Adventures in Zen

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With apologies for my absence — I’m about to begin a long-term residency training program at the Zen Center of New York City in Brooklyn, and preparations have been daunting. I’ve sold, donated or discarded most of my stuff and moved what’s left into a self-storage place, and Tuesday I’ll move into the Zen Center. Right now Sadie Awful Bad Cat and I are staying with my daughter in Brooklyn, where Sadie will live here for at least a few months. She is already pretty much in charge.

I don’t anticipate this will affect Mahablog much. One of the reasons I chose this particular place is that it allows people free time to do other work or even hold an outside job, so once I’ve settled in I’ll have plenty of writing time. This coming week blogging may be a bit sparse, though.

Meantime, be sure to read “A Christian Nation? Since When?” by Kevin Kruse in the New York Times. It explains a lot.

17 thoughts on “Adventures in Zen”

  1. Wow! I keep looking at everything we own and thinking how much less I wish there was. I have that NYT from today’s flight home from Tucson, and saw but did not read. Have you or any of the regulars here read THE FAMILY by Jeff Sharlett?

  2. I remember being in grade school when the pledge of allegiance changed. I remember a lot about the Eisenhower administration because it was during my formative years. However, while I remember that stuff, I have days when remembering at lunch time what I had for breakfast is a good thing. Regarding all this business about Hillary’s emails, I have this one question: Didn’t Edward Snowdon prove to us that Government servers aren’t as safe as once thought either?

    Also, when you finish your training, will be able to have a cat then? I could never give up my cat.

  4. What a great move. How long do you think you’ll be at the Zen Center? “Long-term” sounds like indefinitely.

    Great article in the NYT, I knew bits and pieces of this story, but never had the whole picture explained to me.

    @Bill Bush – I’d heard of “The Family”, and looked it up on Amazon:

    Checking in on a friend’s brother at Ivenwald, a Washington-based fundamentalist group living communally in Arlington, Va., religion and journalism scholar Sharlet finds a sect whose members refer to Manhattan’s Ground Zero as “the ruins of secularism”; intrigued, Sharlet accepts on a whim an invitation to stay at Ivenwald. He’s shocked to find himself in the stronghold of a widespread “invisible” network, organized into cells much like Ivenwald, and populated by elite, politically ambitious fundamentalists; Sharlet is present when a leader tells a dozen men living there, “You guys are here to learn how to rule the world.” As it turns out, the Family was established in 1935 to oppose FDR’s New Deal and the spread of trade unions; since then, it has organized well-attended weekly prayer meetings for members of Congress and annual National Prayer Breakfasts attended by every president since Eisenhower. Further, the Family’s international reach (“almost impossible to overstate”) has “forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most oppressive regimes in the world.”

    I thought that “The Family” was a recent thing, but apparently it’s of the same origins as the stuff mentioned in the NYT article.

  5. “Didn’t Edward Snowdon prove to us that Government servers aren’t as safe as once thought either?”

    Exactly. That would is another reason this whole email flap is ridiculous.

    On top of that, our “brilliant” government is CURRENTLY twisting tech company’s arms to build “back doors” into their products. That is the height of idiocy, and companies should instead build products even THEY can’t snoop on– something Apple has been trying to do. Back doors MAY catch the occassional one-in-a-million terrorist, but back doors WILL put everybody’s financial and personal safety at risk from hackers. NOT worth the risk. It would also put all US tech products at a disadvantage when selling services to other countries. I get the impression most politicians wouldn’t know how to set the time on their VCR’s….

  6. @Tom_b – I’ve always assumed the software (and hardware) we use already has back doors, for years. I think that horse left the barn.

  7. Wow! Maha, I really admire you. I am in the process of selling my home, getting rid of a lot of stuff and planning on moving into a much smaller apartment. It’s really hard for me cause I want to keep a lot of the “stuff” but I know it must be done. To make it harder to find an apartment, my dog, Mr. Spock, is a big dog, a mix of German Shepherd and Husky. Many places won’t accept dogs over 40 lbs. and I am not going anywhere without him. He is my soulmate. So when I think about what you’re doing it gives me encouragement. Sometimes we have to let go of what we have to make room for the gifts that are waiting for us.

  8. Tom B: I thought I was the only one who still had a VCR. Back in the 90s, before the advent of DVDs, I went crazy taping stuff from the TV and now I have beaucoup tapes I have to get rid of because I know I will never watch them. Besides the fact that they have probably corroded by now or fallen apart or whatever it is happens to old tapes. But it is scary to think I am like these old fogey politicians who hang on to old ideas, fantasies, lies or whatever they have clutched in their arthritic hands.

  9. Maha dear – thanks for factoring this blog into your future plans. It would have been too dreadful to read a final farewell from you.

    I hope this move brings you the life you are hoping for. Very much looking forward to reading everything you post online. All the best to you and Sadie.

  12. Gulag: Thanx! My house has just been on the market for a week. But they tell me it is a seller’s market here in my little burg. Don’t know how long it will take. I still have to bury St. Joseph. My Catholic friends tell me it works like magic. It is really just kind of a waiting game.

  13. You have to move along to where the search takes you, and who knows where that will be?

    It seems that a lot of us are at the stage of life when we need to lighten our load and simplify. I had always thought that I could sell the curiosities that I collected over a lifetime as part of our retirement plan, and that’s been working out okay, but it’s time to step on the gas a bit. Maybe that really doesn’t matter. In the end, simplicity is its own reward and physical things will find a new home, even if it’s a landfill. The cats, dogs, goats and horses are the hard part. But, if you know that the parting step was to a familiar, secure place with a good companionship, that’s about all you can do.

    Best of luck in the new adventure, but, selfishly, I hope that you will continue the blog as long as your heart is in it..

  14. Any “Plan B” response to the PPACA was the responsibility of the GOP.

    But they failed to hand-in any homework or papers, and thus earned an “F-!”

    To try to conjure-up some new mythical back-up plan, is a disservice to the people who crafted the actual PPACA.

  15. Oooops!

    Sorry, I hit “Submit Comment,” when I meant to copy and paste to another website whose commenting system sucks!
    The WaMo website has great writers, but a commenting system that rivals dial-up for slow speed!

  16. Oh, and by the way the article at the end of the link was very interesting. I guess we got sidetracked.

  17. I admire people who follow their dreams. I have tried to instill in my children the confidence to be able to change places in order to seek new opportunities. What is interesting is how many people remain tethered to the place they were raised.

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