A Little Angry, are We?

I’ve spent much of my life suppressing my anger, rage and restlessness. And the result, of course, is that it has at times erupted awkwardly in the form of projecting emotionally towards others, but most of the time it has gone inward, causing migraines.  Now, as a I have become more committed to Buddhist meditation (Theravada tradition), I have become more aware of how anger operates in me (although, heh, there’s still plenty of room for growth in that area). I realize, too, that the occasional posts I have here, in regards to the War, Torture, the “new slavery” etc., are a result of uncomfortable emotional energy that needs to be brought to awareness and expression. My participation in the recent San Francisco protest march (see below) is part of that. But it took me a long time before I actually responded with that kind of action. My hope and intent is that I continue to respond in awareness, and not just knee-jerk reactivity.

 Now, my anger about work and labor, is a bit more difficult to deal with. Definitely I have a lot of clinging to ideas about how work should be, and what my relationship to work is and has been, and when it doesn’t fulfill my ideal, I become restless, dissatisfied, miserable. I’m hoping this blog can make those issues more visible to me, help bring more awareness to the matter.

Thailand gal has one of those “zen” moments when you just say and do the right thing in the wrong (work)place (it’s about half way into her post). Anyway — you GO girl!

 Earlier in the post, she mentions the cool work environment provided by Google. I have another one; check out the work environment provided by Pixar: everyone gets a teeny little house! Here’s another page featuring Pixar’s offices (again, scroll down a ways to get to the cool part). If I sound a little jealous, it’s because I am: the publishing company where I work has moved us into new cubicles, and does not allow us to let personal objects extend beyond the edges of our cubes.  Previously, looking out over the cubicle landscape, one would see an open umbrella here, a flower there, a little banner, or cartoon figure poking up above the cubes to mark where a certain person was located. Now it all looks uniform. ; (

Buddhism & Surveillance

Electronic Surveillance in the Workplace: A Buddhist Perspective, by Soraj Hongladarom

The Four Noble Truths of a Cabdriver

A Cab(driver) in New York City examines the Four Noble Truths, HERE.

Which reminds me: on Oct. 30, I posted an excerpt from something Ajahn Sumedho had written, about how he had “made the determination before he left [for a trip] that he wasn’t going to go around the world, he was just going to let the world go through his mind.“

As an experiment that day, I did my usual commute, but also did a breath meditation at the same time, and focused on that sense of the world just arising (rather than me doggedly trying to get somewhere). This led to some curious observations and sensations. Focusing on the end of the outbreath while driving, I started to become aware of the space between each car on the road as “silence.” Each vehicle in the road, each tree and  person I passed came forward, then faded away, much as the objects of my thought appeared and faded. I was on a highway, upon which all things came into being, then moved on. Then I realized that in each of those cars there was a person, in whose mind were thoughts that appeared and faded, too. The exterior journey and the interior journey were one and the same — and I was going somewhere, and yet I was not going anywhere…