To Zen or Not To Zen...that is my question

I'm here.
At a dinner table.
Changing a diaper.
Driving the minivan (looking as smooth and relaxed as one can driving ye olde minivan)
Playing pirates.
Doing dishes,
Washing laundry.
Looking for sleep.
Meeting the repairman,
Paying the bills.
Cleaning up toys.
Bulding couch forts.
Taking out trash.
Returning calls.
Searching job sites.

Everything all of us is doing, connected, hardwired into one another, a giant paternal pulse, in iambic pentamter beating away our living moments.

Boy w've been busy and I apologize for being away--it was intentional and it was part of my growth, being able to let go of the fact that I was going to blob it out everyday and while spiritually, emotionally, mentally I did just that I was unable to send it out to you or post. Rahter than worry myself about it or beat myself up about it for feeling like a fatehrly failure I just let it go, knowing I would get back to it. The reasons are as complex as the lives we have been living, all of us, making our way through each day-- Most snowy here, most jam-pakced with joy and play and trying to fill the days with laughter and silliness and eating and time together.

So here I am, having walked another long way, having asked myself another series of long questions with even longer questions attached to those...and surprisingly some answers along my way too. If I try to live Zen am I missing the point of living Zen, and if I focus too hard on the living of it will I miss the living and my supposed inextricable link to my world?
What about just giving myself over to it--if I do that, and consciously know I am working on doing that, does it take soemthing away from my journey?
I have decided in musing on these things that not any of that matters and if it did it is just bs anyway and not the role or job of this Zen Daddy--or probably any Zen Daddy out there in the universe.
The blogging is a quest, the lifestyle and choices are the vehicle for my self-transformation and that is all that matters along that line of ideology and if other friends, soon-to-be-friends, strangers, parents whoever enjoy the journey with me and find themselves dealing with all of this too and search for their own clarity and tips for being the best they can be daily then it is all truly worthwhile and it will have achieved something that transcends the random and everyday.

Questions are a window into oursleves and into what we deeply at our truest evolved forms wish to be. We ask questions partly because of what we fear from the artificial, superficial world around us I think and we ask those questions also as a weapon to ward off that world believing at those deepest levels that we as a society, as a world can overcome and destroy those veneers and facades which prohibit so many from attaining their best selves.

There...I feel better about those issues, are you confused? Hope not, but if you are that is a wonderful place to work from too. Fear, confusion, uncertainty are only allies in our lives that are reminding us that something more important is out there for us to anchor our hopes and dreams in.

I am wishing you happy searching and questioning.

With Gratitude,
Zen Daddy

Meditating while standing beneath a ceiling fan, seven feet off the ground, arms burning from working on the wiring, thinking about how the world in its ways tries to hardwire us to experiences or expectations of how we should be, how we should define ourselves. I play crisscross with the wires, thinking about for a moment how I do not want to be that kind of person.I believe in tracing one's path you must pull your fingers from that grid and unplug. the electronic herd holds no meaning for you if you are simply being pulled by their mechanical tide, all heading in one direction.

January 26 is coming. A child's birthday. What is really most important here?

I swing from vine to vine tonight, having had a lovely night with my kiddies, more driven by exhaustion then inspiration in my writing, but I am trying to work these convoluted shapes in my head out.

I am wishing all of you a deeply restful, undisturbed rest.

Zen Daddy

Jan.20-22

Two days...trying to put two days into one post--I have been thinking a lot and pondering various personal thoughts, but I am going to be succint, or at least focus on keeping my thoughts brief.

I like to think that we are all cartographers in the world and uncertain ones at that.
Reading the maps that we design for our lives, getting caught in the shoals, being tossed and turned. Sometimes seemingly floating forever going nowhere, watching the horizon but never getting any closer to it.

Isn't parenting like that?

Question: Are children happier within the construct and contexts of family life when the parents are happy and feeling fulfilled and actualized? Is it true? Do the children see that accountability, ownership and deep sense of joy and consciously or subconsciously absorb it as well?

For me and my life with my wife and babies, I think so 100%--we live the questions adn answers of it daily, but what do you think moms and dads, or any friend or reader out there.

When I look at my map and see it smeared with kids' food, scratched out crayon questions, re-tracings of my steps I am reminded of earlier posts and earlier revelations that you won't get everything right along the way--you will barely come close on a daily basis, but you can do a lot of things well and set your sails to catch the most favorable wind as you plot out how to raise your kids and why you want to raise them in the manner that you do.

At times however, I certainly feel I know every breaker and wave, every minute pull of the wind and rudder, but often I am not sure what instrument to use and so I make it up and see how it plays out. Foundering at times, but so far, after 11 years of so, coming out above water, a bit waterlogged and gasping at times, but loving the sweet oxygen and rush I get from all of them, from life, from the adventure.


How do you do it?
What mistakes do you make? Do you feel, as I, that they are things to be celebrated or things to avoid?

What's your compass?


Zen Daddy

Teachable Moments

They're out there--those teachable moments.

The true master realizes that they know nothing and that they have everything to learn from their students.

Things that happen, that just sort of pop up and remind us of why we love something, these teachable moments It could be in the classroom or the proverbial schools and halls of life, but by living in each moment, moment to moment trying to just really be, amazing things seem to happen when the guard goes down. And I did not miss the pun of teach-able--but I beleive that the essence of this word lives in the "Able," the ability to be want to teach, to teach and most importantly, to be able to be taught. To be able to sit down across from another human being, occupying practically the same space, breathing the same air, and simply let yourself learn by just being there with them. It takes a great amount of patience, courage and attention to be able to just be with someone else, let along understand that you have libraries of education to learn from them. And they're all teachers, just as we are all students.

A new lesson each day.

Zen Daddy

Jan.18

Just grateful for having spent a grand adventure in the arms of my boys.

Look at what is most important in your life.
What is worth living for.
What is worth dying for.
What is worth everything to no one but you.
Hold onto those things, tuck them deeply into the folds of your jacket and let these be the roadmap which guide your every single moment.

Zen Daddy

Jan.17: Releasing Weight

Learning to let it go means learning to release the unecessary weight.

And believe me parents, this diet plan is more than Atkinson bargained for. We are talking something much bigger than just physcial, with results that are lifelong and full of deep healing.

Turn down the volume in your head a few clicks simply by switching off the retaliation, rebuttal, or return comment button--you want to say something to that person who cut you off? You have something negative on your mind you want to tell a co-worker? Your angry? Disilusioned?Upset at a casual remark a spouse made that got your goat? Release it. Let your weight go.

Can you imagine, for just one pure moment, what that might feel like?


That aggressive need to be right, to be first, to be the one with THE thing to say, to act as if you're in control over someone else..you're fooling yourself, lulling yourself into some false sense of security thinking "now I've told them.." Release the weight from your life, untie the albatross and take control of your positive living--living that occurs as a result of the good things you say and do, living that happens out of a need to live a good and decent life. How do we fix what goes wrong? We can't-- it already went wrong, but we can do our best in the next moment to live a little better, and if it is our "fault" in some form we can own those issues, apologize and release the weight.

This Dad worked on that today--feeling whole lot lighter today, with just a few tactical errors along the way. By asking myseld about this and all of these other 16 days worth of issues, I am seeing when thigns manifest, how, and creating solutions rather than problems. I am pursuing understanding on a different level now and truly understanding what does and does not matter in the "weight" that frames my daily existence as a person.

So go ahead and give a day over to the release of your weight and check the mental/emotional/spiritual scale at the end of the day--results might be more impressive than you think.

Zen Daddy

Walking the plank...

Lovely day with my boys, but tonight the Zen legacy comes from the mouth of babes.

"Walk the plank me hardies..." says my boys. Lives my boys.

At first this may not make sense, after all the Chinese Zen Buddhists and Japanese masters did not really make their way down to the Barbary Coast to have a cup of tea and talk about enlightenment--perhaps if they did history would have taken a different tact and the English would have been a whole lot more cheerful for a hundred years, but I digress.

We all walk the plank, and either the actions we choose put us on it or we place oursleves on its edge, peering out over an unfathomable sea, swirling uncertainty beneath us, potential murky and dangerous enemies below. Sometimes we need to walk the plank, maybe even give ourselves a good springing bounce before we leap off, and sometimes there are a lot of sharp teeth and eager mouths waiting for us, hungry for what we have or who we are.

I find that if you face the open sea, face lifted to the horizon, body eager and pressed against the caress of a hopeful wind, you can find something that feels like peace. Everything tunes in tightly and all is silence. Whoever or whatever got you out on that plank doesn't matter, why you are there does not matter. The fact is-- wherever you are means that you are there, and it's that plank. So, are you aware of where you are and are you prepared to give that position up in order to accept something bigger than you when you feel your feet on that plank--whether the sea is choppy or smooth?

Currently, we are knee deep in pirate flsgs, sinking ships, swords and eye patches, a pile of scattered Connect Four pieces, sloppy office debris, full belly's, mail and papers probably from 1982, dishes, laundry, workloads, missed calls, returned calls, chipped paint, unwashed floors, trashcans, dirty sinks, broken stuff, stuff. All of it matters and none of it matters--I am here, in it, you are there in it, and nothing can change that fact except for how we choose to see it, recognize it, really be in it and let self move with the rythym of tides. There we are: at work, at home, in the car, sitting on a toilet, at a watercooler, in a cubicle, in an office, in a basement, doing paperwork, missing a lover, loving a love, holding a friend or missing one, playing with kids, sleeping, crying, fighting, living, dying, hoping, praying--pick any adjective and insert it into the moment of where you are now. In everyone there is a plank you are walking, we are walking.

You will slip a little out there, it has many textures for you to discern, and yes, nothing is very easy about doing it and yet everything is. Guess what..you're on it right now and so am I. That horizon, that wind, that taste, this life, this...everything. Go ahead, take that next step.

It's a doozy.


With Gratitude for every day,
Zen Daddy