Monthly Archives: July 2013

Living the Quiet Life

30 Tuesday Jul 2013

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By Leo Babauta

When I first started simplifying my life, about 8 years ago, I remember my life being much busier.

I would say yes to everything, and go to lots of social stuff, and drive everywhere doing a crazy amount of things, rushing wherever I went. By crazy I mean it can drive you a bit insane.

These days I know a lot of people who do an amazing amount of socializing online instead of in person — chatting and sending messages and tumbling and posting pictures and status updates. While I understand the need for social connection, I also recognize the addictiveness of it all, to the point where we have no quiet.

Quiet space is incredibly important to me these days. I like my quiet mornings where I can drink a nice tea, meditate, write, as the day grows light and the kids are sleeping. I like quiet on my runs and long walks, so that I can process my ideas, give my thoughts some space, reflect on my life.

The quiet space I allow myself has made possible my writing, but also all the improvements I’ve made to my life: healthier eating, the exercise habit, meditation, decluttering, procrastinating less, etc. Because the quiet space allows me to be more conscious about my actions, and gives me the time to consider whether what I’m doing is how I want to live my life.

And so, while I still socialize, I live a quieter life now. I have my quiet mornings of meditation, tea and writing, but also my nice runs, some time drinking tea or working out with a friend, alone time with my wife, reading with my kids, and some time alone with a good novel.

Is every minute one of quiet? No, the kids make sure I have some noise in my life, and I’m grateful for that, but the quiet is also in how I respond to the noise. A quiet response is one that absorbs the force of noise, with compassion, and doesn’t throw it back with equal force.

Today I wish the quiet life upon you.

Some ideas:

  • Create a little quiet space in the morning.
  • Meditate for 2 minutes a day (to start with). Just sit and put your attention on your breath, returning when your thoughts distract you.
  • When you feel the urge to socialize online, pause. Give yourself a little quiet instead.
  • When you feel the automatic urge to say Yes to an invitation, consider saying No instead, unless it’s something that will truly enrich your life.
  • Don’t take music on a run or walk. Instead, give yourself space with your thoughts.
  • When someone talks to you, instead of jumping in with something about yourself, just listen. Absorb. Reflect their thoughts back to them. Appreciate their beauty.
  • Make time for the people closest to you. One-on-one time is best. Really pay attention to them.
  • Make time for creating, with no distractions.
  • Spend some time decluttering, and creating peaceful space.
  • Create space between your automatic reaction, and your actions (or words). Even one second is enough. In that space, consider whether your reaction is appropriate.
  • Instead of rushing, take a breath, and slow down.
  • Pay attention to sensations of whatever you’re eating, drinking, doing.
  • Have a daily time for reflection.

You don’t have to do all of these, and certainly not all at once. A slow, happy progression is best.

In the quiet space that you create, in this world of noise and rushing and distraction, is a new world of reflection, peacefulness, and beauty. It’s a world of your own, and it’s worth living in.

 

reblogged from zenhabits.net

Uncopyright notice: Leo’s entire blog is uncopyrighted (since January 2008), he has put it in public domain; still, when reposting, BE A DARLING and credit the source of original content because it’s the right thing to do.

 

A quiet day on Darebin Creek, Tom Roberts (1856–1931)

A quiet day on Darebin Creek, Tom Roberts (1856–1931)

 

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‘If you wake up surrounded by broken vodka bottles…

10 Wednesday Jul 2013

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… ass-naked in the snow you had a quiet night with some work colleagues in Moscow’, says the Road Junky’s Instant Global Morning-After Self-Locator. Sounds funny and perfectly depicts the common stereotypes about mother Russia – but it’s false. 21st century Moscow’s reality is rather what they believe to await you in Switzerland, under the circumstances: If you wake up in a snow bank and are greeted in six different languages by a helpful hiker you are in Switzerland. Don’t touch anything; you can’t afford it.  You see, Zurich is ranking somewhere 7th in various lists of the world’s most expensive cities, and Moscow is either No1 – or second only to Tokio.

The truth is that my friends and colleagues here don’t drink more than my other friends anywhere in the world, it’s only that they pay double and triple for the booze. All in all, if you are dying to live a genuinely Russian experience – or, rather, a Soviet one – you’d better head for Moldova or Belarus. I’ve been to Moldova couple of years ago – and it’s really an experience out of this world, somehow the globalization has bypassed it and you can indeed experience stuff unavailable anywhere else; i was told the same is in Belarus.

In Moscow – you won’t get lost if you don’t speak Russian, as it was the case some quarter a century ago, Russian cars are driven mostly by migrants from Central Asia, while locals prefer Mercedes and Audi. Wherever  you go – there is a McDonald’s and a Starbucks and there are very few foods from home which you’ll miss horribly while staying here – you can buy pretty much everything in Moscow’s hypermarkets.

If you were here 25 years ago, you needed to speak from the framework of Russian culture, so to be understood – cultural gap was huge because Russians at the time were watching their own movies exclusively, reading their own writers mostly and listening to music that was made-in-Russia… It’s not the case anymore, the same Hollywood blockbusters are screened in the movie  theaters here and the NY Times bestsellers are translated instantly. Nowadays, when you want to share something from another culture – your brain won’t explode while thinking of the Russian equivalent (i mean the impossible comparisons of a kind: Jim Morrison is to us, what Vladimir Vysotsky is to you, to which foreigners used to resort at the time), just spit it out, whatever it is that you thought of – chances are that your Russian host already knows about it.

Of course that there are certain local specifics – like the tea culture and certain traditional foods, such as herring which is savored with delicious Borodino bread … But those you can taste in any Russian restaurant pretty much everywhere in the world.

Oh, right – many Russian women still wear fur, but so do Montenegrin and vegetarianism is not as common as it is in the Western Europe and USA.

Other than that – i really have hard time thinking of some major differences; Russians, like other Eastern Europeans, were said to be gloomy because here it wasn’t common to keep smiling at all times, but that’s changing too; also the previously obligatory use of patronymics is mostly the matter of the past.

All of that being said, you can imagine my amazement when -unexpectedly – i’ve lived an jamais vu experience, here at VDNH which by now is as ‘all-Russian’ as KFC at the Chinese Great Wall is all Chinese.

After the stroll at the botanical garden, across the park’s ponds we headed to the Exhibition Center VDNH which is adjunct to it. With a friend who’s my usual sojourner during the local adventures, for some reason we ventured into the Pavilion No2, where Soviet geological wonders used to be exposed (nowadays it’s a flower market.)

Lo and behold, we hear loud Panjabi music coming from somewhere, we follow it and get to some stairs leading down, the entrance itself being hidden by white textile paravan… Excited, we head downstairs and find ourselves in the most amazing place in which i’ve been during my three years long stay in Moscow – it’s a restaurant and a shop owned by a Bengali gentleman, Amin, who runs it mostly for his own countrymates and the small business owners from the flower market.

I do doubt there is a friendlier restaurant owner in Moscow than Mr Amin – and i am certain that you can’t treat yourself to such delicacies at such a low prices anywhere else. The atmosphere is that of a local pub – and it doesn’t matter that you don’t really know anyone, you feel welcomed; with all the loneliness and alienation typical of Moscow and all other megalopolises – Amin’s restaurant does feel like a cosy, divinely smelling and tad messy home away from home. (Pictures posted with permission.)

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Critique of Pure Writing Genius

06 Saturday Jul 2013

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English: An original card from the tarot deck ...

English: An original card from the tarot deck of Jean Dodal of Lyon, a classic “Marseilles” deck. The deck dates from 1701-1715. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sic. You know i am into catchy phrases, but there is something else… It’s that a genius  is presumably so exceptional and so out of ordinary, that it’s beyond critique – and often – even beyond the comprehension of us, the mortals.

Let alone that no one really knows what’s genius (except that we all agree Da Vinci, Einstein and Tesla were that ), sometimes being genius in one field obviously doesn’t mean the individual in question can transplant that geniousness  onto something else – or – better to say, on anything else.

If you wonder what got me into this flow of thought – it’s that i am reading Italo Calvino’s Tarot inspired book – The Castle of Crossed Destinies… Meh. I’ve been hunting it for years and only this time in Moscow i bumped into a forgotten (and damaged) copy laying somewhere at the sides of a big, flashy bookstore in my neighborhood.

Not sure why i thought Calvino’s would be any different than Pavic’s – or of any other good (or even great) writer who thought his genius writing style sufficed to bite into something as complex and as mystical as Tarot is. You see, it’s not enough. It takes way more than being good (or even great) with words to write about Tarot – given that in your writings you aspire to any depth and any subtext.

I loved Calvino’s others books, he’s simply a great writer. The beginning of the Castle sounded promising – again, at first it’s the master storytelling that gets you… But what it comes down to?

It seems what Calvino did is the following – he shuffled and pulled the cards randomly and than wrote whatever association came to his (rich) imagination.

Which is good, and every single serious Tarotist did it – as a learning exercise. That’s what you do, when you are just starting to learn reading Tarot de Marseilles; you pull the cards randomly, arrange them in a line, pay attention to the body language of the figures depicted – and tell the story.

If you are somewhat gifted for writing and more so if you were diligent in your high school history classes – you’ll end up with a good story and most probably – with a great story.

Then you learn to read the Tarot as cartomancers do… and a whole new paradigm, a whole ‘brave new world’ opens up for you.

That space, the discourse between you and the cards – it’s sacred and i won’t pollute your experience by retelling mine, but whomever did it – knows it’s deep and overwhelming and mind blowing… Oftentimes it’s beyond verbalization, but when peeps who were brave enough and nerdy enough to let the Tarot paradigm infuse their minds, those who were opened enough (and mad enough) to live the Tarot experience… when they start putting those into words, in their very words – and often  in between them, you feel the Light, or that which we normally name ‘geniusness’.

I am not saying Calvino’s book is not good – it is of course, but not more than that – and somehow i did expect more.

The thing is that many great minds – such as Joseph Campbell, who co-authored a book on Tarot ( “Tarot Revelations”, Joseph Campbell and Richard Roberts)- in their work touched on Tarot and left it at that…

Sad, because one can’t but think – what if… What if those great minds really spent prolonged periods of time with their decks, without presuming that they can put it to some use, as it is?

Mary Greer writes on Jung and Tarot. I claim Mary to be genius – and here is why: i’ve studied from her books and i’ve been reading her posts on certain Tarot forum and in several facebook groups, see – firstly she has an out-of-ordinary capacity to learn, digest and deconstruct enormous quantities of both scientific data and mystical texts; she found the proverbial middle way – not being a slave to facts, but not falling into mishy-mashy pseudo-scientific discourse to which many of esoteric authors are inclined. You see – to achieve that balance when working with the occult – is genius. Also, Mary is movingly honest in her search – and from Socrates onwards all great minds were such. See, that – the honesty in one’s search for truth – is the main reason that Thomas Aquinas by most in academia is not even considered to be a philosopher; the thing with him is that he ‘knew’ the truth and by various means is manipulating you into his believes and views… that’s dogma, not philosophy, no matter how skillful the orator.

So, for myself, when defining a genius i follow the notorious ‘i know it when i see it’ – and it is so; we all have this or that author to whom we are partial, but we mostly agree on who among them is genius.

Calvino’s writing style is genius, it’s a gift and when you read his work, even in a dreaded translation, you feel it, you feel that 1% of something, that can’t be put into words and which can’t be achieved with the proverbial 99% of sweating. Calvino has it in his words, my pet peeve is that he thought it sufficed to write on Tarot.

Once again, his is a good book – and even  a great one, if you don’t have a clue about Tarot; the thing is that equally well written texts you can find on aeclectic.net if you go to the Tarot de Marseilles subforum and dig out some older threads there… You know what? You’ll find way better written texts there – because the peeps who authored them – Le Fanu of the Curious Cabinet, Paul Nagy, Enrique Enriques , Jean- Michel David and others with great gift for words wrote those – and that’s after having spent years and decades with the cards.

Tarot-wise, i grew up on that forum, so while reading Calvino’s book, i can’t stop myself from thinking: Italo, my man, you should have tried harder…

“Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.” 
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

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Europe’s Largest Botanical Garden

04 Thursday Jul 2013

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Russians take their Botanical Gardens very seriously – there are five in Moscow alone. The country’s botanical gardens were traditionally under the patronage of the Russian royal family, but Soviet authorities, however, managed to outdo the Tsars both in scope and grandeur.

The largest and the most famous one is that of the Russian Academy of Sciences’, located in the northwest part of the city, next to the VDNH Exhibition Center.

Officially founded in 1945 and spanning over 890 acres, it’s twice the size of Monaco, and Europe’s largest Botanical Garden.

The rose garden alone is the home of 2,500 species, including an ancient green Bengali rose.

adopted from: moscow.info and rt.com

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