At this point, I have to admit that I have not been disclosing everything that I've been doing lately in this blog. In addition to my work and my support of Zen Buddhism, I've also been involved in certain community affairs. Activism. Volunteerism.

I want to be very cicumspect about these activities and very cautious here about my choice of words, because I don't want anyone to come to this site after Googling the key words related to the cause, and get a confused idea of what the cause is all about. Not that I'm ashamed of anything stated here (hell, I post picture of my own face right up by my words), but what's discussed here has nothing to do with the political and community issues I've been involved with, and I don't want anyone to mistakenly think that one has something to do with the other.

So anyway, tonight included very high-profile participation in a community meeting about that-which-cannot-be-said. I spoke, coordinated the facility, set up the A/V, and sat through to the bitter end. I had to leave work an hour early to get the auditorium all set up, and basically pitched in to the effort from 4:30 until 9:30. And this whole meeting was just grass-roots community involvement for another meeting on Thursday, where I'm to carry the concerns expressed by the community tonight to a government agency as part of it's "community participation" outreach.

I've been to at least one meeting a week over the past several weeks about this issue.

It's exhausting. Between my job, the Zen Center and the activism, it's like having three jobs, and sometimes I don't feel like I'm giving any one of them the full attention it deserves. It's like I sit in on one, fill my head up with all sorts of specific info, and then go to another completely unrelated meeting and get a brainful of new data there, which just pushes that previous info load out of mind. And then on to another. And another.

So why do I do it?

The job is important because it's the only one that earns revenue and therefore funds all of the other activities. Besides, I work in the environmental business, and it's right livelihood, etc. The Zen Center activities give "meaning" to it all (largely by reminding me that it all has no "meaning"). And the community activism gives back to society in reward for all that it has given me - if not a fulfillment of the bodhisattva vows, then at least practice in the dana paramita.

And it sure as hell beats sitting around here and blogging.