Materialism

Yesterday, while the contractors were working on my house, I had lunch with my Zen teacher.

We discussed my so-called practice path, and whether I wanted to train as an "Ordained Zen Priest" or as a "Certified Lay Zen Teacher." Not only does this require me to pick and choose among options and aspire toward a goal, but it ignores the fact that I went through some sort of Zen Teacher initiation ceremony over two years ago.

Worse, I've been asked to list and catalog just how many week-long retreats I've participated in, how many weekend sesshins, and how many day-long zazenkais. Counting these episodes seems somehow wrong to me - the tao is the path, not the number of steps you've taken on the path.

Back home, the contractors had made a lot of progress on the house. They pressure washed the whole front, repaired a damaged shutter, replaced a weathered cap on the front railing, and painted the entire porch railing. They installed new light fixtures and a medicine cabinet in the main bathroom. They stripped some horrible wallpaper and then painted the spare bedroom (my meditation room). Two full days work. $950, payable in two installments.

The house now looks quite a bit different and is almost ready to show. And as soon as I sell it, I can get out of Atlanta, with its nation's-worst traffic and fondness of execution, and move to Portland.

For those of you keeping score at home, the cost has been $29 for a plumber to tell me that my bathtub wasn't broken - I just didn't know how to work it; $135 for a junk hauler to take away my broken tv, my e-waste and an old desk; $460 for landscaping and yard maintenance; $139 for the light fixtures and medicine cabinet; $26 for the paint; and now $850 for the contractors. Total is, let's see, um, $1,639. None of which is tax deductible or reimbursable.

The thing is, I have no problem cataloging and totaling my home-repair costs, but I do object to dealing with my meditation practice in the same materialistic way.