There’s a great piece titled “In Praise of Melancholy” (from a book that comes out tomorrow titled Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy) in The Chronicle Review.  It’s a well-reasoned piece arguing that in all the new agey search for eternal happiness and contentment, our souls are being sucked from us.  The author says that melancholy feelings are often mistaken for depression and that if that’s the case, the feelings should be embraced.  Feelings of sadness, being overwhelmed, and just being “down” are healthy and can often drive the creative urge.  This paragraph sums it up best, I think:

Melancholia pushes against the easy “either/or” of the status quo. It thrives in unexplored middle ground between oppositions, in the “both/and.” It fosters fresh insights into relationships between oppositions, especially that great polarity life and death. It encourages new ways of conceiving and naming the mysterious connections between antinomies. It returns us to innocence, to the ability to play in the potential without being constrained to the actual. Such respites from causality refresh our relationship to the world, grant us beautiful vistas, energize our hearts and our minds

What I like most about Zen is that it doesn’t try to hide melancholy feelings.  It doesn’t encourage you to distance yourself from them.  It makes you see them for what they are and accept them as they come.  No doubt, it’s challenging to do this, as I’m finding to be the case an awful lot recently, but it’s essential in maintaining a life that’s not devoid of feeling but isn’t wallowing in constant sorrow, either.

The world exists as it is all across the spectrum, from extreme sadness to extreme happiness, and we’re doing ourselves a disservice if we run because we’re afraid to be sad.

This may be the only time zombies (well, cannibals) and zen have been mentioned together:

Because when the cannibals come to the door, your chanting and your bells and your visualizations, your Secret and your gods and your mumbo-jumbo, your politics or your philosophy and ethics, all that will be gone. Just you looking down the barrel of a gun (Mao had that right) or at the razor-sharp teeth of a predator with your name on ‘em.

Oops, wait… no it’s not.

One of this blog’s two (or am I being too generous?) readers mentioned that I need to write more.  So here goes.

I’ve started off 2008 with an invigorated practice.  I have to admit that for the last three months of 2007, my practice was practically non-existent.  But I’ve sat my butt down on the cushion every day this year so far for at least 10 minutes, so that’s a start.

Something I’ve realized as I’ve entered back into practice a little more seriously is exactly how scattered my mind is, something I imagine everyone figures out pretty early on.  I’ll be sitting there, counting my breaths in an attempt to still things a bit and by the time I’ve gotten to ten I’ve thought about work, something I need to do, an idea about a blog entry to write, how I’m not catching these thoughts as they come and thus having a “bad” session, and then flashing back to some memory from childhood.  And this is in a 30 or 45 second span.  No wonder I feel like I’m all over the place… my mind is working triple and quadruple duty most of the time.

As I’m picking my practice back up, I’ve been on an informal search for a local sangha.  I’d like to have some people to sit with periodically and be around some others who I might be able to learn from.  Unfortunately, even though I live in the fastest growing county in the nation, there just aren’t many options that aren’t far away.  There is a Thai Vipassana temple near my work which I’ve considered going to, but I’m wondering whether that would be in conflict with the Soto Zen I’ve decided to practice.  Maybe I need to just talk to someone there about it.