Occupy the present moment!

Occupy Samta Fe: from Maia Duerr blog 10/15/11

Breaking from my normal format, today I celebrate Maia Duerr's blog, The Liberated Life Project, which brings a Buddhist presence to the Occupy movement.  Occupy the Present Moment is the perfect expression of that sentiment.  It also highlights the spiritual and contemplative dimension of this movement, actually the ground upon which the movement is built.

Meditation group, Libery Park, NYC 10/8/11        Jean Stimmell©2011

When I was in New York, I participated in a large meditation group that has been a intregal part of OccupyWallStreet since the beginning. But the media has almost universally ignored this vital spiritual underpinning.

Maia wrote in her 10/15/11 blog that it has become abundantly clear to her  that the Occupy Movement is "based in a real honor and respect for kindness, for making sure every voice is heard."  She goes on to say:

         A quote from Arundhati Roy has been very much on my mind the past week:

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness — and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling — their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

The other quote that kept coming to me today was one from Mother Teresa: “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

This collective of people — all around the globe — is remembering that truth. We’re waking up to it, to use a Buddhist phrase. We are changing the story… we are no longer believing that we are beholden to corporations, but rather to each other. We are creating rather than merely consuming.


Thank you, Maia, for your inspiring blog, and, hopefully, you do not mind that I have copied the long excerpt above, into my blog.  Keep up the good work!

Writing language back into the land

Shadow and Leaf against Boulder, Turkey Pond, Concord NH  11/6/11

For those of us who care for an earth not encompassed by machines, a world of textures, tastes and sounds other than those that we have engineered, there can be no question of simply abandoning literacy, of turning away from all writing. 

Our task, rather, is that of taking up the written word, with all of its potency, and patiently, carefully, writing language back into the land. Our craft is that of releasing the budded, earthly intelligence of our words, freeing them to respond to the speech of the things themselves – to the green uttering forth of leaves from the spring branches… 

Planting words, like seeds, under rocks and fallen logs – letting language take root, once again, in the earthen silence of shadow and bone and leaf. – quote from Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram (p. 274)

Daffodil pushing up through the snow in our front yard: 4/23/11 

Technology standing between us and the world

New World Trade Center to be called "Reflecting Absence"
 10/8/11      J.Stimmell©2011

As you, my readers, may have guessed from the last few posts, I am reading – actually rereading – Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,  a personal meditation written by Thomas Merton, first published 46 years ago in 1966.

I am awed that Merton – long before the age of computers, virtual reality, and Facebook, – already grasped the essential conundrum of modern technological society: It’s “as if the whole of reality were in the inventions that stand between us and the world: the inventions that have become our world. (p. 15)”

He goes on to say: “Technology is not in itself opposed to spirituality... But it presents a great temptation. For instance, where many machines are used..., there can be a deadening of spirit and of sensibility, a blunting of perception, a loss of awareness, a lowering of tone, a general fatigue and lassitude, a proneness to unrest and guilt which we might be less likely to suffer if we simply went out and worked with our hands in the woods or in the fields.” (p. 16)

Like incoming artillery rounds landing too close, Merton’s words about the harmful effects of technology have rung in my ears for the last week, ever since I updated my computer operating system only to discover, to my horror, that various subsystems crashed, data was lost, and certain crucial applications could not be upgraded – like my financial software I use for my business and also my databases.  In addition, my email stopped working, along with my voicemail...on and on, a pure disaster.  

My world was knocked asunder, like being flattened by a falling sequoia tree.

Things are better now but I am still spending hours every day, putting things back together on my hard drive – which I regrettably admit –  has taken over altogether too much of what used to be handled by me and my brain. I'm horrified to find out to what a degree, slowly and insidiously, technology has come to control my life. 

Today was a good day as I managed to resurrect 857 quotations, some long, some not that I have collected over the last 30 years: quotations that spoke to me in a deep and personal way – like Merton’s quote above:

In the wake of my computer disaster, Merton’s description of technology’s deleterious effects is a perfect diagnosis of my condition: a deadening of spirit and of sensibility, a blunting of perception, a loss of awareness, a lowering of tone, a general fatigue and lassitude, a proneness to unrest and guilt which we might be less likely to suffer if we simply went out and worked with our hands in the woods or in the fields.”

My only saving grace, preventing both manic anger and depressive stupor – echoing Merton’s advice – has been my daily therapy of going deep into my woods to work with my hands, cutting firewood for next year.

We are living in the greatest revolution in history

OWS General Assembly: NYC 10/08/11     J. Stimmell ©2011

We are living in the greatest revolution in history--a huge spontaneous upheaval of the entire human race; not the revolution planned and carried out by any particular party, race, or nation, but a deep elemental boiling over of all the inner contradictions that have ever been in man, a revelation of the chaotic forces inside everybody. This is not something we have chosen, nor is it something we are free to avoid. 

– quoted from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton

Solitude is to be preserved, not as a luxury but as a necessity:

Reflections at Pawtuckaway State Park, 7/11/11   J. Stimmell

Solitude is to be preserved, not as a luxury but as a necessity: not for "perfection" so much as for simple "survival" in the life God has given you. Hence, you must know when, how, and to whom you must say "no." This involves considerable difficulty at times. You must not hurt people, or want to hurt them, yet you must not placate them at the price of infidelity to higher and more essential values.

–From Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton

The body is the shore on the ocean of being

A Body on the Shore                Cape Cod, 5/17/11           J. Stimmell©2011

The body is the shore on the ocean of being–

Anonymous Sufi saying

Click here to read a truly poetic passage by Henry Beston about the majesty of the Cape, tinged with sadness – and in my case, despair –  by our human disregard for this treasure.

Every moment... one is growing into more or retreating into less.

Winter Harbor Maine  Sept. 2011     J.Stimmell©2011

“Every moment of one’s existence one is growing into more

or retreating into less.

One is always living a little more

or dying a little bit.”

–Norman Mailer–