Work

The value of work is the work itself. My practice entails routine and planned work. Usually this work involves simple and routine maintenance of my environment. Weeding the garden, painting the fence, sweeping the stairs. Absorption in simple and regular tasks is meditative and curative. The idle mind, when not engaged in tasks, meditation or learning, is prone to negative influences and worthless obsessions. Too often, work is equated with the earning of money. The work of living well is more fulfilling than working for money.

Birth

I recently saw a female celebrity on television speaking about giving birth. Her perspective was centered on HER experience of giving birth to HER babies. Birthing these eventually independent human lives held more significance for her than considering her responsibility for bringing two separate human beings onto a planet which is rapidly deteriorating from the overpopulation of our species. This is primitive and childish. Yet it is an epidemic among our species. Senseless procreation, procreation for its own sake or the sake of ego gratification, will someday be seen as a mental illness on this planet. That time will come sooner than later. If it does not, then our species itself will fail with its destroyed ecology.

Focus

To be able to focus in a rapidly unfocused society is a great benefit. Practice is a form of creating focus in daily life. Setting the goal, the cause, which underlies all thought and action in life, is an essential step to developing a practice and maintaining focus. One cause, for example, could be to devote oneself to helping other human beings to improve their lives. Then one's practice every day would be focused by responding to the world with the goal of increasing the general quality of life in each moment of the day. Those who set a goal of being rich, for example, often practice the accumulation of money every day. That is also their focus. The difference in these goals and practices is simple. The person who focuses his practice in increasing the general quality of life on the planet is rewarded in ways money can never buy. The person who focuses their practice on being rich is eventually rewarded with great physical comfort, but often suffers from an isolation from other life on the planet. These are choices. The rare person who can accumulate wealth and be open to the Universe is indeed fortunate and can do great good.