Take it from this Arrow Street antique dealer: good things might come to they who wait, but good things never last. In the used goods business, where one person’s trash is another person’s treasure, it’s best to grab your treasure while it’s hot.
I personally think time is the most precious collectible around, being as it is both priceless and irreplaceable. One person’s waste of time is another person’s time well spent, and the older I get, the more quickly time gets snatched up. For all the time I’ve spent trying to save time, things have come out a wash: whether wasted or hoarded, seconds pass like so many beads of quicksilver, sparkling and ungraspable. The more you chase time, the faster it flows.
This morning dawned foggy but promised to be partly sunny, so I did something I’ve been meaning to do for months: I made the two hour drive down to Boston to attend the mid-morning long sitting at the Cambridge Zen Center. Yes, spending two and a half precious hours staring at a Dharma room floor might be most folks’ definition of Time Wasted, but in my mind it was (and always is) time well spent. When you consider the amount of time most of us spend rushing and worrying through our lives and through our days, spending an hour here and there simply stopping isn’t such a bad idea. For me, doing formal meditation practice at the Zen Center is one way of consciously slowing the pace of my life: a time to re-connect with body and breath in a setting purposely set aside for such practice.
The other perk to practicing at the Cambridge Zen Center is, well, Cambridge. Once Sunday’s mid-morning practice session is over at 11:30, there’s still plenty of time to head down to Harvard Square and soak in the sensory overload that is the Big City. Traveling to Boston or Cambridge from humble little Keene is always a treat for the senses: in the course of an afternoon, I can see more colorful people and overhear more accents and languages than I could during a month or more here in New Hampshire. Moving from the intentional silence of the Zen Center, where even the rumble of passing trucks and the wail of city sirens don’t disturb the prevailing serenity, to the hubbub of Harvard Square is like jumping from the refrigerator straight into the fire. During walking meditation in the Zen Center’s Dharma room, I meticulously heeded the angle and arch of every step. Walking among the huddled masses in Harvard Square, I had to keep on my toes to avoid getting run over by the teeming throngs.
Since the afternoon was overcast and I was more intent on watching and listening than I was on shutter-bugging, I didn’t take many pictures. However, one particular diptych says something about the dizzying array of options that greet you when you come down from the hills of New Hampshire to hit the streets of the Big City. No sooner had I left the tranquility of the Zen Center and then “pahked my cah neah Hahvahd Yahd,” I was bombarded by this pair of signs: the first promising sex from one side of the street…
…and the second asserting from the other side of the street the unreliability of earthly pleasures.
I’ll leave it to you to decide who wins the debate between Carrie Bradshaw and Mary Baker Eddy. As for me, I later discovered that I probably had wasted the morning meditating, since it would have been much easier for me to have bought Peace of Mind from a gumball machine rather than trying to earn it on a meditation mat and cushion.
Forget about Sex Every Night…it’s Peace of Mind that’s a precious commodity in Cambridge these days: get it while it’s hot.
Sep 25, 2005 at 9:43 pm
Considering you went to Boston for formal meditation, sight seeing, and taking great photographs, and I simply spent most of the day putting furniture back in place after having my carpets cleaned on Saturday. I would say you spent your time much better then I did, and had much more fun too.
Clean carpets did not give me “peace of mind”, nor was moving furniture around any fun. Time spend on getting carpets clean is almost pointless in the big picture of things, since they will only get dirty again. Perhaps I should take your advice on the precious use of time.
Of course hardwood floors would solve the the carpet problem, and being homeless would solve all house cleaning problems in one sweep. (No pun intended.) What would the enlighted Zen practioners do in this situation ?
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Sep 26, 2005 at 6:46 am
“I personally think time is the most precious collectible around, being as it is both priceless and irreplaceable. One person’s waste of time is another person’s time well spent, and the older I get, the more quickly time gets snatched up. For all the time I’ve spent trying to save time, things have come out a wash: whether wasted or hoarded, seconds pass like so many beads of quicksilver, sparkling and ungraspable. The more you chase time, the faster it flows.”
I wonder if you are aware of your own capacity for wisdom. The above quote is a gem, and could be the germ of a wonderful essay. I am 68, a place from which time seems to flow faster. You have given me the challenge of reframing my time perspective. I can choose to see it another way, huh?
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Sep 26, 2005 at 7:12 am
Time doing nothing is precious, so that the following action is meaningful.
Every breath is important, shameful to ignore that and rush around in busyness.
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Sep 26, 2005 at 7:58 am
I agree, time doing nothing in undoubtedly time very well spent. I love doing nothing…i can quite happily sit and do nothing for long periods of time. My housemate on the otherhand always has to be doing something. I don’t understand it personally…how you ALWAYS be doing something? Just sit down, chill out, relax for a little while. I love it!
great post! i love the peace of mind in a gumball machine! did you try one? did it work?
hope all’s well,
take care
Rach
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Sep 26, 2005 at 11:24 am
I really envy you, Lorianne. To me, you have just the perfect life and you spend it so well. It is still steamy hot in Nashville as September draws to a close. What I wouldn’t give to be in New England right now!
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Sep 26, 2005 at 2:15 pm
I echo Linda above – I love your life and thank you so much for sharing it with us.
Have you ever read books by Gladys Taber? She wrote books about life on a farm in Connecticut, Stillmeadow, and I loved reading her. Like you, she had such a capacity to share the joy of everyday life and the simple pleasures. She wrote a column in a magazine called Butternut Wisdom.
Thank you also for the near-daily entries! I need my fix, much like Reggie and his Indian tobacco. (I wonder, are there recovery programs for dogs?)
Nancy
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Sep 26, 2005 at 3:15 pm
Yes, I have a wonderful life: I’ve been amply blessed, and not a day goes by that I’m not at some point mindful of that fact!
Joe, you ask me what an enlightened Zen practitioner would do with their floor. If it were a carpeted floor, she would vacuum and occasionally shampoo it. If it were a hardwood floor, she would sweep and occasionally mop it. Which do you prefer?
Carol, we can *always* see things another way…if we couldn’t, what would be the point of being alive? 🙂
Rach, it seems that my STUDENTS are always masters of doing nothing! 🙂 No, I didn’t try any of the gumballs…I figured they were probably stale, and there’s nothing worse than STALE Peace of Mind! 🙂
Nancy, I’ve not read (or even heard of!) Gladys Taber. I’ll have to add her to my list of contemporary nature writers to check out.
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Sep 26, 2005 at 7:28 pm
Lorianne, focusing the beginning of your entry today, I wish point the issue “time”. As I am 62, I am concern and worry about the pass of the time. As said Carol Gee, this phase is a “place from which time seems to flow faster”. I have a book that I love so much, write by Seneca: “On the Shortness of Life”, which it is on special place on my bookshelf. I quote from it: “It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it.” I can feel and learn reading your “Hoarded Ordinaries” that you know very well how profit and use your time. You travel, you write, you teach, you do meditation, you photograph, you have fun and much more. Thank you for share with us your time!
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Sep 26, 2005 at 11:17 pm
Lorianne, I wrote a long comment for you – and now it is gone – I know not where. Anyway, suffice it to say that I have referenced your post on my blog for tomorrow.
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Sep 27, 2005 at 6:19 am
Greetings Lorraine … first time visitor here via Judy (kenju). I’m so glad she pointed me over in this direction. This was a wonderful read and with lovely photos to go along with it! I, for one, am pleased as punch to have spent this particular ‘time’ here reading your excellent works.
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Sep 27, 2005 at 10:53 am
I began to relax while viewing your pictures and the story to go along with it. What a wonderful way to spend the day! I really enjoyed your insight, and i’ll be back for more.
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Sep 27, 2005 at 11:15 am
I want that wood office chair.
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