Dear Abbot

Tired of London, Tired of Life?

Dear Abbot---
I worry that I am tired of life. I could use your advice.
Recently my wife and I spent three weeks on holiday in a house on the outskirts of London. We were with our grown children, their spouses and our grandchild. We took day trips into London, saw museums, went to a play, ate at wonderful ethnic restaurants, enjoyed the rich history, the parks and the wide rainbow of people on the Tube and buses. In addition to seeing London we also took car trips into the lush English countryside and visited small English villages. We also had several long visits with a niece and nephew who live there. For my wife and I this was our fourth trip to England and London. This was the first time for our children.
Towards the end of our stay there, I was reading one night and happened to come across a quote from Samuel Johnson, the English essayist, who wrote, “When you are tired of London, you are tired of life,” basically because London has all that life has to offer. I started to worry.
I am near retirement. My wife and I had planned to travel much after I retire, to see the sites and to spend more time with our children, even though in the last five to ten years we have already traveled quite a bit both at home and abroad. Witnessing the excitement and enthusiasm of our children on their first trip to England, I clearly felt a certain lack of such enthusiasm in my own condition.
Although I of course love my children to infinity, and deeply enjoy spending time with them, and travel to new destinations does continue to refresh my worldview and spark my native curiosity, I sense that traveling, even to exotic locations, or spending more time with children will not be enough for me after I retire. I worry I will become obsessed with my lawn, and/or a bridge club, as so many retirees do. Help! I need your advice. Mr. Johnson suggests I may be tired of life. What else is there? What should I do?
Ralph, from Des Moines

Dear Brother Ralph--- (I call you brother because it’s helpful to remember we are all brothers and sisters here. We all belong, after all, to the same human family. Your questions and concerns are the questions and concerns of our wider family. So thank you, brother, for generously sharing, and asking.)
So, Brother Ralph, my advice: Get a life, dude. You’re starting to sound like a monk.
Oh wait. You already have a life! And it sounds like a rich, peaceable, colorful life, filled with love and adventure. Yet still … You are a bit tired of London.
We are taught that a “good life,” or well-being means “doing” well. We are taught to “do well” by first doing well in school, then “doing well” in a job, then “marrying well.” Our well-being is further encouraged by having kids, staying employed, staying healthy enough to get to retirement, stay friends with our kids, collect enough funds to travel far and eat well. It appears that you have “done well” in all of these areas. Congratulations. You’ve done what everybody says you should do to have a good life.
You ask, “But what should I do next?” Apparently, you sense that keeping the crab grass out of your lawn will not be “doing” enough.
And there’s the rub, and the insight: “doing” will never be enough! Ever. This is a revolutionary insight because it undermines everything we are taught. Even doing London, or the English countryside, or Fiji or Hawaii will not be “doing” enough. We feel we must still to do more to achieve lasting well-being. But lasting well-being does not come (here’s the revolution) from doing. (Emphasis here on ”lasting,” because, of course, it’s easy to have a sense of well-being when laying on the beach in Fiji. But if we lounged on the beach all day every day for a month—or even two weeks—we’d find ourselves restless, upset with the cabana boy for not putting an umbrella in our drink.)
“Well-doing” is relative. Some readers here assume if they could just “do” a job, and get paid enough to go on vacation, that would “do it.” They would achieve well-being. Others assume that if they could just “do” a spouse, have a spouse, or have children, that would “do it.” Then they would have well-being. Others assume if they could just “do” their Hedge Fund for one more year--- collect just another 185 million--- that would “do it.” (And then they would be off to Fiji to enjoy well-being.)
Some readers, reading your question, would ask, “What’s wrong with this guy? He has nothing to complain about? He has it made!”
And yes, of course, doing these events, doing these relationships does indeed “do it,” --- bring a sense of well-being--- but just for a brief bit. And then there’s always a little something more to “do” before we arrive at lasting well-being. We tend to feel we could be or should be “doing” something more, something next in our marriage, or with our children, at work, when traveling, or investing, or getting ready for retirement, because the doing itself--- this moment-- never feels quite complete, and thus never enough! And this is the problem: We will always need more doing when we are trying to “do” well-being.
So, Ralph, what to “do”? Here’s your delicious pre-retirement challenge: Go beyond your training, go beyond your culture, go beyond what everybody else is doing and be brave enough, for a brief moment, to just be, no matter where you are or what you are doing. Taste the being, Ralph, that is already present here, within and without. Feel it. Smell it. Rest in it. The being, Ralph, is the key. Not the doing. It’s the being.
When you are being in your yard, with focus on being rather than doing, then doing the crabgrass is enough, because you directly experience that being itself is infinite, radiant, totally complete and harmonious, right there in the back yard. It might be easier, for a brief moment, to feel the infinite beauty of being when on the beach in Fiji, but that being is no more complete and magical in Fiji then at the mall in Des Moines. When you are resting in being when at the bridge club, then the bridge club becomes a gathering of immortal yogis.
Ralph—check out “The Landing” process here on this website. This is what you are doing, here in your silver years: you are coming in for a landing, discovering (rediscovering) and settling into your own being.
Obviously, you are already being. The delicious challenge now is to learn to rest in that being, even for just brief moments, amidst all the doings, yours and others. You will discover that you continue to “do”--- continue to visit your kids and travel and play cards and get the crab grass out of your yard. And yet, being will refresh itself time and again, moment after moment, ever new and surprising.
Ralph, you are tired of doing London. For a brief moment, instead of doing London--- or Des Moines-- just be in London. Allow London to “do” itself and just be, going where you go, seeing what you’re seeing. Well-being is not where you are. It’s what you are. Let the doing take care of itself. There’s no retirement from being, even after dropping the body.
It’s good practice, Ralph, for what’s ahead: just be, for brief moments. It’s retirement from suffering, and the beginning of joy, of a life well-lived. This is what it means to join the monastery: giving up the “worldly doings” to discover--- and live--- the deeper presence. Being is what is true and worthwhile about yourself and your world. Just be, and then do as is appropriate. This is the delicious monastic practice, always available to whoever feels inclined to sign up, even right there in Des Moines. .

More Depth

The Landing

In my life I have been deeply influenced and greatly helped by many wonderful teachers. The two most influential —after Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Lao Tzu, M.B.E., Nisargadatta and Bobby Dylan--- seem to be the French physician, Dr. Christian Almayrac (“Dr. Happiness”) and the contemporary sage, Candice O’Denver, founder of the Great Freedom and Balanced View teachings.
This morning the blending of these two particular teachers, along with all my other teachers and teachings seems to have come together in a nifty little “summary” practice that I’ll call “The Landing,” since this summary seems to bring everything together, at least for me, in this moment of time and helps settle me back safely on (in) the “ground of being.” Here it is:

The Landing: How to Come Home

1. Happiness, or peace, is natural, native to our being.
2. Enjoying happiness, or peace, is the most important and most loving thing we can do for ourselves and all those around us.
3. We enjoy happiness, or peace, simply by taking the emphasis off of our doing and resting in our natural being for brief moments, repeated many times.
4. We cease enjoying happiness, or peace when we assume that a doing, or point of view—be it ours or others—is somehow apart from, or more important than being itself, which is in essence happiness, or peace. (A “doing” or “point of view” is any thought, feeling, sensation, relationship or circumstance that rises up in being.)
5. When we recognize that we are giving independence or exaggerated importance to a doing, or point of view, ours or others, we again simply rest for a brief moment in being itself.
6. When we rest for brief moments in being itself, we recognize that our own doing and other’s doings all unfold effortlessly, harmoniously and we come home to happiness, to peace, time and again. We are free to engage this practice of resting for brief moments in being until we have established ourselves permanently in our native, natural being.
7. The good news is that we’re already there, (in being itself.) The prize is already won. Welcome home.

Heart Mountain Monastery (HMM) was started by a few very ordinary men over 20 years ago. We met for over 15 years almost every Sunday morning, and often in the weekday evenings, in our homes and sometimes in various hiking areas in Northern Colorado to discuss meditation, our various spiritual teachers and what it meant to live a consistently authentic spiritual life while simultaneously being “family men” working in the world.

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