Happy Friday to ALL!
Today I’m off for a little R&R starting with a good deep massage at The Encinitas Massage Center. My muscles are truly sore after my deadlifting and lunging workouts this week.
I hope you enjoy my Tao-Te-zen: Age Is Working at Life
Would your age be different?
If you had no fear of the end?
TAO-TE-zen practice is the culmination
Of no-mind.
No-mind comes as a total letting go
There is no worry,
No story,
Just peace.
Peace is the river that floats the boat
Peace is the soil
That supports beauty, the color.
The snake that eats its tail
Creating both the story and the land.
In zen there can be no age
For age is but a story being told.
Telling is working
Working is telling.
Zen is neither drop
Nor ripple
For no-mind has: is, and isn’t
That is all.
That is zen.
I’m sure all of you have had the opportunity to meet people in your life who truly love what they do.
If you think back for a moment and look at the faces, the eyes, and the bodies of those people who are truly living their dreams, their legacy, their love, you’re very likely to notice that there is a common denominator in that they all look younger biologically than their age chronologically.
Their eyes sparkle, their skin glows, and they have a beautiful aura around them of vibrant life-force.
A good example of this is tai chi and chi gong instructors (all of whom I’ve met that are authentic instructors) usually look at least 10 years younger biologically then they are chronologically because quite simply when we are doing what we love to do, we become timeless, we enter timelessness.
Surely you’re aware that there is a big difference between labor which ages us and doing a labor of love. Those labors that are fear based are the ones that age us. Labors of love don’t – they are akin to a mother’s willingness to endure the pain of child birth – it is a labor of love.
Elderly people often, especially in tribal societies, share their wisdom with children and young people. Even when they may be physically tired, their sharing is a labor of love, it is truly an authentic gift.
Because it is powered by love, there seems to be a wellspring which people who are loving and in love have access to that denies the diminished resources of energy that people typically feel as a process of aging or working at it.
One will find quite easily just by looking at their own life and life situation that after a day of working at life, whether it be staying in relationships that you’re not fulfilled in, or in a job you’re not fulfilled in, or in a religious practice that you’re not fulfilled in, that the fatigue emergent of such a way of living invites deep physiological, emotional, and mental fatigue.
That kind of fatigue actually stops us from authentic “rest.”
We will dream about what we need.
One who is hungry soon begins to dream about food. One who is not effectively able to meet their sexual needs quickly begins dreaming about sexual interactions. One who is financially challenged is likely to begin dreaming about money and ways to make it or ways they’re losing it, all of which are acts of awareness yet all of which have the potential to diminish our capacity to accept and enter into deep restful states of sleep.
On the other hand, those that are facing all the normal challenges of life yet have made the conscious choice to put their efforts into labors of love come home just as physically and mentally tired, but do not show the emotional fatigue and do give themselves permission to enter into deep, restful states.
You will see that such people cannot only get by on a lot less sleep, but they can acquire a degree of rest in a short period of time that one who is working at life and aging because of it cannot achieve.
The zen principle is the principle of the most efficient way.
No-mind is the principle of doing-not-doing.
In other words, being present with the moment and the natural flow of the seasons and energies of life before us give us what we need to live and rest well.
One who ages within the construct of the philosophy of zen grows the fruit of wisdom and develops a progressive inner safety and security that anchors then not in the earth plane where change and death are guaranteed, but in the spiritual plane where their roots are in the ground of being, not the temporary expressions of being.
Therefore, one who truly lives the principles of TAO-TE-zen is grounded in ultimate safety and security which is silence itself—which is deep rest—which is the optimal way to recharge for you next labor of love or day in the life of expressing your chosen labor of love.
Its a circle, a dance with Self and Life!
May your labors of Love provide you with just the right activity so that you can rest deeply and contribute wisely.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
