, my practices, my thoughts, ways of seeing, of being, even of cooking. We will see.
Zenie, a recommencement.
This site has my nickname. Zenie.
I was given, and took that name during Covid. You might find me online with that name.
It was a time when I was meditating an hour or more every morning and playing shakuhachi and harmonic shakuhachi all day long as I steadily went blind from cataracts. It lasted far longer than normal à grace de Covid. The blindness created an opportunity to find patience, intention and beauty in everything. It was one of the most poignant and beautiful experiences in my life, to watch the world slipping away.
Life was simple, I had plenty of time to do everything very intentionally. It was during this time that I also decided, I had no real choice, to live as best I could, on my own path keeping my values without compromise. It is not always easy in this world, but I’m doing it anyway.
Food and Diet.
I’m sure that I will write about cooking and food here. I mainly follow a low or no carbohydrate diet. I cycle in and out of Keto and I adapt to where I am. I make a good pasta carbonara, so I’m going to eat that now and then.
I have no food limitations, other than that I have had gout for a very long time and I do need to mind some things. I do eat simply for the most part. I avoid sugar and processed foods. I like good tea more than coffee and I apreciate a good wine.
I like to cook, I find a lot of creativity there. I like to fuse various cuisines, but I also very much like classic dishes. I cook in a tiny kitchen, 4m carré. I cook mostly with my wok, but I also have a sous vide, and a toaster oven.
Even though I am frequently in Keto, or vegetarian, I’m not the sort of cook that feels the need to emulate the foods that I cannot or will not eat.
I would rather imagine what I could make with what I have, naturally in the flow of things.
Meditation
Although zazen is more buddhist than Tao, I find it very complementary. I have always meditated, I was a very quiet child, meditation and awareness was natural. I didn’t know it at the time. My experience has illuminated who I was then. Perhaps it was my neuro-divergence at work.
My meditation practice, has, of course, varied over my life. It has been a strong daily practice for more than two decades now. Even moreso since Covid. I love playing my shakuhachi and that has kept my practice steady when everything else was against it.
Triggering Awareness
Setting triggers is a practice I have done for myself since many decades. I still have my daily morning meditation practice, and my shakuhachi honkyoku practice that seems less like a practice than a doing, a way of being. It is to be in the flow.
My meditation practice is my daily reminder of how and where to be in my mind. More importantly, I have meditations that invade my daily life after many years, when I stand, when I sit, when I walk, when I stand in line, these little reminders help me remain where I like to be, in calm, open awareness.
I love walking meditations and I have plenty of opportunity, I walk everywhere. It brings a focus and awareness to the world around me that so many people miss as they go aimlessly with their phones.
Shakuhachi
Playing Shakuhachi Honkyoku, comes from the Zen Fuke sect in Japan. I do not subscribe to the Honkyoku traditions, I have no school, no master. I am ‘Gaijen’.
I have used the shakuhachi as a path to meditation for decades now. At it’s most basic, to play honkyoku is to play an entire breath at a time. Often only the lowest note. Soon I fall into the flow, and what happens is what happens.
The depth of my honkyoku has grown even further with the commencement of making my harmonic flutes during COVID. They are so simple and immersive, that meditating with them in the moment is almost necessary.
Stoicism
I also use stoic practices in my daily life, they are simple and precise reminders of how to be. I am especially fond of the practices of Seneca who like Marcus Aurelius had his daily practices and self reviews. I seem to have taken his periodic practice of living in poverty to heart.
The stoic practices are very simple to remember and apply. Stoicism is the foundation of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), for good reasons.
Taoism
I’m quite fond of daoist teachings, It is very congruent with how I have always seen the world, this existance, that we find ourselves in. The balance of things is something to hold. The flow is a place to be, where everything can be seen if you know how to look. The tao is before you.
The Unknown
I believe we cannot know what we cannot know. Perhaps we have an idea in our head, or a desire to believe something in order to be at ease in this existance. But we cannot know it. Like the Hermit with the candle, we cannot but take one step at a time into the darkness.
Mindful practices, meditations, and lucid dreaming are natural to me, and perhaps they will serve a further purpose as this body of mine returns to its origins.
