Quest Questions

“If you don’t understand the way right before you,
how will you know the path as you walk?
Progress is not a matter of far or near,
but if you are confused, mountains and rivers block your way.
I respectfully urge you who study the mystery,
don’t waste time.”

~ Shitou Xiqian, “Harmony of Difference and Equality”

I started this blog nearly three years ago with the express purpose of chronicling, and seeking guidance for, a quest of mine: to prove that one can simultaneously pursue one’s passions and sustain a modestly comfortable lifestyle. Well, the time has whizzed by, and I’m not sure I’m any closer to my goal, but this seems as good a moment as any for a progress (or lack thereof) report.

In the past three years I moved from Denver to Austin and back in something of a sub-quest for my magic mantra of Money, Mission, Mate, and Home. I’ve managed to earn enough from various school and freelancing jobs not to burn all the way through the savings I took from the world of regular, full-time work. When I’ve been able to maintain enough focus, I’ve brainstormed various schemes and ideas for how to find/create work I love that also pays the bills.

And yet, as I said above, I don’t seem to have progressed terribly far toward my goal of passion-driven, life-sustaining work, despite having learned a good bit and enjoyed some adventures. Were I to issue myself a performance evaluation using the criteria of that four-part mantra, I’d have to say I’m one for four at best (Mission), with bits and pieces of the other three.

How could I have let the years slip through my fingers just like that? How can it be so easy to get lost in the day-to-day trees as to completely lose sight of the life’s-purpose forest? I’ve been just getting by for years, telling myself, “Well, this isn’t so bad. Let’s give it one more year and see what happens.”

Well, no longer. I am no longer willing to “one more year” myself.

But what does that mean? First off, I think it means I have to stop wasting time; I have to stop indulging myself in any pursuit that doesn’t further this quest. It means I have to be ever more focused and disciplined in identifying and going after what I want.

Okay, fine: so what do I want, then? Again returning to the mantra, I want:

What’s In Your Bag?

Another Monday, another very short Zen story. This one comes from The Great Heart Way, a truly remarkable book co-written by the teachers at Great Mountain Zen Center in Lafayette, Colorado, where I first sat.

There was a traveling monk who went from temple to temple carrying a big bag of horse manure over his shoulder. When he arrived at a new temple, he would set his bag down and exclaim, “This place smells like shit!” Then he’d pick up his bag and move on to the next temple and do the same thing, surprised every time.

I hesitated briefly when choosing to post this story: as pithy and humorous as I find it, it could come across as an obvious point rather coarsely expressed. In the end, I decided that this tale embodies quite well the frank earthiness of Zen—and as I mention on the homepage, if I’m not offending someone at some point, I’m probably not doing my job.

For me this story is pertinent not only because of my deepening interest in Zen, but even more, my ongoing quest to find a more fulfilling life situation, one that more fully approaches my magic mantra of Money, Mission, Mate, and Home.

Quotable Home

Like many people, I imagine, I enjoy gathering quotes. In fact, I’ve posted a few here on this blog. So it’s hardly surprising that, given my mantra, a number of my favorite quotes would delve into the meaning of home.

For instance, I have no idea how I came upon this first quotes, but you can probably see why I held on to it…

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.

~ George Moore

Then there’s Kathleen Norris, who’s lived the question of home in a rather deep and conscious way. In her twenties, Norris left New York City to spend what she thought would be a few years attending to the estate of her grandparents in rural South Dakota, a place she’d visited extensively throughout her childhood. This temporary move ended up lasting nearly twenty years, during which time Norris plumbed the social and geographical aspects of home—what ties people to a place and to each other, and how culture emerges from these interconnections.

I suspect that when modern Americans ask “what is sacred?” they are really asking “what place is mine? what community do I belong to?”

~ Dakota: a spiritual geography

To be an American is to move on, as if we could outrun change. To attach oneself to place is to surrender to it, and suffer with it.

~ The Cloister Walk

However, the two home-quotes that have spoken most vividly to me come from Wallace Stegner’s novel Angle of Repose (one of my all-time favorites) and Natalie Goldberg’s Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America (which she autographed for me at a bookstore in Boulder, where I was then living and where she’d once studied).

Three Faces of Home

As part of my magic mantra, I’d say considerations of Home and all it entails reasonably qualify as an obsession. For years I’ve wanted to live in a place that felt like home; for years I’ve wondered where on Earth that place might be.

Recently, though, I’ve been wondering if—for me, anyway—home is less about place and more about people. Generally speaking, it seems the more I think about home, the more wrinkles and ramifications I discover. For example—and at the risk of grossly oversimplifying things—glancing over my past and present reveals at least three different types of home: what I’ll call geographic, social, and residential.

Do You Think I’m Asking Too Much?

I’ve explored the wisdom of navigating terra icognita by relying on one’s sense of what’s appealing or compelling at a given moment, and of skipping ahead mentally to one’s preferred life and working backwards until a path’s in sight. Perhaps it’s time to apply those models a little more closely to my own situation.

Recently I’ve begun applying the navigation-by-inclination approach to my current situation, surveying various activities that seem both appealing and capable of generating income. In this post, I’d like to start delving into my personal vision of an ideal work environment and see what that turns up in the way of options.

On the most general level, I know that I crave meaningful work that enables a modest, yet comfortable, lifestyle—in other words, the “mission” and “money” elements of my mantra, leaving aside for now the aspect of “home” (though I will say that paying work I can find not tied to a particular locale would seems to maximize my flexibility).

Speaking of flexibility, I know this is an important quality in whatever work I pursue, along with a great deal of discretion or latitude in setting my agenda and deadlines, plus ample amounts of quiet solitude. Being able to spend time outdoors and travel would be a bonus.

Given all this, as well as things mentioned in recent posts, it would seem my niche lies in nonprofit management, promotion, building, etc.—entrepreneurship with a cause. As I’ve said before, I feel absolutely driven toward work that truly makes a difference, that will leave the world a better place: reducing suffering, cultivating compassion, empowering people.

Yet I wonder how to go about finding this kind of work in a form (or forms) that enable me to cover my basic expenses. The world for which I was prepared and conditioned—one of full-time employment in stable, extended careers—seems long-gone now. This appears especially true for the sort of crusading, windmill-tilting work that calls me, work whose relative tenuousness and low pay isn’t all that new.

So once again, the core question of this blog looms: how do I, a middle-aged man with ancient teaching credentials and modest freelance writing experience, create a life of meaningful, enjoyable and creative work/play, sustaining and sustainable?

Identifying Passion

I don’t know how to account for this, but something isn’t working…or something’s missing, or something’s out of alignment. (Or, perhaps, all of the above.)

On the one hand, how can I complain when I’m spending the vast majority of the time doing what I want: building and enjoying a Sudbury school, making music with talented singers, meditating with a spiritual community, and running and biking year-round? I spend time with good people, and I have time to myself. So what if I haven’t figured out how to make all this financially feasible, if I’m still keenly missing the communities I had to leave behind?

On the other hand, how can I not acknowledge my ongoing struggle to prove it’s possible to make a living pursuing one’s passions in a place that feels like home? Or my frustration that, after seven months, I seem not that much closer to realizing that vision.

Previously I’ve explored the wisdom of navigating terra icognita by relying on one’s sense of what’s appealing or compelling at a given moment, and of skipping ahead mentally to one’s preferred life and working backwards until a path’s in sight. Perhaps it’s time to apply those models a little more closely to my own situation.

Regarding the first question—navigation by inclination—I’ve also written previously about the critical role of passion in creating an authentic, vibrant life. In my view, passion is closely related to cultivating one’s intuition, to being mindful and honest, and loving life (or, to use Byron Katie’s term, Loving What Is).

All right, then, what are my passions? When do I feel most alive?

Homing In

“Where are you from?” “Where’s home?”

Sometimes the simplest questions are the hardest.

In a recent post I considered the benefits of envisioning one’s ideal life, then working backward until a path emerges. I decided that elaborating my mantra of Money, Mission, Mate, and Home might be a way to try this out for myself. Thus, having begun with a glance at Mission, I now turn to a subject scarcely less dear: that of Home.

As I said in my original mantra post:

For years I’ve been seeking a sense of home, something more than just a place to keep my stuff and pursue my career and recreation…I want to feel grounded, rooted, connected. Ideally, this home would combine access to nature and urban opportunities; vibrant, overlapping communities and not too much sprawl; and not be too far from my family.

A year ago at this time, I knew I had to shake things up somehow. Straddling the border between comfortable and stagnant, I felt myself going in circles. Now, I want to be clear that going in circles isn’t necessarily bad: at a certain point in life, it seems we find those circles that work best for us, that circling in fact means digging down, nesting into an increasingly grounded, rooted existence.

Yet I’d never felt particularly connected to Colorado as a place, and the fact that the things I most enjoyed there were so far apart meant that (a) I was spending a great deal of time on the road, and (b) none of my micro-communities overlapped in the least.

Contributing to Colorado’s not feeling like home was that its climate, topography, and vegetation differ significantly from what I imprinted on living in Missouri and Illinois my first 30 years. It didn’t help that I was nearly 800 miles from my family at a time when my parents are aging and my niece and nephews are rapidly growing up.

Thus, when Austin appeared on my horizon, I leaped.

Toward a More Mindful Mantra (or, Mission Possible?)

Wow! That’s a lot to process! I hope you’re not too overwhelmed!

A friend just emailed me the above, after I shared some of what’s on my mind these days. Let me offer you a quick glimpse of the circus in my head:

• About four days a week, I bike past a Brazilian waxing spa. I’ve wanted to post about this for weeks, what seeing this place does to my peace of mind, what I believe it indicates about the state of our culture.
• When I see this spa, I typically think of Peter Singer’s marvelous book The Life You Can Save, whose premise is that the 24,000 children who die every single day from poverty-related causes could be saved at a cost we in the developed world would scarcely notice.
• Three days a week I go running, often listening to a podcast called “Best of the Left.” In addition to informing myself from non-mainstream sources, I suspect this boosts my speed, as the indifference and cruelty evidenced in the news fuels my sense of injustice, sometimes to the point of outrage.
• I’m pretty much constantly asking myself if I should have moved, if I should have moved here, and if I’m too busy with too many things, all of which are fulfilling yet none of which provide an income stream. Where should I be, and what should I be doing? How can I find an appropriate balance of work and play, being out in the world and taking care of my introverted self?

Amid all this, I spend a good deal of time in front of a computer screen—or visiting the nearby Zen center, where I sit facing a wall, meditating and chanting—wondering what the hell I’m doing with my life. I’m busy helping build a small Sudbury school, trying to get my own Sudbury support nonprofit off the ground, singing, blogging, and generally wondering how to make a living.

Busy, yes, but how much am I actually accomplishing? Given that we’re killing each other and poisoning our habitat—while for many of us, our biggest concerns are who will win today’s big game or the unsightly hair on our legs—I have to ask: Am I doing enough, am I doing all I can?

Show Me the Money

I’ll admit, I’m getting a little nervous.

Why so? Well, six months into this grand experiment, seeking passion-driven work that’s viable and sustainable, I’ve as yet found only the tiniest trickles of income.

Granted, this dry spell was part of the plan: prior to leaping, I’d saved up enough money to go more than a year without income. Even though choosing a negative cash flow runs counter to my conditioning and personality, it seemed necessary to clear out a great expanse of time in order to find…well, something. Myself? A new revenue stream, a new groove in my career track?

Regardless of whether you buy into the equating of time and money, currently I feel as though I’m running low on both—which begs the question of why I’m writing here, now. Shouldn’t I be working on a plan of some kind, or simply job-hunting? Polishing my resumé, updating my LinkedIn profile, scouring Craiglist for freelancing writing and editing work?

To tell the truth, I’m a little afraid of blogging: afraid it’s a waste of time, that I either won’t have anything to say or won’t be able to shut up (not that those are mutually exclusive, of course). Who knows, though: as I’ve written previously, it’s surprisingly difficult, if not downright impossible, for me to ascertain whether a given activity is an utter waste of time or an investment in the future. Is what appears to be downtime a necessary break? Is there learning or networking going on beneath the surface?

Getting back to the subject of this post, a more personal, pressing question these days is why I seem so allergic to income.

Mantras & Mindful Living

About a year and a half ago, I sought out an oracle that delivered to me the following four words: money, mission, mate, and home.

Now, when I say “oracle” I really just mean a brilliant friend and colleague from The Circle School in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Jim came out to visit us at Alpine Valley School and do a public presentation, and I took the opportunity for a private chat on the dilemma I’d been grappling with for some time: why I felt so restless when some of the key elements of my life—especially my job and choir—were so very, very good.

As he’s wont to do, Jim not only heard me out for ten or fifteen minutes but then quickly condensed what I told him into the above mantra: money, mission, mate, and home. (Actually, I added the “home” part; otherwise the mantra was also alliterative.) And I have to say, while life rarely reduces to easy formulas, this one really helped cut through the clutter: it gave me a handy way to assess what I want in my life and how well any particular situation measures up to that standard.

Before I continue, perhaps a word of clarification is in order for each of these terms.

By Money, I simply mean enough so that I’m not distracted by worries over whether I can not only feed, house, and clothe myself, but also provide for transportation, health insurance, and a modest level of recreation.

A sense of Mission has always been critical to me. Most people, I think, long to be part of something larger than themselves, to know that their life has some purpose and that their legacy will outlast them. Often, but not always, one’s mission is largely manifested in one’s work.

Mate is, I hope, largely self-explanatory. All I will add here is that, for me, a life situation that makes it less likely for me to find a loving relationship is a life situation that’s far from satisfactory.

The subject of Home could take up several posts. For years I’ve been seeking a sense of home, something more than just a place to keep my stuff and pursue my career and preferred forms of recreation. Rather, I want to feel grounded, rooted, connected. Ideally, this home would combine access to nature and urban opportunities; vibrant, overlapping communities and not too much sprawl; and not be too far from my family.

Applied to my situation at the time, I saw that I had Mission easily covered. Money and Mate weren’t present, but the Denver-Boulder area isn’t a bad place to seek either of them. Home, however…the climate and topography there, however great, weren’t what I was used to as a  lifelong Midwesterner (from birth to age 31). That I might have dealt with as well, but my experience of the area was that things are so scattered geographically, given my interests, that the sort of local community I wanted was going to be very difficult to find.

Of course I’m reducing countless hours of contemplation, conversation, and anguish to a few sentences here, but my point is that, for me at least, having this mantra made it relatively easier to make the hard decision to upend and rearrange my life. About a year after Jim and I talked, I decided to stop accepting a life that was good, but not great; I decided to give up the best job and choir I’d ever known to pursue this crazy dream of having it all.

To me, this gets at the essence of mindful living: consciously arranging those aspects of life one can control (such as work and location) in order to maximize the chances of living the life of one’s dreams.

And so I want to ask you—or better yet, for you to ask yourself:

What’s the life of your dreams? What life are you currently leading? How big a gap is there between the two?

What things can you not live without, and what are you doing to ensure they’re a part of your life?

If you’re so inclined, leave a comment with your answers to these questions. I’m curious to see what my readers would have to say on this subject. Thanks!