My life is so busy. My biggest complaint is that I have no time for me. I am missing my mat, my meditation practice, my breath and my life! It is time to get my Zen on.
In order to achieve that I need to know what Zen is. Simply put, finding your Zen is cultivating your happiness. Zen is experiencing your life being fully present, and finding joy in the simplicity of life
Once I understood this, I just figured out that I can bring Zen to my everyday life and create more time, happiness and space for myself. I just have to become the master of my own “Zen-ness.” My Zen approach to my life has to become a part of my everyday mundane tasks.
I just finished rereading the Bhagavad Gita for the 12th time. I read it every year for my Yoga Teacher Training class, and every time I do, I find something new and profound in its pages. One of the questions that came up for me this time was “how do the divine and mundane aspects of our lives interact?” To engage the Divine is to find peace and happiness, which led to the question “how do I find Zen in the everyday?"
Finding the Divine in the Mundane
I am trying to find Zen at the grocery store. I loathe grocery shopping; to me this is among the most mundane tasks of my life. As a mother of 2 boys, I spend a great deal of my time grocery shopping or doing laundry. These aspects of my life are truly mundane and almost irritating. Acknowledging these feelings has helped me to look at how do I change my attitude about these tasks. How can I make them a Zen practice?
The answer is I change my perspective. Providing service is the most noble of all causes. In order to be happy you have to know yourself. Gandhi says : “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
Being gifted with children is the ultimate act of service and love. Shopping for food and providing them a clean and safe environment to live and grow is the ultimate Zen experience. The Zen experience is not about what this task is taking away from me but what I am giving, and how I am serving others.
So now, when I step into the grocery store, I look at it as nourishing not only my family, but my soul. When I see my children grow and succeed at tasks in their lives I know it’s because I’ve served them and nourished their bodies.
When I clean my house, I know I am serving my family and taking good care of them. It changes the way I feel about myself, my role in the world, and how I define happiness.
Getting Zen with the everyday is both a decision and a state of consciousness. The every mundane task that I do is the divine way I serve the world.
Where will YOU find Zen?
