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Showing posts from May, 2016

The Enjoyment of Not Enjoying Myself

     Since I arrived in New York, I've made a habit of calling my mother once a week to give her updates on how I'm doing.  It was during our last phone call that she said in a worried voice, "Honey, it doesn't sound like you are enjoying yourself very much".  Her words struck me as I hadn't realized that I'd been giving her that impression.  However, looking back I can definitely see why she said that. I'd just completed a week of weeding raised garden boxes of herbs, planting blueberries, and mulching around newly planted trees in a humid ninety degree heat. To add to this, my arms and chest were all covered in a massive heat rash which left me scratching at my skin like a flea-ridden dog.  I can only imagine what it must have sounded like as I talked about my situation.  I quickly responded by telling her that everything was great, but when we finished our conversation I wondered, "Do I enjoy farming?" The Merriam-Webster dict

The Lies Society Told Me

     When I was in kindergarten, my teacher pointed at a picture of grass and asked, "What color is this?"  I knew from earlier lessons that I needed to say, "green" if I wanted to get a gold star for the day.  And I really wanted a gold star because the kids with five gold stars at the end of the week would get to go to an ice cream party.  So I said, "green" like a good little boy, and I've stuck with that answer ever sense.  But closer inspection reveals that there is a quandary here.  If I had to guess, I'd say that my kindergarten teacher only told me that the color of grass is green because that's what her kindergarten teacher told her.  Furthermore, I would guess that if we continued back through time in the style of Dr. Who, then we'd find an endless stream of kindergarten teachers all saying, "Grass is green," because that's what their kindergarten teachers told them until finally we arrived at some undiscl

Poem Number Two

When a cold wind blows I just shiver in response Good Conversation If you enjoyed this article, please like The Same Old Zen on  Facebook You can also connect with me on Twitter

Poem Number One

The still point in a sea of chaos It is the rock that neither moves or stays still When others speak of good or bad It smiles and laughs If you enjoyed this article, please like The Same Old Zen on  Facebook You can also connect with me on Twitter

The Zen of Losing a Loved One

     My brother-in-law is dead.   He died four days ago of a heart attack at the age of forty-six.   And in the rush to find out what happened, console my loved ones, and travel back home for the funeral there has been little time to process that fact.   But as I sit in my father’s living room and look out the window, the realization grows like a tree in the murky darkness of my mind.   Eventually, it becomes the only thing that I can think about.   My brother-in-law is dead.        What am I supposed to do about that?   How do I console my sister when she started this week as a wife, only to end it as a widow?   As I mull over these questions, I’m reminded of a story I read a while back.   A Zen monk learned of his mother’s death, and responded by bursting into tears.   When he saw the confused looks on his students’ faces, he asked them, “What does it mean to lose a mother?”   No one was able to tell him, so the monk gestured at his tear-stained face and said, “This is wh

On Killing Chickens

          We have one hundred chickens on the farm right now.  They are Cornish Crosses, a special breed of meat bird that is generally docile, and reaches slaughter weight in approximately eight to ten weeks.  One week ago, they were living in a chicken coop. But we recently moved them to a barn which opens into an enclosed pasture.  Their new home will provide them with plenty of room to run, grow, and socialize until the day they're sent off for "processing".  It was during the transfer process when I felt their scared, squirming bodies in my hands that it hit me, "These chickens are going to die, and it's all my fault".  I've spent most of the past week trying to wrap my vegetarian brain around this fact.  To be clear, I knew that this would be part of my experience.  When I visited www.attra.ncat.org and searched for organic farming internships, the listings were very explicit in terms of what would be expected of me.  So how did I end up here