The Reality at Hand

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Here at Pudding Creek, we do not have garbage service. We collect all of our garbage and recycling - and yours too if you come for a visit - in a small building that we call the pump house. Three or four times a year, Joe and I make a trip to the dump (also called the transfer station, which to my mind, obscures the reality of the piles and piles of refuse). It is sobering to regularly see with my own eyes what happens to what we collectively no longer need or want. Because of this, we look to find new uses for the endless packaging and odds and ends that we are left with. We buy less. And we compost everything that we can, making beautiful new soil for the garden. 

During my mindfulness meditations over the last weeks, I distinctly and overwhelmingly hear the sounds of heavy machinery and trees crashing down. The land adjacent to us is getting logged. Paradoxically, the air smells good, scented with the fragrance of cut redwood and fir.

So I sit down and bear witness to the actuality of industry and economic growth. This is not about some demonized other peoples somewhere else. My home is made of wood, and I have wooden furniture. I am a part of this system. This is hard to bear, and important to contemplate.

We may come to meditation longing for peace, yearning to get a break from the difficult or unpleasant. It is true that we need that break and that we need to calm ourselves so that we can enter the wild ride that is life.  However, mindfulness is also a method designed to help us see clearly the reality at hand. We can't stop at just being calm; we need to be calm in order to bear witness, to grieve, and to make new choices.