Well i am back, my laptop is back in from its third send off in two years meaning the next thing to go wrong equals a brand new one! Wootles! Anywho, off of my tech semi detox i gotta say this one was way easier than the other times i have been without my computer, and i want to give props to the reasons why.
First and foremost would be the people who kept me busy, so thanks to my friends, family, girlfriend, and my boss who kept scheduling me for 40 hours a week despite my part time status. Next props goes out to my cell phone which has become my top way to keep in touch with people, through both texts and tweets. Final props has to go again to my girlfriend and the public library both of which provided me with internet access when i really strongly needed it.
So now i am back to my online life with what i hope is a new and lasting perspective. And so i have many things to write about (but as if i could come up with something planned in advance...).
So I'll go with something i saw today which happened to pop some new ideas into my head after meditating. I was walking down the street in Bowmanville and i saw a person get in their car, drive off, and head towards a subdivision that was within reasonable walking distance.
That made me think about what is going on with people driving places all the time and always being in a rush to get from place to place. This brings me to talking about my job.
Yesterday was my last day before my student leave began, yet rather than being filled with happiness that i was leaving i felt a melancholy fill me. I had been working their for almost three years, 40 hours a week for most of the summer. And now it was all over.
I had grown attached to the suffering that was so associated with working so much. With this sudden lift of it i had no clue what to feel. Which brings me to a book on power written by a Buddhist teacher, it is called The Art of Power. The teacher is Thich Nhat Hanh. In the book he talks about how people "never really walk on the ground" but rather as we walk we think about all the things going on in the past or that might happen in the future.
The point is that the woman who was driving home so fast, not wasting a single second, was doing just that, driving on all her worries as fast as possible, back to her stronghold. When an animal is scared it will go to somewhere it feels safe, a den or barn. I think that with all of our lack of interaction prompted by computers and texting and email we have retreated from really knowing what to do in the real world.
Because of this we don't really take the time to step outside our patterns and experience new things. We don't look for new places and people because we have too many things to think about, too many experiences to worry over. So we need to retreat to our strongholds, our dens, as fast as possible.
Anywho i hope meditation will help me to wake up from this a bit. I hope it will help me to let go of my suffering faster, and not miss the pain when it is gone.
Challenge to people who read this for the next month: take one walk a week and go to a totally new area. Totally experience it when you are there, don't think about the past or the future or what else could be happening anywhere else. Be present.
31.8.09
18.8.09
My Role Model
Alright so i am blogging from the public library today because of the fact that my computer is still being fixed and i refuse to use my sister's incredably old one at home. The thing is so slow that i am almost certain that it would freeze when i started typing on blogger. Not that the library is much better... oh how i miss my computer, this is deffinatly a wake up call to how lucky i am to have it. Anywho this is my first chance to blog about something that i have wanted to talk about for a while now.
Jason Mraz. I lucked out along with a bunch of other people who entered the Scene Contest for tickets to his recent show at the Molson Ampitheatre where he rocked out in an awesome show. The guy was... well he was the best preformer i have ever seen in concert.
To give you an idea of who i am comparing him to i have seen the following live, Seether, Three Days Grace, Avril Lavigne, Faber Drive, State of Shock, David Usher, and ill Scarlett. It may not be a very long list but there are some impressive people on it. And to me at least Jason Mraz blew them all away(as i sit in a public library in the t-shirt i bought there).
It was an impressive concert with a great venue and the opening act's lined up (at least in my mind) with the type of music that the headliner plays better than several others. Of course there was the concert enviorment from the very beginning, people all ready and waiting, the pressure building, anticipation wasn't the pleasue for people there but it was about as thick as the tension in a steriotypical murder mystery.
Then when he finally came on stage it went wild. The other acts had done great music and had nice lights but the set up had barely been used and it made it all the more impressive when Jason opened up and began to play.
So the enviorment was as ripe for a great experiance, people seemed to expect greatness from him and he did not disappoint. But there was more to it than that, for me at least... Do you remember the music magazine blender?
Well in their final print issue they featured Jason Mraz... That was the first time i found out that Mr. Mraz was and is someone who practices Zen, is a vegitarian surfer and scrabble junkie who grows his own organic food. Like dude, loved this guys music since i first heard it the summer between grade 10 and 11, i remember telling people on msn to download him dispite not having a clue at the time how to spell his name.
And now, after i have finished most of my spiritual search, and i have finished it when it comes to considering things outside of Buddhism, is it any wonder that my favorite male singer for several years now follows that very same belief?
Back to the concert, i guess what made him so amazing was... Well at Avril's concert she played the crowd, just like a good preformer should. But Jason seemed more genuine and he worked to spread a very hippie-ish message where he was trying to spread the vibe of The Gratitude Cafe through the world. Like the guy is actively working on spreading goodness and happiness through the world with one of his messages being live your life to leave things better than you found them, people and places.
The t-shirt i bought has a hidden message in it which i think is the Om symbol but i am not sure, and it is orgnaically made. His other message was don't let your mind stop you from having fun. I mean come on, that is a perfect message for people to hear, it resonated with me so well that i have had to spread it and rant about it to those people who i hoped would listen.
Because that is what worries me, his message was great, and he said it to a massive crowd of people. People of different ages and different orgins and behaviours all coming together to hear him sing. But i wonder how many people listen to the words in-between the music? How many people noted what the actual meaning was? And how many will carry it forward?
(P.S. If you haven't heard his music listen to the song The Dynamo of Volition for the music and Life is Wonderful or Song for a Friend for the words)
Jason Mraz. I lucked out along with a bunch of other people who entered the Scene Contest for tickets to his recent show at the Molson Ampitheatre where he rocked out in an awesome show. The guy was... well he was the best preformer i have ever seen in concert.
To give you an idea of who i am comparing him to i have seen the following live, Seether, Three Days Grace, Avril Lavigne, Faber Drive, State of Shock, David Usher, and ill Scarlett. It may not be a very long list but there are some impressive people on it. And to me at least Jason Mraz blew them all away(as i sit in a public library in the t-shirt i bought there).
It was an impressive concert with a great venue and the opening act's lined up (at least in my mind) with the type of music that the headliner plays better than several others. Of course there was the concert enviorment from the very beginning, people all ready and waiting, the pressure building, anticipation wasn't the pleasue for people there but it was about as thick as the tension in a steriotypical murder mystery.
Then when he finally came on stage it went wild. The other acts had done great music and had nice lights but the set up had barely been used and it made it all the more impressive when Jason opened up and began to play.
So the enviorment was as ripe for a great experiance, people seemed to expect greatness from him and he did not disappoint. But there was more to it than that, for me at least... Do you remember the music magazine blender?
Well in their final print issue they featured Jason Mraz... That was the first time i found out that Mr. Mraz was and is someone who practices Zen, is a vegitarian surfer and scrabble junkie who grows his own organic food. Like dude, loved this guys music since i first heard it the summer between grade 10 and 11, i remember telling people on msn to download him dispite not having a clue at the time how to spell his name.
And now, after i have finished most of my spiritual search, and i have finished it when it comes to considering things outside of Buddhism, is it any wonder that my favorite male singer for several years now follows that very same belief?
Back to the concert, i guess what made him so amazing was... Well at Avril's concert she played the crowd, just like a good preformer should. But Jason seemed more genuine and he worked to spread a very hippie-ish message where he was trying to spread the vibe of The Gratitude Cafe through the world. Like the guy is actively working on spreading goodness and happiness through the world with one of his messages being live your life to leave things better than you found them, people and places.
The t-shirt i bought has a hidden message in it which i think is the Om symbol but i am not sure, and it is orgnaically made. His other message was don't let your mind stop you from having fun. I mean come on, that is a perfect message for people to hear, it resonated with me so well that i have had to spread it and rant about it to those people who i hoped would listen.
Because that is what worries me, his message was great, and he said it to a massive crowd of people. People of different ages and different orgins and behaviours all coming together to hear him sing. But i wonder how many people listen to the words in-between the music? How many people noted what the actual meaning was? And how many will carry it forward?
(P.S. If you haven't heard his music listen to the song The Dynamo of Volition for the music and Life is Wonderful or Song for a Friend for the words)
6.8.09
So this will be my second post tonight, for the reason because i have had a lot of things spinning around my head. The one i want to talk about now is the stupid thing my sister's friend was saying the other day. I had picked them up from training their cows (questions for another day).
Anywho my sister was asking for book recommendations from her friend, as well as me. She tends to read like a fiend during the summer because there is little left to do here during the summer. I want her to check out the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind but she doesn't want to start something that is 13 books long, around 700 pages each. As such she wanted other recommendations. My next choice was Bloodletting, to which my sister said it would be sad, and then my sister's friend said that she never reads anything that is real or watches movies which are based on true stories because she doesn't want to be depressed by them.
That strikes me as ridiculous. To willingly blind yourself to the things that happen out in the real world because they are depressing. To refuse to see things as they are means that all kinds of things escape you. Change ceases to happen. Issues over the globe are ignored. People already don't watch the news, don't protest, lose their passion over issues (i do this too), and tend to look the other way when it comes to problems larger than themselves.
As humans we are all tiny and individual, to quote a line from a book by Brian Jacques called Martin the Warrior "We all are like tiny droplets of water, scattered easily by a single hand, but if we are united together we can become a powerful stream with the strength to even erode boulders." People are truly like this yet now we are more separate than ever before.
To blind yourself to what is out there is what could allow someone to rise to power like Hitler again, to allow rights and freedoms to be taken away. You need to read and watch things that are real, it lets you see what is real. Imagination and fantasy are important but the real world is where we all are, and we need to see it or we wont survive in it for long.
Anywho my sister was asking for book recommendations from her friend, as well as me. She tends to read like a fiend during the summer because there is little left to do here during the summer. I want her to check out the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind but she doesn't want to start something that is 13 books long, around 700 pages each. As such she wanted other recommendations. My next choice was Bloodletting, to which my sister said it would be sad, and then my sister's friend said that she never reads anything that is real or watches movies which are based on true stories because she doesn't want to be depressed by them.
That strikes me as ridiculous. To willingly blind yourself to the things that happen out in the real world because they are depressing. To refuse to see things as they are means that all kinds of things escape you. Change ceases to happen. Issues over the globe are ignored. People already don't watch the news, don't protest, lose their passion over issues (i do this too), and tend to look the other way when it comes to problems larger than themselves.
As humans we are all tiny and individual, to quote a line from a book by Brian Jacques called Martin the Warrior "We all are like tiny droplets of water, scattered easily by a single hand, but if we are united together we can become a powerful stream with the strength to even erode boulders." People are truly like this yet now we are more separate than ever before.
To blind yourself to what is out there is what could allow someone to rise to power like Hitler again, to allow rights and freedoms to be taken away. You need to read and watch things that are real, it lets you see what is real. Imagination and fantasy are important but the real world is where we all are, and we need to see it or we wont survive in it for long.
5.8.09
Tech Detox
Hmm, what to blog? What to blog?... Well there are a lot of things that are possible but what do i feel like? I don't really feel like writing about anything in particular... But i want to write about something, see i plan to send my computer in to be worked on soon, meaning that the only time i will have access to the internet will be at my girlfriend's house.
Its going to be a total shift from what i tend to spend my time doing now. I use my laptop for almost everything, i blog on it, peruse blogs, research things. I write on it, i use it to watch videos, to watch DVDs, to listen to music, charge my ipod, and plan things out. It is kinda dissapointing relying on this peice of machinery so much, it has become a center point in my life. It and my cell phone are my life lines out of my house because i live so far away from anywhere else.
Anywho the next little while without my laptop will be interesting. So that will probably be my first post when i get back. Detoxing from the online world. I will still be plugged in though, so the question is how bad will it be? Last time it happened i was angryer than normal and had a shorter fuse.
Its going to be a total shift from what i tend to spend my time doing now. I use my laptop for almost everything, i blog on it, peruse blogs, research things. I write on it, i use it to watch videos, to watch DVDs, to listen to music, charge my ipod, and plan things out. It is kinda dissapointing relying on this peice of machinery so much, it has become a center point in my life. It and my cell phone are my life lines out of my house because i live so far away from anywhere else.
Anywho the next little while without my laptop will be interesting. So that will probably be my first post when i get back. Detoxing from the online world. I will still be plugged in though, so the question is how bad will it be? Last time it happened i was angryer than normal and had a shorter fuse.
2.8.09
The Righteous Rage Becomes my Cage
So i don't know exactly why i am blogging this... I guess its because i need to take an action right now to get some of the stuff bouncing around the inside of my skull out and this is the least self destructive way to do so.
So i've got family from New Brunswick in the area for this weekend, and they would fit in really well with George Bush and his cronies or so i think. Ya, that is right, i am related to bible thumpers. Somebody who thinks that Zen is the way to go, and a big part of my genetics is linked to people who dislike gays cause it says so in the old testament and yet love Jesus in the new one, even though he says "love thy neighbor" and "judge not lest yea be judged". My two favorite quotes from him.
And tonight after working for 8 and a half hours, starting this morning at 7 am (thats the time i had to be there, not when i woke up...) i was expected by my mom to go and make polite conversation with them about life and ignore any and all comments about gays, sex, life in general.
And i said no, flat out no, i will not do it. I wont go and suffer through it and have to associate with people whom i so strongly disagree with who will proceed to gossip about me behind my back (despite the fact that thats a no no in the bible too, check the old testament this time). And this is a major problem to my mom. She falls into the category of believing that family means come and smile and be pretty whenever they are in town then go back to insulting them once the plane takes off.
And i said no because, well, hypocrisy has always been waaaaaaaaaaay up there in my pet peeves, and i just can't stand to do it when i am falling asleep during my shift at work. If i had some more sleep sure, if i was in a job i hated less sure, if i was given a little more advance warning then defiantly a plus.
But i got none of this, and so i said no, i refused and my mom left basically crying after a near record holding shouting match between us. It was the first time i had managed to not shout for nearly the entire time too. But i did crack, and i yelled, and now i see the results of rage.
Because i love my mom, yes i love my mommy. And I'm seeing right now that maybe this once i should have given in to what she wanted instead of insisting for my own independence right now like i have been for months. Because that is why i fight her on things so often, i need my space to grow and start making my own mistakes (not that i don't make them now, but i need some freedom, why else would i be so desperate for residence?).
So i guess my point deep within all this rambling is consider your own motives, and when you have done that, consider them again. Then consider the other person's reasons for what they want. Then you can make up your mind.
1.8.09
Chips and Dip
So this is a post that actually hasn't been a long time coming. Rather it is something that i want to write about now because it came up the other night when i was talking to a friend of mine and well... It seems like a good blog post to offer up to the world.
As i have and will continue to state over and over i practice some Zen Buddhist practices, and generally believe the same things as Buddhists do. Now me, i am a passionate person, i tend to get really involved with things that i think about, like say politics (DOWN WITH THE CONSERVATIVES!!!) or women's rights, or music (ROCK ON BNL).
So i tend to also get angry often and fast, but most of the time i am very good at letting go of my emotions before they do something negative. Namely, i am a master of chillaxin and takin a break. As such, even though i get angry about things people think of me as a happy person because i usually have a big goofy grin on my face (unless i am getting\taking a picture).
Meanwhile when i was talking to a friend of mine the other night at work about how stressed out she was getting and how it was effecting her life. She has been having trouble sleeping and getting close to a breakdown (interesting isn't it how that place seems to eat people's souls for snacks?).
I took a few moments before ranting at her to consider why she is stressing herself out so much that she is suffering from insomnia. And this is what i came up with, the society that we live in is one which promotes flaunting your suffering. It isn't enough to have a job, it has to be a job that you complain about. Your best friend isn't just the person who you have known the longest, they are also the person you talk to about your significant other (aka complain to).
What is with the obsession with the negative we all seem to have? Why does everybody have to have some kind of problem in their life? And yes i know i spend most of my blog posts ranting about things that i want improved in my life and that this one will probably come off as me being all pissy that people can't handle their problems all 1950's style.
The issue here is that our lives aren't really that hard, i have known people who have rights for their angst and people who are making their problems worse than they actually are. Most of us fall into the second category. I can admit i do, my only real issue with life is that i am bound to a job that i don't like in any way shape or form. And even that i don't really mind most days, just when i have dodged meditation for a long time it starts to pile up.
So why do we flaunt suffering and carry it around with us wherever we go? Why is it that we want to suffer more than we want to be happy? The answer i come up with is simply that whoever has the most angst wins.
I'm gonna explain this with a story, back when i was a little kid i was in boy scouts and my mom was one of the leaders. (my mom is awesome by the way, and i know it despite how often we fight or argue, i know i could have it a lot worse)
Anywho there was this kid in the group who wasn't exactly liked by most people there, he was basically the negative opinion of most society when they think about those "damn kids". So most of us disliked him in the group as well yet for some reason my mom took time with him basically making him her favorite of us all. This bugged me at the time because i wanted to be my mom's favorite, but he was.
The way my mom explained it to me was that if i knew what he had been through i would understand but that she couldn't tell me. I think we have grown up on that idea, that the kids who had bad stuff happen to them deserve and often get special treatment. It is prevalent throughout the rest of society as well with the treatment of minorities as well (and i know i shouldn't really be saying this what with me being a white male in Canada).
But the problem with this is that as kids we don't really see it that way (or at least i didn't, maybe i am that different). Instead we see it as whoever complains the most gets treated special, and we start to carry our angst around with us. The problem is that because this behavior is learned so young people keep doing it throughout their teens, stressing themselves out to get special treatment.
There is a great episode of Scrubs covering this in season 6 where one of the characters is cruel to people all the time, yet whenever she goes to far simply says "my parents were mean to me" and people forgive and forget. Chips on the shoulder have begun to excuse any kind of behavior, even if they are of the person's own making.
If you check out the book Tuesdays With Morrie you will eventually get to the line that says basically (because i cannot remember it word for word) we live in a society where people get hurt all the time but it is acceptable to us because it is much harder for us to start our own society.
Well that's what i am trying to do, let go of my past pains and angst and move on. Come on people, come with me, put that chip down, and grab a plate of nachos instead.
As i have and will continue to state over and over i practice some Zen Buddhist practices, and generally believe the same things as Buddhists do. Now me, i am a passionate person, i tend to get really involved with things that i think about, like say politics (DOWN WITH THE CONSERVATIVES!!!) or women's rights, or music (ROCK ON BNL).
So i tend to also get angry often and fast, but most of the time i am very good at letting go of my emotions before they do something negative. Namely, i am a master of chillaxin and takin a break. As such, even though i get angry about things people think of me as a happy person because i usually have a big goofy grin on my face (unless i am getting\taking a picture).
Meanwhile when i was talking to a friend of mine the other night at work about how stressed out she was getting and how it was effecting her life. She has been having trouble sleeping and getting close to a breakdown (interesting isn't it how that place seems to eat people's souls for snacks?).
I took a few moments before ranting at her to consider why she is stressing herself out so much that she is suffering from insomnia. And this is what i came up with, the society that we live in is one which promotes flaunting your suffering. It isn't enough to have a job, it has to be a job that you complain about. Your best friend isn't just the person who you have known the longest, they are also the person you talk to about your significant other (aka complain to).
What is with the obsession with the negative we all seem to have? Why does everybody have to have some kind of problem in their life? And yes i know i spend most of my blog posts ranting about things that i want improved in my life and that this one will probably come off as me being all pissy that people can't handle their problems all 1950's style.
The issue here is that our lives aren't really that hard, i have known people who have rights for their angst and people who are making their problems worse than they actually are. Most of us fall into the second category. I can admit i do, my only real issue with life is that i am bound to a job that i don't like in any way shape or form. And even that i don't really mind most days, just when i have dodged meditation for a long time it starts to pile up.
So why do we flaunt suffering and carry it around with us wherever we go? Why is it that we want to suffer more than we want to be happy? The answer i come up with is simply that whoever has the most angst wins.
I'm gonna explain this with a story, back when i was a little kid i was in boy scouts and my mom was one of the leaders. (my mom is awesome by the way, and i know it despite how often we fight or argue, i know i could have it a lot worse)
Anywho there was this kid in the group who wasn't exactly liked by most people there, he was basically the negative opinion of most society when they think about those "damn kids". So most of us disliked him in the group as well yet for some reason my mom took time with him basically making him her favorite of us all. This bugged me at the time because i wanted to be my mom's favorite, but he was.
The way my mom explained it to me was that if i knew what he had been through i would understand but that she couldn't tell me. I think we have grown up on that idea, that the kids who had bad stuff happen to them deserve and often get special treatment. It is prevalent throughout the rest of society as well with the treatment of minorities as well (and i know i shouldn't really be saying this what with me being a white male in Canada).
But the problem with this is that as kids we don't really see it that way (or at least i didn't, maybe i am that different). Instead we see it as whoever complains the most gets treated special, and we start to carry our angst around with us. The problem is that because this behavior is learned so young people keep doing it throughout their teens, stressing themselves out to get special treatment.
There is a great episode of Scrubs covering this in season 6 where one of the characters is cruel to people all the time, yet whenever she goes to far simply says "my parents were mean to me" and people forgive and forget. Chips on the shoulder have begun to excuse any kind of behavior, even if they are of the person's own making.
If you check out the book Tuesdays With Morrie you will eventually get to the line that says basically (because i cannot remember it word for word) we live in a society where people get hurt all the time but it is acceptable to us because it is much harder for us to start our own society.
Well that's what i am trying to do, let go of my past pains and angst and move on. Come on people, come with me, put that chip down, and grab a plate of nachos instead.
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