“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like.” ~ Will Rogers

 “Order your soul. Reduce your wants.” ~Saint Augustine

“Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.” ~ Isaac Newton

“We can travel a long way and do many things, but our deepest happiness is not born from accumulating new experiences. It is born from letting go of what is unnecessary, and knowing ourselves to be always at home.” ~ Sharon Salzberg

 “Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” Lin Yutang

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”~ William Morris

Dear Friends,

August brings “Back to School” signs and the reminder that for some of us, life will change dramatically in a few weeks. August can signal the bittersweet end of leisure and the beginning of back to school, work, and the serious task of preparing for the winter. My family is moving house this month and we are working diligently to reduce our possessions and pack them up. I am filled with the desire for the simplicity of the monastic life where one’s possessions amount to three robes and a begging bowl. I’ve had to face the reality that the dozens of single socks I’ve held onto for the last six years, hoping to one day reunite with their long lost mates will forever remain unpaired. I was astonished at the number of writing implements we own and dismayed by the tangled skeins of electrical chargers and adapters that belong to defunct technology or broken toys, a result of planned obsolesce.

Life is feeling complicated with mortgage applications, escrow, and all the legal stuff of home selling and buying. A few weeks ago, I participated in a group meditation where we were asked to find what felt complex and what felt simple, right this moment. The complex was a cracked boiler expansion tank and the simple was being here, present in this breathing body that feels contact with the cushions beneath me, and the sounds that come to my ear. This awareness of simplicity in the midst of complexity requires renunciation. The renunciation of the planning, worrying mind. The world offers complexity everywhere we turn, on the news, in our political structure, and our economics. It’s easy to live in complexity. It’s much harder and takes intentional action to live simplicity.

My best teacher of simplicity this summer has been a toad who lives behind the pile of chair cushion on my front stoop. Shifting the cushions I heard a soft chirp and saw a palm-sized toad situated between two cushions. This shaded nook was the toad’s home during the day. I came back days later and peeked. The toad was still there… and nothing else. There was no bedding, no straw, or bits of food, nothing, but the toad resting in the coolness. This image stayed with me for days, the toad that needed nothing, except to stay cool during the heat of the day. This being that trusted that each night there would be adequate food, enough insects to feed on and during the day there would be a space to find safety and shade. This toad had no pockets for possessions and lived in absolute trust and accord with the natural order.

We humans manipulate so much in our environments we forget that we too must live in accord with the natural order. We cannot escape from our biological and environmental realities. We all must reckon with how we live on this earth and the true price of complexity. This week you may like to explore mindfulness of simplicity and complexity and ask, how much do I really need to be ok? What can I let go of? Maybe it’s the growing stash of takeout soy sauce packets or striving for a job with a bigger paycheck and lots more responsibility and hours. What does living simply on the earth look like for you?

This inquiry can deepen to include the perception of the body and emotions. We can ask, what feels complex right now? Where does complexity live in the body and how does it feel emotionally? And then, what is simple right now? What is the body/mind experience of finding simplicity? What would it feel like to live a day in simplicity? For simplicity requires diligent renunciation of the habits of proliferation, greed, acquisition, and the habit of fear. All of which our culture tells us will keep us safe and well, but what is our lived experience of complexity? Does it really make us happier and more peaceful? At each moment we do have the ability to choose where to place our mind and whether we want to live simply or not.

I know my life will include complexity. It is inescapable, but my teacher, that modest toad on the front stoop, reminds me that life can look different. Even when the tasks at hand are complex, touching into the always available presence of body and mind awareness is simple, but not easy.

May we all trust our light,

Celia