Working Meditation

The Revolutionary Act of Doing Nothing

After a morning block of Zoom calls, I was exhausted. My brain felt like it was thinking through sand, and my coffee seemed to be powerless against the fluorescents. While the squirrels hopping between trees in our forest provided additional entertainment, it only enhanced the monkey mind’s distractibility. I was over being a talking head; I wanted to be an entire human again, so I did what any reasonable acolyte does, hit the training room. When you work for the countries oldest Buddhist College, Naropa University, that looks like hitting the meditation room.

Today the yellow and red roses from last week are dry, and they make a lovely offering at the Stupa that watches over the green between our buildings. The purple felt like a cloud of our school’s color against the offering of fire colors. Ikebana has always had a home here, so this pause is aligned with our schools’ values.

Shoes in the hallway, today there are none here but Sean’s. It strikes me that Sean would have crushed it in our master’s program, and he could have set the tone for what’s happening at the Pyschdeilic center. Here we are, my Ginsberg to your Cassidy. What a loop? How proud would you be of Liana and Scarlett right now? How funny is it that Justin, who you replaced in Rent, is teaching play workshops with me? Sara, said you reached enlightenment…