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Showing posts from April, 2016

Pain Isn't the Problem

      As the morning sun peers through my window, I wake up and begin to take stock of my situation.  My arms are covered with angry scratches from the two days I spent cutting down a hedge row in the orchard.  My lower back aches from the twice-daily ritual of carrying buckets of water to the chicken coop, and my dreams are filled with images of hay, mulch, and manure.  I've learned two things this week.  First, farming is hard work!  Second, I need to get back in shape.  Over the years, I've tried to maintain a regular weight lifting schedule, but my body is clearly unprepared for farm life.  I groan like a ninety year-old man in need of a hip replacement as I sit up on the edge of my bed.  To say that I'm discouraged is an understatement.      "Is the whole six months going to be like this?" I wonder.   I try giving myself a pep talk about the good work that I'm doing here.  I think about the people that will have healthy, chemical-free food to ea

Leaving Home: An Emotional Roller Coaster

4:00am- My father is driving me to the train station.   He speaks softly, giving me advice as we travel down the empty highway.   “Make sure you give us your address when you get there, and watch your back” he says, not taking his eyes off the road.   I nod dutifully, and tell him that I will.   His lectures have become part of a ritual we go through every time I leave home.   As always, I listen closely because I know they come from a place of love.   Eventually, he shifts gears and we talk about sports, but the conversation becomes forced as we get closer to the station.   Eventually it stops completely, and the car is filled with a heavy silence.   This is also part of the ritual.   “Don’t be afraid to come home,” he says.   His voice catches slightly as he talks, and an arrow pierces my heart.   He wants me to stay home, get a corporate job, and leave the road behind. But I can’t.        We only get eighty years on this planet, and I don’t want to spend them doing the sa

Environmentalism is Easy When You Don't Exist

     In a few days, I'll be jumping on a train and heading to an organic farm in upstate New York to assist the owner with gardening, animal husbandry, and beekeeping.  My hope is that the six months I spend there will allow me to experience a subsistence lifestyle outside of the capitalist paradigm that currently dominates America.  Additionally, by working on an organic farm I'll be able to advocate for environmental causes by directly competing with industrial farms that dump huge amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides into the ecosystem.  In short, I'll be able to walk the walk of environmentalism as opposed to just talking the talk.  You would think that caring for the planet that we live on would be a natural thing, but there is a disconnect.  Many people think that the environment is a separate "thing" from us that is not worthy of concern.  Others think that our planet must be conquered in order to ensure human survival.  Naturally

Samsara vs. Tank Man

     It seems like samsara is even more messed up than usual right now.  The GOP front-runner is a man who thinks Muslims should be banned from entering the country, and his closest rival attends conferences where people advocate  executing homosexuals .  At last count, there were 270,000 tons of garbage floating in the world's oceans, and 97% of the meat that gets consumed in this country comes from factory farms where the animals are tortured and eventually killed in the name of corporate profits.  I'm not sure what is so special about today that is causing me to feel overwhelmed by all of this.  Maybe the cloudy grey skies are starting to get to me.  Maybe I watched too much political news coverage this morning.  Maybe I just didn't sleep well last night, and now I'm cranky.  I don't know what's causing me to feel this way on today of all days.  But I do know that I'm frustrated, and angry, and disappointed that in the year 2016 things like, "Do

What I Learned From Zen Practice and Video Games

       Why did I give away my car and volunteer to spend the next six months of my life on an organic farm?   More importantly, why should you care?  Truthfully, you probably shouldn't.  I'm not going to say anything on this blog that hasn't been said before by people far more intelligent than me.  My primary goal is to improve my understanding of Zen, and hopefully convince my friends, my family, and myself, that I haven't gone insane.  I think the best way to do that is by briefly discussing what got me to this point.   Why am I doing this?  Why did I quit my secure, well-paying IT job?  Why did I stop eating meat?     Three years ago I was suffering from severe anxiety and depression.  Some of that was the result of a bad break-up, and unresolved issues from my time in the Marine Corps. But I honestly can't think of a time in my life when I didn't see the world through a fog of melancholy.  Either way, I tried dealing with my problems in the typical