Photo credit: JasonDGreat / Foter / CC BY
Zen and the Art of Everything. Writing a blog post? Designing the Macintosh computer (Steve Jobs reference)? Sure, why not! The idea for this post was concieved while sitting in dense DC traffic a few weeks back. You may be familiar with the book, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert M. Pirsig. It is about a motorcycle trip that a father and son take and essentially uses motorcycle repair as a metaphor for the different facets of life. For me, that day (like so many others), traffic was causing an enormous amount of stress. In trying to eliminate that stress, I thought to myself comically, ZEN AND THE ART OF SITTING IN TRAFFIC! I started laughing. How silly? I honestly have somewhat limited knowledge (trying to learn more) about actual Zen Buddhism (I did take a college course on Buddhism, but we were not exactly meditating). Is there really a way to be calm and happy sitting in traffic? If the Buddha himself were in my car with me, would he be just as jolly and calm as he is often depicted, cruising at a cool 2 MPH while a chorus of asshole drivers lay on their horns in perfect harmony? Hard to believe but after all, he is the Buddha, right? In continuing this thought process, I began thinking about stress reduction in general as a way to prevent myself from becoming too stressed out about the things that I cannot change– such as traffic. How? Cue to the Buddhist Monk who stoically and condescendingly mutters “mindfulness.” Read More →