Tag: Buddha

Deciding To Smile Anyway

Deciding To Smile Anyway

Though he’s never spoken a word to me, his presence is a source of daily inspiration.

He’s been sitting in my garden for a few years now. Indifferent to the rain, snow, heat, or the cold, he just sits there. Smiling and laughing, without a care in the world.

I guess it’s pretty easy to not have a care in the world when you’re six inches tall and made out of concrete. And that’s exactly what he is, my cracked yellow Buddha, a small piece of statuary I found on a dusty shelf at a local closeout store. Cracked, because he’s been exposed to years of wet winter weather. Yellow, because I painted him in a failed attempt to protect his porous surface from the wet winter weather. 

There’s something wonderfully imperfect about a cracked, yellow Buddha. Maybe that’s what Continue reading “Deciding To Smile Anyway” →

The Magnetic Nature Of Expectations

The Magnetic Nature Of Expectations

The quote arrived in a social media feed.

“Expect nothing. Appreciate everything.”

The appreciate everything part…I can learn to do that. But the expect nothing part?

Is that even possible?

I’m not sure where my expectations come from, but they’ve always been there in one form or another. Expectations for myself as well as expectations for others. Especially the ones I had for others. Buddha warned that unmet expectations certainly can be a source of great suffering.

That’s exactly what they’ve been for me.

My problem with my expectations is they would often contradict reality. It was me not accepting What Is in favor of how it is I felt it Should Be. Or needed it to be. Forcing is a form of fear, a need to control that which is out of your control. Yes, a perfect breeding ground for a great source of suffering to flourish in.

Releasing expectations is a pathway towards peace, but for me it’s been a bit of a rocky road. Having no expectations means no one can disappoint you nor let you down, right? But many attempts to expect nothing proved to be nothing more than jaded, passive aggressive attempts to defiantly deal with my Continue reading “The Magnetic Nature Of Expectations” →

Buddha, Red Meat, And A Salad Fork

Buddha, Red Meat, And A Salad Fork

So, how do I not eat meat?

For a full year?

New Year’s Day for me falls in October. Because that’s my birth month. I’ve started getting far more intentional about what I want to accomplish in the 12 months between birthdays. Far too many years have come and gone and the only thing I got was older.

I don’t want to just be older.

This past year the goal was to do 20,000 push-ups, which worked out to be 55 push-ups per day, every day, for 365 days. I still don’t really know why I wanted to do it. I guess the Continue reading “Buddha, Red Meat, And A Salad Fork” →