Moments of Zen

Carcass · Feb 21, 2010

It's hard for me to explain exactly what I mean by the title of thread, but let me try. Sometimes I experience a moment of intense clarity stemming from a completely mundane experience or interaction. Often times, this takes the form of a quote that ends up becoming a sort of mantra in my life. One of my favorite examples is as follows:

One afternoon I was walking from nowhere in particular to go home so I could do nothing of consequence. As I passed row after row of houses (half abandoned, half occupied) in the Southwest Philly ghetto, I chanced to notice a resident sweeping up a mound of trash. She had amassed a heaping pile of those ubiquitous bags of single-serving potato chips that flit down the street like urban tumbleweeds and was attempting to cram it into a plastic grocery bag. As I approached, her neighbor was leaving the house, perhaps also on her way to nowhere. The neighbor paused for a moment to inquire as to what this woman was doing.

"I'm cleaning up all this goddamn trash!" the woman intoned.

"That's a shame," her neighbor tsked, "why isn't there a trash pick-up service?"

And then came the reply that put my entire life up until that point into crystal clear perspective: "because ain't nobody give a fuck!"

Carcass · Feb 21, 2010

One more example and then I'll let y'all take it away. This comes from my buddy Charlie.

When we were kids, we used to hang out at the Monroe County Public Library quite a bit and, thus, ended up getting acquainted with (and sometimes buying weed from) a few of the homeless luminaries of Bloomington, Indiana. The day after September 11th, Charlie was sitting in the library with one of these fellas while he read the front page article in the New York Times about the attacks. After having finished, the guy puts his paper down, looks off into the distance and says,

"Well. I don't blame 'em."

"Don't blame who?" Charlie asks.

"Any of 'em."

dwtcos · Feb 21, 2010

I experience that all the time! Would epiphany be a good word to describe it? That's how I'd describe my experience in the topic anyways. I can't cite any specific example but I'm pretty sure I understand what your talking about.

Probe · Feb 22, 2010

hm...i wouldnt call these kinds of things moments of zen...but...i cant think of anything better...

Rathryn · Feb 22, 2010

I was kind of assuming you were going to mention a form of moving meditation, but alas.
As for the epiphanies (I do think that's a good suggestion, dwtcos) can't say I have a lot of those myself, most of them usually creep up on me or fester inside me for a while before coming to fruition. So it's not really a 'eureka' moment for me, really.

New Face In Hell · Feb 22, 2010

I get a feeling like that when listening to certain songs. Most recently was "Treason" by Naked Raygun.

dwtcos · Feb 22, 2010

I think the single greatest enlightenment I have ever had in my life was learning the law of conservation of mass. I learned it in sixth grade but the shear power of the law didn't hit me until a few months later. it changed my entire view of the world and life on earth.

Probe · Feb 22, 2010

hm...the only kind of zen or whatever i get is deja vu...i like getting those...
i suddenly think ive done this before...its a good feeling to have

DrunkSquid · Mar 13, 2010

yeah I get feelings like that all the time. probably because so often my mental clarity is so obscured, then i retreat back into my shell but when i walk out again it becomes so clear again and i only have a preview of it because i know i must retreat back into the shell and thus, thrust upon the world a wasteful, hopeless bag of meat, dancing on the stage of a thousand palmfulls of goldfish urine.

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