Life is one plan after another, one decision after another, one step after another. How we approach these plans, decisions, and steps is up to us. If we want the best for ourselves, if we want a life of emotional, mental, social, physical, financial, and spiritual well-being, we keep this well-being at the forefront of our planning, decision making, and stepping.
When things go awry as they are apt to do, we can think clearly and calmly and move forward with composure and confidence. We do this by looking within and recognizing our thoughts for what they are: most often ungrounded in reality and what never actually happens. We might have doubts and fears, but we keep planning, deciding, and stepping forward. We feel the fear and do it anyway, as Susan Jeffers advises in her invaluable book of the same title, because otherwise, we never do the things we want to do. Fear will slow down or stop our lives.
This may not sound like Zen but it is. Zen is not passive acceptance or inertia. Zen is not detachment or non-attachment in the sense of not caring or giving up. Zen is not just sitting on a cushion and meditating. Zen is about waking up to our lives. Zen is about positive action for a meaningful, contented life. Zen is about being in the moment as you are doing the moment.
That moment constantly changes, sometimes to our liking and sometimes not to our liking. Nonetheless, we must step forward wholeheartedly and appreciatively.
Walking meditation, or kinhin in Japanese, reminds of this. We just take the next step forward over and over again into the present moment.
Robert Maurer explains in his book, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, that we can do anything we put our minds to if we just do the next small thing we need to do and take the next small step we need to take. We can go forward in life with serenity instead of anxiety and confidence rather than uncertainty. This is kaizen. When we practice kaizen we take the next step necessary to continue on our spiritual path in a way that is meaningful and mindful to us. Kaizen is kinhin (walking meditation) in our every day daily lives.
The ability to adapt to the ever-changing future and to know that we can handle whatever comes our day is a crucial skill to have. Adapting often means changing our minds about a situation and making a decision that creates a new and better reality. When we do this we create well-being in our lives. Well-being is the ultimate goal of Zen and of all spirituality and religion.
The Wisdom of Zen
Living a Mindful, Meditative, and Meaningful Life
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Friday, May 30, 2014
When We Practice Mindfulness
When we
practice mindfulness we develop well being in all aspects of our lives, relieve
stress because we realize that we create it, increase emotional health, and
discover and express our true nature.
When we
practice mindfulness we focus on our breath and body, view our thoughts and
feeling as friends temporarily visiting us, acknowledge our senses, and let go
of our thoughts, feelings, and senses over and over again as we return to our
breath.
When we
practice mindfulness we remind ourselves that we don't stop our thinking but
rather we compassionately and patiently train our minds to think without
attachment and judgment, always remaining in the present moment.
When we
practice mindfulness we gain insight because we see the impermanence of our
thoughts, often illusory in their discontent, dissatisfaction, and desire, and
we see the interconnection and impermanence of our lives and all of life.
Monday, March 17, 2014
My Teaching Vision Statement
Recently
at a staff meeting, our middle school's principal shared with us her vision
statement about education. I liked
that she did this. Her statement
revealed her passion. Since then,
I've thought a lot about my own vision statement for my teaching with more a
mindfulness and kindness based philosophy. Right now it is this:
I teach students to think, read, and write
critically, creatively, and contemplatively.
I teach students to think, speak, and act
with kindness toward themselves and others.
I teach students that learning is life long.
I teach students that life is about
becoming the best person they can become.
I teach students that there are wise people and wisdom
to teach them throughout life if they are willing to learn.
I teach students that life is amazing.
I teach student to appreciate each and every moment in their lives,
including now.
I teach students to think, read, and write
critically, creatively, and contemplatively.
I teach students to think, speak, and act
with kindness toward themselves and others.
I teach students that learning is life long.
I teach students that life is about
becoming the best person they can become.
I teach students that there are wise people and wisdom
to teach them throughout life if they are willing to learn.
I teach students that life is amazing.
I teach student to appreciate each and every moment in their lives,
including now.
The Door into My Classroom This Winter
I thought of the idea. My sixth grade advisory students created the image. All of them had to do at least one part. It was fun to see creativity and cooperation from twenty three students.
The Smallest Connections
This past
Friday afternoon during my prep period I walked from the middle school where I
teach to the copying center at the high school. A long hallway connects the two schools. After I dropped off my copying
requests, and I was walking through the high school atrium, a high school
student said, “Hi Mr. Eich. Do you
remember me?”
It's a
question I often get from high school students. I taught them as seventh or sixth graders, and so often I
don't remember them. It's been
sometimes five years since I've seen them and they've changed, grown from a
middle school student into a high school student, a child into a teen. Depending upon which year I taught
them, I taught either 300 or 150
students each year, so it's easy
to forget names and often I do.
“I'm
sorry, I don't,” I said to the boy.
He told
me his name and then said, “Do you still like Steely Dan?”
“I do,” I
said.
Then it
clicked. I remembered him. I
taught him in the seventh grade. I
have my students write down personal information at the beginning of each year
to get to know them better, and he had written that his favorite band was
Steely Dan. It was such an unusual choice for a twelve year old boy. I told him
I liked Steely Dan and asked him how he knew about this band. He said his dad took him to a
concert. I brought in
a CD of their greatest hits and gave it to him. This student, now a senior, remembers me because I made a
connection with music and gave him a used CD of mine from when I taught him
five years ago. This small
connection is what he remembered about me, something I had forgotten, something
that really took little effort on my part.
The
moment was a great reminder to me as a teacher and as a person—and for all of
us—that what we say or do for other people, no matter how small, can make a
difference and often is remembered by them long after we forgot.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Acceptance
Two
strategies for achieving happiness: one is to change the external environment
to meet the needs (or wants) of the organism; the other is to change the
internal state of the organism to adapt itself to the environment. We can either change the world to
satisfy our desires or change our desires by adapting to the world. Both strategies aim at removing the
agitation of desires, one by fulfilling them and the other by relinquishing
them.
From Unlimited
Mind: The Radical Experiential Psychology of Buddhism
by Andrew
Olendzki (2010)
God grant
me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the
things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardships as the pathway to peace.
from The Serenity Prayer
by
Reinhold Niebuhr (1943)
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