Tracking Life

Every day is a good day...to work

Tue, 18 May 2010 14:50:29 -0600

Pai Chang was the Zen Master famous for establishing the Zen monastic rule. He was always very insistent on working every day. When he was old he persisted in this, and the monks felt sorry for him so they hid his tools. He said, "I have no virtue. Why should others work for me?" And he refused to eat. He said, "A day of no work is a day of no eating." This saying became very famous in Zen circles, and to this day the Zen schools are noted for their practice of work.
Once Yun Yen asked Pai Chang, "Every day there's hard work to do. Who do you do it for?" Pai Chang said, "There is someone who requires it." Yun Yen said, "Why not have him do it himself?" Pai Chang said, "He has no tools."
If you really think about what work is you see that everything is work—being alive and in a body is already work. Every day there is eating and shitting and cleaning up. There is brushing and bathing and flossing. Every day there is thinking and caring and creating. So there's no escape from work—it's everywhere. For Zen students there's no work time and leisure time; there's just lifetime, daytime and nighttime. Work is something deep and dignified—it's what we are born to do and what we feel most fulfilled in doing.

When I was young my father made me mow the grass. My mother had us help wash dishes. It is in the every day work that I am finding my roots and sanity again. We live in a society built upon the efforts of others, from our past, and in other parts of the world. We don’t want to work, it should all come easy. The Santa Fe teachings of abundance...yet every day work beckons, and the idea of vacation is some modern invention that supposes we hate our job, and must take a vacation to enjoy ourselves for a short while.

East yard gate, video two

Mon, 8 Feb 2010 23:11:20 -0700

When I made this video, the thought occurred that i can make one long 8’ gate, and not cut any sections of the picket fence. Here i discuss moving the picket fence section closest to the house, and moving one post to allow a long gate to swing over the sidewalk. Now I am back to the two gate idea.

East yard gate, video one

Mon, 8 Feb 2010 23:11:19 -0700

I am designing a gate to open on the north side of the east yard fence, which will give the tenants Morgan and Catherine access from the north parking lot.
When I made this first video, I was looking at the picket fence sections and thinking about where to place the posts.
The plan was two posts on either side of the cement sidewalk, and two swinging gates meeting in the middle of the sidewalk.

Cranes and the Sandias

Thu, 3 Dec 2009 04:44:50 -0700

This photo is from the open space in the North Valley Albuquerque. The poem is from somewhere else recently...

Love is no dream
It is wakefulness itself

Minute attention to the mundane
ecstatic embrace of pain

steadier and deeper than the mere excitement of the senses
and the rolling waves of emotion

more like the love the Big Bang must have felt
before it exploded, unable to stand
this searing intensity of love folded in upon itself.

Deeper than chemistry
beyond nuclear energy

simple
losing self in the blooming flower of rowdy nowness

bringing Presence forth even as nothingness opens it's gaping maw
and threatens to devour us completely.

simple, being breathing by the bedside of a dying loved one,
who is poised to enter all of eternity alone.

What can I say?
Nothing,

Looking in the eyes of the Beloved,
the mind silenced by the urgency of the heart.

Mt Taylor to the west

Thu, 5 Nov 2009 22:12:59 -0700

As I began to walk towards my chosen destination, the piles of rocks on a ridge, I looked back over the city and saw Mt Taylor in the distance. Cactus and wild grasses, and I was on my way.