SIMPLICITY: ALLOWING THE NECESSARY TO SPEAK

Many years ago, a friend made me a begging bowl like the ones used by the Buddhist monks.  I keep it on my desk, where it can be seen daily, because it reminds me of several principles that I want to guide my life.  First, it reminds me of Lao Tzu's paradoxical advice that we must be empty if we wish to be full.  Second, it reminds me that my needs, versus my desires, are no greater than what can be placed in a small bowl each day — a little food and a little water.  Finally, and most importantly, it reminds me of the need to anchor my life in simplicity — simplicity of purpose, simplicity of thought, simplicity of action.

In a world where one must "make a living", pay bills, discharge household chores, and take care of loved ones, it may be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve the simple life that is the lodestar for many of us.  Still, I find there are things that can be done to move my life closer to the ideal.  To use the words of the late artist, Hans Hoffman, I can "eliminate the unnecessary so the necessary may speak."  And that is what I truly want.  I want to hear the music of nature; I want to hear the music of other lives and other cultures; I want to listen to the beat and music of my own heart — music that is often smothered by the din and demand of modern life.

How, then, can we eliminate the unnecessary things in our lives, so that the life-affirming, necessary things can not only speak, but be heard?  I'm no expert on these matters, of course — simply a student.  There are a few simplicity practices, however, which I have incorporated into my daily life, and which have been paying considerable dividends in terms of the quality of life. Among the practices that I try to follow are these:

Do not make anything larger, more complex, or more serious than it needs to be.

Let nature and solitude be enough for my daily pleasure.

Always remain conscious and present with the task at hand.

Remember that some things are best left undone.

Minimize exposure to "news" and commercial advertising.

Follow Goethe's advice to "hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day . . ." 

Keep nothing that is not either useful or beautiful.

Remember that every act of consumption has environmental and social consequences.

Don't waste time attempting to rebut the arguments of foolish people.

To quote Alice Longworth Roosevelt, "fill what's empty, empty what's full,   and scratch where it itches." 

While I have yet to master these practices, I have found that each provides an effective way of simplifying my life, if only in some small measure.  How about you? What practices do you follow to keep yourself anchored in this world of mind-boggling complexity?

Set forth below are some interesting quotes on the need for more simplicity in our lives.  Many of these writers have inspired my own practices.  May you, too, find inspiration that will bring more simplicity and peace to your own lives.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.  It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.

E.F.  Schumacher

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter . . . to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a birds nest or wildflower in spring — these are some of the rewards of the simple life.

John Burroughs

The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you.  Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone.  The wisdom of life consists in elimination of non-essentials.

Lin Yutang

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

William Morris

Be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are.  When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

Lao Tzu

Live simply, so that others may simply live.

Gandhi

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

Thoreau


Who is rich?  He who rejoices in his portion.


The Talmud

If you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted with pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.

Annie Dillard

Voluntary simplicity means going fewer places in one day rather than more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I can do more, acquiring less so I can have more.

John Kabat-Zinn

You can't force simplicity; but you can invite it in by finding as much richness as possible in the few things at hand.  Simplicity doesn't mean meagerness but rather a certain kind of richness, the fullness that appears when we stop stuffing the world with things.

Thomas Moore

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never; in a word to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.

William Henry Channing

Yesterday, my friend Robert, whose blog is The Solitary Walker, posted a moving article on his view of The Simple Life.  I close by quoting from Robert because what he says is as fine as anything said above:

The simple life is the good life, is the best life.  Joy, happiness and fulfillment come from the innocent, simple, often freely bestowed pleasures of existence: a bracing cliff top walk on a blustery autumn day; the sound of bagpipes in a remote Scottish glen; crossing the Spanish meseta under a hot sun, then spending the night in a cheap albergue with other pilgrims; growing, preparing and cooking one's own food; the scent of fir tree sap; the cold grittiness of rock beneath the fingers; the tang of citrus; the cry of owls; the running of deer; eating when hungry, drinking when thirsty, sleeping when tired; lovemaking.

Go forth and keep it simple, 
my friends, 
especially during the holidays!

NOVEMBER REFLECTIONS

Perhaps it is trite to say this, but nature is, indeed, an amazing artist!  If you have any doubt, just look at the interplay of color, form, and reflections in this little scene that I discovered near my home late one afternoon earlier in the week.  For one blissful and surreal moment, I felt that I was standing in the middle of a Monet painting.

Amazingly, this scene was found next to a well-traveled bridge on the upper headwaters of the Tred Avon River.  Cars were crossing the bridge incessantly while I stood on the riverbank, but no one seemed to notice the miracle of light that was occurring not more than fifty feet from the road.  Strange, isn't it?  The magic can be so close, yet most people are too busy to notice it.

After discovering this lovely scene by happenstance, I decided to take a more disciplined approach to my photography this week.  More specifically, I made sure that, camera in hand, I was near some body of tranquil water during the hour just after sunrise and the hour just before sunset, the two hours of day when the light is usually at its best, especially in mid-November.  A few of the photos taken this week are set forth below, paired with some relevant thoughts about the role that nature plays in the preservation of our sanity.

Some of these photos are representational, while others are abstract.  Each image, however, reflects that beauty than can be discovered on rivers, lakes, and ponds during the luminous days of autumn.  Enjoy!

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

John Muir 

I'll tell you how the sun rose a ribbon at a time.

Emily Dickinson 

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

Desiderata

Civilization has fallen out of touch with night. With lights, we drive the holiness and the beauty of night back to the forests and the seas; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it.  Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of the night?  Do they fear the vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars?

Henry Beston,
"The Outermost House" 

There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night . . .

Rachel Carson 

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Lao Tzu 

Each moment of the year has its own beauty . . . a picture which was never before and shall never be seen again.

Emerson 

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

e.e. cummings 

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

Walt Whitman 

We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.  For it can be a means of assuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.

Wallace Stegner 

When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be — I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.  I come into the peace of wild things . . .

Wendell Berry 

If the only prayer you said in your life was, "thank you," that would suffice.

Meister Eckhart


Peace to everyone and thank you! 

TRUTH AND PARADOX

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Persig's memorable philosophical inquiry into values, the narrator is often perplexed by the obstinate refusal of people to see what is right before their eyes: 

The truth knocks on your door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away.  Puzzling.

The problem, I believe, is that the truth itself of often puzzling.  It offers the promise of something we seek -- for example, living in harmony with the universe -- but it then recommends a path that usually makes no sense, at least at first glance, to our logic-oriented brains. Suggest to someone that the greatest among us should be a servant or slave to others, as Jesus recommended, and you will likely encounter a stare of disbelief.

As Lao Tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching, "the words of truth are always paradoxical."  We may be attracted to a noble idea of the truth, but our egos usually reject what the truth calls upon us to do.  Many people, for example, profess to be Christians -- but how many are willing to act in accordance with the paradoxical teachings of Jesus?  Who is willing to lose his or her life in order to find it? Who is willing to love the enemy, pray for those who spitefully use us, turn the other cheek when assaulted, and rejoice when others revile or persecute us?  And what would the elite of our society think if the first really became last and the last became first?

Many profess to be followers of the Tao, but who is willing to act in accordance with the teachings of Lao Tzu (left) in the Tao Te Ching? Who is willing to yield to force, rather than respond in kind?  Is anyone willing to empty himself or herself in order to become full?  Willing to give up everything in order to gain everything?  Willing to allow the death of one's self in order to be born again into a higher consciousness? 

And what about the noble truths of Buddhism?  How many followers or admirers of Buddhism are willing to relinquish the cravings and desires that underpin all suffering?  How many are willing to abstain from harmful conduct, including gossip and other harmful speech?  How many are willing to resist any act, including war, that involves the taking of a life?

My point here is not to take a moral, political, or religious position on what we should or should not be doing with our lives.  It is understood, I hope, that such positions are off limits in this online journal.  What I do want to emphasize, however, is that spiritual truths are seldom comfortable, because they usually call upon us to do something that is counter-intuitive, at least initially.  Indeed, the truth to which we are drawn often seems inherently contradictory, and therein, of course, lies the paradox.

Many withdraw from the truth at the first hint of paradox. For thousands of years, however, the great teachers of wisdom have repeatedly told us that the things we most desire -- love, peace, happiness, and true security -- can only be discovered by actions that, paradoxically, seem inconsistent with those objectives. The question that always remains, however, is whether we have the courage to press through the walls of fear that surround our lives.

My decision to post something on the relationship between truth and paradox was precipitated several days ago by the rediscovery of a passage from T.S. Eliot's great poem, The Four Quartets.  That passage is set forth below, together with some other relevant observations by Anthony De Mello, Lao Tzu, Mother Teresa, Carl Rogers, C.K. Chesterton, Jack London, and Madeleine D'Engle.  Read and enjoy.

Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there.

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
  You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
  You must go by the way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
  You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
  You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

                           T.S. Eliot
                           The Four Quartets

All mystics . . . no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion -- are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well.  Though everything is a mess, all is well.  Strange paradox, to be sure.  But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep.  They are having a nightmare.

                       Anthony De Mello
                       Awareness




           If you want to become full,
           let yourself be empty.
           If you want to be reborn,
           let yourself die.
           If you want to be given everything,
           give everything up.

                      Lao Tzu
                      Tao Te Ching

I have found the paradox that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.
          
                        Mother Teresa


The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
        
                        Carl Rogers


The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.
          
                         C.K. Chesterton

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise.  And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive . . .

                          Jack London
                          The Call of the Wild

The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox.  We know that light is a wave, and also that light is a particle.  The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle.  Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being.

          

                          Madeleine D'Engle
                          Two-Part Invention