I was reading an essay in the book 'Ordinary Magic' in which Chogyam Trungpa talks about 'nowness'.

He tells us we need to experience life with a sense of nowness - the magic of the present moment. It is what joins the wisdom of the past with the present. When you appreciate a painting or a piece of music or a good book, no matter when it was created, you appreciate it now. You appreciate the same nowness in which it was created. It is always now.

The way to experience nowness is to realize that this very moment, this very point in your life, is always the occasion. So the consideration of where you are and what you are, on the spot, is very important.

Appreciating this sacredness of the moment begins very simply by taking an interest in all the details of your life. Interest is simply applying awareness to what goes on in your everyday life - awareness while you're cooking, awareness while you're driving, even awareness while you're arguing. Such awareness can help to free you from chaos of all kinds. It can help free you from the obstacles, so that you can cheer up on the spot by just being aware.

I don't know about you, but I need some cheering up now and then. Living in the moment and experiencing nowness can help. Try it and see.

posted by bluematrix at 04/29/07 21:30 | link | comments

sometimes i drink bottled water when i go out. i get tired of high fructose corn syrup in soft drinks, or don't want caffeine, or juice doesn't sound good, or whatever. i usually get water in a glass at restaurants (or paper cups at fast food places). but sometimes i like the ability to screw the cap back on and take it with me in the car. and i feel healthier drinking water.

today i read an article on the high costs of bottled water to the environment that is going to really make me think twice about buying them in the future. here are some highlights from it...

Maybe it's because we think bottled water is cleaner and somehow better, but that's not true. The federal standards for tap water are higher than those for bottled water.

The Environmental Law Foundation has sued eight bottlers for using words such as "pure" to market water that contains bacteria, arsenic and chlorine.

It costs 240 to 10,000 times more than tap water. For the price of one bottle of Evian, you can receive 1,000 gallons of tap water. Forty percent of bottled water should be labeled bottled tap water because that is exactly what it is.

The global consumption of bottled water reached 41 billion gallons in 2004, up 57 percent in just five years.

Just supplying Americans with plastic water bottles for one year consumes more than 47 million gallons of oil, enough to take 100,000 cars off the road and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, according to the Container Recycling Institute.

More than 1 billion plastic water bottles end up in just California's trash each year taking up valuable landfill space.

get a glass or thermos next time.

posted by bluematrix at 04/18/07 12:50 | link | comments (2)