Last 2 days to sponsor my meditation marathon
Sit Down, Rise Up!
A reminder to all of my friends that on Saturday I’m participating at the Interdependence Project marathon and I need your help.
As you can read in my previous post, I will be publicly sitting for 4 hours on Saturday, between 11AM and 3PM, in support of the Interdependence Project. This is the annual fund raising for this great non profit organization.
Showing your support is easy: visit this page, select your amount, and add my name in the “Name of sitter” field.
I know you want to do it, and the time is short! Come to the event, which is hosted by the ABC Carpet and Home at the corner between Broadway and 19th street, to see me sitting still and to get free meditation classes with three great teachers: Roshi O’Hara, Dr. Miles Neale, and Robert Chender. The classes are at 12:00PM, 2PM and 5:3pPM. If you want to learn more about meditation, now is the time.
Meb Keflezighi wins the NYC Marathon
Meb Keflezighi (right) around the 8th mile on Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn (Photo by Antonella Pavese)
This was my first time watching the NYC Marathon. It was an amazing experience. The entire neighborhood was in the street, cheering, making noise, dancing, and having fun, welcoming with the same enthusiastic support the first runners and the last runners, the fast and the slow, as people of all races and ages streamed through.
Go, John!
More picture of the NYC Marathon seen from Brooklyn »
Sponsor me, as I sit still.
Sit Down, Rise Up!
You might know that I am part of the Interdependence Project (IDP), a non-profit organization based in Manhattan blending meditation, art, and activism. On November 7, I will meditate for 4 hours as part of a 24-hour meditation marathon organized to support IDP’s annual fundraising.
Donations collected for the 24-hour marathon will be used to fund classes on Buddhist meditation and philosophy, to take actions on social issues, and to sponsor art projects. The IDP practices integral activism, an approach to progressive social transformation that connects personal experience with political work and our efforts to transform society.
Why am I asking you to give money to the Interdependence Project?
Because I care deeply about the IDP and I want this organization to thrive. I also want you to learn about IDP’s unique approach to personal and social activism. The IDP project survives Manhattan’s high rents (we are on the Bowery in the LES) and program expenses through donations and low-fee classes. Among the many IDP programs: college tutoring for people getting out of prison, a project to eliminate plastic bags from New York through a combination of public events, awareness raising, and legislative action; art workshops.
All this, combined with the informal, non-cultish, and smart community, makes the ID project one the best place to be mindful in NYC. Your donations will help a great cause and will be tax deductible.
How can you help?
I will be sitting for 4 hours during a 24 relay meditation event, and I’m asking to sponsor my effort with an hourly donation to our non-stop, group meditation marathon. For example, a $2/hour donation offers the IDP $48, but you can donate as much or little as you want.
I will be sitting between 11AM and 3PM on November 7th, in a window at the ABC Carpet and Home at the corner between Broadway and 19th street. Pass by to take a picture and make faces as I try to sit still. As you may expect, I will be sitting there no matter what. But 4 hours of meditation are hard stuff, and your donation will keep me motivated and warm and fuzzy.
To donate, please visit this page, select, your amount, and add my name in the “Name of sitter” field.
With gratitude,
Antonella
The City that always sleeps on the subway
The cheerful person who defined New York City as the city that never sleeps must have never stepped on a subway car.
There is no time of the day, no subway line, no neighborhood that is immune from the army of NYC subway car sleepers. We sleep in the morning and in the evening, but also at lunch time and in the early afternoon. We sleep crossing downtown Brooklyn, we nap in Gramercy and Soho, we snooze in Forrest Hill, Washington Heights, and the Bronx.
Some subway travelers sleep lightly, their eyes gently shut and sitting straight as if meditating, still holding a book or a bag. Some sleep hard, falling down from their seat, leaning on the person on their side, snoring, and sometimes missing their stop. People can even sleep standing on their feet, their forehead on the metal bar.
Train sleeping crosses all the boundaries of race, age, economic status. Entire families find harmony in shared sleep time on the hard seats of a subway car. We all come together in the sweet arms of Underground Morpheus.
New York is the city that is chronically sleep deprived, and takes naps on the subway.
[See 800 more pictures of NYC subway sleeping on Flickr]
[Sleep Bonus: Look at politicians sleeping at public events.]
Happy right now!
I’m looking out of the window at a bright blue sky and the naked tree branches of the end of winter, with new buds waiting for the spring a few weeks away, shivering in the loud wind. For a moment, just a moment, I feel at peace. Just looking out of my window and listening to the wind, there is nothing missing from this moment. I feel, I dare to say, happy like Louis Armstrong in my favorite song of all times.
I’m aware that this state of mind is fragile. In a minute, I will be thinking of what I need to do today, tomorrow, and in the far future. I will start worrying about the pile of todos in my GTD system that I don’t have time to finish, the difficult discussion with my boss that is waiting for me this afternoon and that I’m rehearsing obsessively, the feeling of my own inadequacy, and I’ll be back to my familiar state of hectic anxiety.
I wonder: do we really want to be happy? I look at myself and most of the people I know, and I notice our remarkable gift for postponing happiness and justify why we couldn’t possibly be happy now. An old boyfriend of mine was certain (and tried to persuade me) that we could not be happy until the inevitable proletarian revolution would take place. His belief was the marxist version of my Catholic Sunday school’s teachings: life is a bitch, but if you don’t sin and/or if ask for forgiveness when you do, when you die you’ll end up in Heaven and then you’ll be happy. I give credit to my boyfriend for believing that happiness was possible in this life.
Raise your hand if you think you’ll be happy when life finally gives you a more satisfying job (or, in this economic situation, just a job), or a better relationship, nice warm weather, more money in your 401(k); you’ll be happy when you retire, when you get the money to buy a Kindle, the new MacBook Pro, or a shine motorcycle, that beautiful pair of shoes, or that fancy new table for the dining room. Perhaps you’ll be happy when you move to the West Coast, or to the East Coast, or to that tropical paradise you’ve visited once. You’ll be happy tomorrow. Today is for making your life better.
I thought so. We all hold our breath and wait for the wave to pass, for the rain to stop, and the sun to shine again.
But why? What is preventing us to be happy right here, right now?
A few days ago, while reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings for a class that I’m taking at the Interdependence Project, I found this paragraph on aimlessness:
“If we think we have twenty-four hours to achieve a certain purpose, today will become a means to obtain an end. The moment of chopping wood and carrying water is the moment of happiness. We do not need for these chores to be done to be happy. To have happiness in this moment is the spirit of aimlessness. Otherwise, we will run in circles for the rest of our life. We have everything we need to make the present moment the happiest in our life, even if we have a cold or a headache. We don’t have to wait until we get over our cold to be happy. Having a cold is a part of life.
(…) We don’t need to become anything else. We don’t need to perform some particular act. We only need to be happy in the present moment, and we can be of service to those we love and to our whole society. Aimlessness is stopping and realizing the happiness that is already available. If someone asks us how long he has to practice in order to be happy, we can tell him that he can be happy right now!
(…) I’m happy in the present moment, I do not ask for anything else. I do not expect any additional happiness or conditions that will bring about more happiness. The most important practice is aimlessness, not running after things, not grasping.”
This quote hit me directly between the eyes. If you have run into Thich Nhat Hanh in person or in writing you know that, other than having a lot of Hs in his name, he is a delightful, sweet vietnamese zen monk that writes poetry and knows how to speak to your heart. This book is on the foundations of Buddhism, and as other books on the subject, it has important insights, many numbered lists, and practices to perform. But that quote spoke to me directly.
I could see Thich Nhat Hanh looking right in my eyes and saying: please stop using any possible excuse to avoid to be happy now. Don’t tell yourself that you are not wise enough, that you don’t meditate enough, that you don’t have enough money to retire, that your coworker just yelled at you, that your friend just yelled at your, that the sky is not blue, your mom didn’t love you enough as a child, or that you are socially awkward. Take responsibility for what you are doing to yourself day after day, moment after moment: not paying attention to what can make the present moment the happiest in your life and obsessing about the things that make yourself feel miserable.
Dear friend, continues Thich Nhat Hanh, there is nothing in the future that will bring you happiness if you are not willing to listen to your happiness right now. Some of us are in really ugly situations, it’s true, but even that is not a good excuse to deny ourself the happiness that we could experience if we just paid attention to what is here now.
Perhaps we are afraid of happiness. Perhaps we are just used to be worried and busy, as if our worrying could save us from danger or improve our situation in the future. Perhaps this particular state of peaceful and fulfilled happiness is unfamiliar to us and we don’t recognize it as a useful state of mind. Whatever the reason that makes us focus more on what is missing than on what is there, we should think of the price we pay for procrastinating happiness.
But, I hear you and myself say, how can anybody be happy with all that is happening in the world, the people who are killed, the kids that are dying of hunger or preventable disease right now, the economic crisis that is hurting so many? The old Thay replies:
Yes, there is tremendous suffering all over the world but knowing this need not paralyze us. (…) Worrying does not accomplish anything. Even if you worry twenty times more, it will not change the situation in the world. In fact, your anxiety will only make things worse. (…) If we don’t know how to breathe, smile, and live every moment of your life deeply, we will never be able to help anyone.”
So, ask yourself, do you really think that something outside of yourself will bring you happiness? Something that may or may not come, that may or may not stay, that may or may not be the way you expect it to be? And how can you be sure that even if this mysterious and elusive thing exists, you would recognize that it’s arrived if you don’t paying attention?
So, I realize, happiness takes responsibility and commitment. Believing that what I’m not yet or I don’t have yet will bring me happiness is such a hurtful illusion. There is no great next thing I’ll be able to buy, achieve, possess, obtain, that will bring me happiness. Deep inside, I’ve always known it. And I know you’ve always known it darn well too.
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