Girls Gone Zen

Something clicked inside me while I was in Taiwan. It was a combination of many things:
1. My state of mind before I left
2. The company I was with
3. Visiting all these underdeveloped places while staying in 5 star hotels
4. Reading "Teachings of Buddha" the entire trip
5. Hiking to remote places and seeing scenery that are captured in Chinese landscape paintings
6. Going to countless temples
I now clearly know and understand the things I need to do.

Life can be like a roller coaster or like the weather, taking you through a series of polar opposites:
-Highs and Lows
-Good and Bad
-Happy and Sad
-Light and Dark
-Full and Empty
-Perfect and Imperfect
-Success and Failure
-Heaven and Hell
-Life and Death
-Happiness and Suffering

I was guilty of being affected by polar opposites. Sometimes, I feel like I am on top of the world when I’m walking around the financial district. Everything seems perfect. I smile at everyone I pass. I think I can accomplish anything and everything I set out to do even if I didn't want to do those things. Other times, I feel like I'm stuck in this rat race climbing a corporate ladder that I don't even know how high it goes and everything that can possibly go wrong seemily goes wrong. And then there's the female monthly cycle which used to dictate my mood...up and down, angry, sad, happy, overall moody...

All of this changed a little after taking the "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" and then went away 99.9% after going to all the Buddhist retreats and zen lectures. How was it possible?

-The first one is, again, just telling yourself that every experience you go through is fleeting..."this too will pass"...and things that happen to me that would have otherwise affected my mental/emotional well-being doesn't become as significant anymore...
-Meditating certainly helps me when I am completely boggled.
-Keep in mind that you have to experience both sides of the spectrum. You don’t know how good you have it until you experience a bad…and you don’t know how bad something is unless you had something good. You can’t fully appreciate success, until you failed a couple of times. So any thing that is bad isn't really that bad and anything that is good isn't really that good. Everything is relative. When you keep experiencing good, any little bad, even if it is minimal can seem like a huge bad. When you have it bad, any little good could mean the whole world to you. So, putting things into perspective of other things helps.
-Having a strong foundation...this does not mean house, money, car, materialistic things...this does not mean other people either (family, friends, significant others, colleagues, etc.) although having these people in your life helps a lot...this means, having a strong self...(I'll write about the self in the next entry...)

These days, I feel really neutral and grounded, except for that 0.1% of the time that I can still work on. Appreciating the good and bad…don’t let either affect you.

Sometimes the feeling may make you seem like everything is becoming emotionless, stoic. But it's actually a good feeling to have because I feel like I'm less affected by events and things. So, essentially, living through polar opposites allows you to cope with everything...allowing you to have a peaceful, calm mind when you don’t know where the rollercoaster is taking you. No one can predict the weather...

You make your own weather...

Blanche Hartman said, “Practice is not about gaining something that you don’t already have…” She goes on to tell us to be awake and patient and live in the current moment, in the now. And that “the problems you have now will forever remain with you for the rest of your life” and that practice is not going to make all those problems go away.

If Practice is not about gaining anything, then what is it really about? It is about living each moment with the utmost gusto. It is not caring about the end results whether you win or lose, achieve or fail, get or not get. It is about the journey that you take to get there and the effort you put into that journey.

During the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” class, AM always reminded us of this also. It is not about the end results but the journey. No matter what, people will always get things done and completed, there will always be an outcome to the things you do. In the process of getting to that outcome, were you stressed, happy, mean, courteous, not giving any effort, or giving all that you can?

If you apply the logic that we are not gaining anything we don’t already have, it means that happiness is actually innate in all of us and can be achieved. I believe this. We are capable of being happy for ourselves and for all else. No one else can take the happiness away from us but ourselves…thus it is up to us to be happy during the journeys that we take.

I dedicate this entry to the two other remaining single BLs, who both happen to be Buddhists too. We have had a heck of a year. I know all three of us do not know where our paths are leading us and that we can’t fathom a future with the things that we’re doing at this current moment but in the process, we sure had a lot of fun this year (changing jobs, moving, making out with random people among other stuff…I think all three of us did some stuff this year we never thought we would do and at certain points out-doing each other when we thought we were not getting any action.) To think back to Freshman year, remembering the day when the three of us went to Durant Food Court to talk about de-pledging the sorority, we didn’t know then what the future held for us neither, but look where it has taken us...

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life
We have refused
Again and again
Until now.

Until now.

- David Whyte

99 and I were driving from Stanford after the Dalai Lama talk.

99: You know, you've changed a lot. In college it was hard to talk to you sometimes.
33: Really? Was I unapproachable?
99: Yeah... you kept a lot of things to yourself. But now...
33: Yes?
99: Now I can't get you to shut up.

I once heard during a Dharma talk that it is often the case, through practice, that one becomes a champion of that Ox which you seek, face, and accept. This means if you are an impatient person, through practice you become well-known for your patience. If you are selfish and inconsiderate, through practice you become well-known for your compassion and generosity.

Ever since highschool, I've been keeping things to myself. I couldn't admit to liking guys because that was deathly embarrassing. I never talked about feelings except to my one and only best friend, thus alienating all my other girl friends who thought I was being secretive and exclusive.

Now, I let things flow. I try to keep things honest and straightfoward. Isn't it the most empowering feeling of all to know that your most unbecoming weakness will be your greatest strength?

Thanks for listening to me rant & share more than you ever want to know, 99.

Welcome to the official launch of "Girls Gone Zen". We hope you will enjoy reading the many entries to come and that the entries will bring inspiration to all of you reading this. But please keep in mind that we are also going through life's many lessons as we are writing and are not experts or perfect ourselves. We want to start this site in hopes to share our experiences with you and give you some philosophical concepts to think about.

This is the most appropriate time for us to launch this site for many different reasons. We are two girls, searching for our spirituality in the corporate technological world, where everyday we are faced with many distractions that sometimes result in a disturbance of our peace of mind. The most innate human right is to be able to live (and die) happily and all of us are striving to pursue that happiness.

Our path really came into fruition in June. We were both in need of a spiritual awakening and finally made it to Land of Medicine Buddha. The retreat, along with a walk in the woods/mountains where we got lost, was an eye-opening experience where we listened to lectures about Buddhism, suffering, and the concept of being fulfilled and thus equipped to give unconditional love.

When we came back, we became a regular at the San Francisco Zen Center, which provided us even greater inspiration.

And, just this past weekend, we had the absolute pleasure of attending a two-day conference at Stanford University where we witnessed the Dalai Lama speak in person. When he first entered the stadium, the two of us were almost in tears.

We have had many influences thus far from Land of Medicine Buddha, SF Zen Center, and the Dalai Lama that we have a lot of writing to draw from, so again, enjoy the entries to come. And please ask us questions and pose any topics that you would like us to discuss further.

~33 & 99