500 Words on Thursday | Written by Lee Schneider
Maybe it’s because I live in the yoga capital of the world, Santa Monica, CA, that I hear people saying the word sacred every couple of minutes. They even say holy a lot. Pretty much, I hate that kind of talk. Holy brings to mind words reverently spoken by priests who take advantage of children, and sacred has been uttered by any number of false prophets who are all about profit. There are only two words more often abused than those two and they are targeting, as in targeting customers, and branding, as in branding yourself. If you brand yourself and then go around targeting people it sounds like the makings of an edgy, homicidal lifestyle. (“Honey, what’s that smell? Oh, that’s just me branding myself again. When I’m done, I’m going to get right back to targeting people. I knocked off ten today.”)
When a word is detached from meaning it can roll around on the floor and that’s really dangerous. You could trip over it, and that would be impactful, a word I always trip over because I get nauseous just thinking about it.
But it’s not a bad thing that I hang around people who say words I don’t always like hearing. They cause me to ask questions like what’s sacred in my life and how might I try to live more purely.
I will often come home from a yoga class and have a glass of wine. It reminds me of people who finish a nice run and then light up a cigarette. A yoga teacher I respect once mentioned that alcohol reverses the effects of yoga, but to me it’s a comforting contradiction. It’s part of what makes people people – their humanness, for me, is bound up in their complications. This will sound a bit like a Zen koan, but I don’t think people are meant to be pure, because impurity is the very essence of our purity. Objects are pure. Design is pure. A VW Bug always makes me smile. It exists purely unto itself, independent of function, which, of course, is transport. But it doesn’t need to be going anywhere to be serving the higher purpose of beautiful design.
Real people will never be pure. That’s for storybook saints and cartoon character heroes. Higher purpose is useful, but what happens in practice? Well, what do you make of Pepsi, a malicious maker of addictive sugar water, funding the Pepsi Refresh Project, which is helping fund the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and things like warm winter coats for children in need? How much money will Pepsi have to give away to worthy causes before it becomes a corporate expression of higher purpose? As you do the math on that, consider this item from the Kansas City Star.
A 300-pound chimpanzee escaped from its owner Tuesday afternoon and ran rampant through a Kansas City neighborhood, scaring walkers, pounding on passing cars and breaking a police car’s windshield. The 21-year-old ape, named Sueko, also pointed and laughed at residents and flipped off an animal control officer near 78th Street and Indiana Avenue, witnesses said.
Not only is it remarkable that there are newspapers still being published somewhere, but when I think about a manic chimp flipping off an animal control officer, well, that makes me smile, and that’s sacred.
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Photo credits: Lee Schneider and VW Beetle by Chris Keating via Creative Commons License.
500 Words on Thursday | Written by Lee Schneider
On Monday, in Big Sur, California, I walked in a river barefoot. The water was bracingly cold. I must have massaged a couple of special acupressure points because I had a wildly transformational experience. I walked out of the river realizing that everything that is wrong in my life and in yours too is connected to technology.
I hate technology now.
I’m getting rid of every bit of it right after I finish writing this on my computer. I swear, when the battery runs down on this thing I am chucking it in the garbage. Then I will be free, finally, free.
To be fair, it wasn’t just the river that caused this awakening. I read an article that said using your cellphone will make your head explode, and if that doesn’t happen, you will grow another head. That’s what Maureen Dowd said in the New York Times. Nicholas Kristof, another respected columnist, recently wrote that the minerals used to make the electrical capacitors in your iPhone, iPad and iWhatever are sourced by warlords in the Congo who exploit women and children and the waste generated by the disposal of our tech toys is fouling the planet.
But I’m not getting depressed about that, because I see a bright future where we walk everywhere. And we talk to people, really talk to them and get so close we can see the food in their teeth. And when we want to make a film we don’t use cameras and pixels but we just draw really fast on a cave wall using a piece of chalk. When we want to distribute music or ideas or anything at all we just hand it to somebody and tell them, “Run man, run like the wind all over the world and give this to everyone you see until you drop dead from exhaustion.” Man, that’s really exciting. That’s, wow, I, um… you know, I’m kind of rethinking this a little.
We camped out in Big Sur. The tent we used was probably designed on a computer. It was a brilliant design with folding poles that telescoped out of themselves and supported lightweight ripstop fabric that kept us warm and dry. Our flashlights were solar-powered. The camp stove was tiny, backpack-ready, but capable of heating a pot of water in less than four minutes. I didn’t really walk barefoot in the river, either. I was wearing Vibram Fivefingers made of polyamide fabric on top and a TC1 performance rubber compound for the soles. I doubt I would have gotten the same performance by strapping a couple of big leaves to my feet.
Maureen Dowd didn’t actually say your cell phone would make you grow another head. The reason I know is I used technology to check her quote at this link. I mangled the Kristof quote, too. You can check how badly, using technology.
If there’s any doubt how tightly woven technology is in my life, that doubt was erased when, back in Los Angeles on Tuesday, I was talking with the owner of a local yoga studio. It’s a donation-based studio, which means that people pay what they wish for the classes, and that reflects an ancient faith in the basic goodness of people. But he’s also streaming video of the classes live on the web, both as a way of bringing yoga to people everywhere and also to generate a revenue stream for the studio.
Technology is bringing us greater accountability (I can’t fake those quotes), speed of communications (people all over the world read this article instantly) and yes, the fun of scampering along in a river without smashing your toe on a rock.
It’s easy to be a hater, but it’s harder when you really consider what you’re hating. Is it technology that deserves our wrath or just the way we are using it?
You can follow me on Twitter by clicking here, unless you hate technology. Then you can wait until you run into me and I’ll tell you about what I wrote.
500 Words on Thursday | Written by Lee Schneider
I am married to a holy vibe chick. Can I discuss this with you? We all know that women like to share. Holy vibe chicks like to share a lot. If they share a whole lot together they have something called a share-gasm. In fact, they are capable of multiple share-gasms, if conditions are right and there are enough lighted candles. It is a little intimidating, as a man, to witness this. Most of us men are capable of only one share-gasm at a time, and after that we have to rest a little before we go again.
Being married to a holy vibe chick (for a year, thank you for the congratulatory notes and checks) has brought many wonderful things into my life. I’ve learned to cook vegetarian and I am proud to say that I’ve stopped eating meat. Well, that’s not true. When I am away from my holy vibe chick I do eat chicken and pork sometimes, and it feels wonderfully illegal. I drink whiskey too, and port, which can seem holy, if it’s vintage 1977 port. After yoga I often get the urge for a good pinot noir, and I almost succeed in convincing myself that pinot after Pincha Mayurasana is spiritual in that it involves spirits. But that rarely works. I settle for organic juice squeezed from the sweat of yaks, which is all that we have in the refrigerator. Then I drink pure water to cleanse my soul, dress all in white and stare at the sun for an hour.
Holy vibers certainly do wear white a lot. This isn’t a problem here in Southern California, but if some holy vibe chicks went out in a snowstorm we might lose them in a blinding, monochromatic whirl of deep meaning. Did I mention that when you are living in the magnetic pull of a holy vibe chick everything has deep meaning? If you have a runny nose, a medical intuitive like Louise Hay will explain that means “inner crying.” 
I have been working through some running injuries, a balky knee and now a healing heel, which are apparently an expression of the transitions I am undergoing, or plain stupid overtraining. Take your pick. (Hint: Plain stupid overtraining is not the holy explanation.) Various Hindu goddesses have a hand in finding us a good parking space. Spiders and crows are messengers. We place fresh flowers on Lakshmi’s altar and ask her where our new clients will come from.
Consulting goddesses for their advice is novel for me. But I have learned that holy vibe chicks also consult other people about things. I am something of a lone wolf, and also male. I think about something for a minute and then I do it. There was a Seinfeld about this. Men hunt down a shirt and buy it. Women gather to discuss what shirt to buy. In a holy vibe household, few decisions are made alone. That’s the real beauty, of course. We find connection with ourselves and a community. Come to think of it, looking at the world as a place of deep meaning is a good way to live. It builds compassion; it brings focus and passion to life. Self-examination leads directly to self-improvement. Yoga feels good. It’s so true that the holy vibe chick I married is a deep friend who has taught me a lot. I love my holy vibe chick!
Oh my god, I think I just had a share-gasm.
Lakshmi image by Ravi. Photos by Lee Schneider.
Written by Lee Schneider
Getting less sleep lately, and it’s not a bad thing. Here’s why. Thanks to the folks at Zipcar, who picked up half the cost, I was able to drive out to meet architectural pioneer Michelle Kaufmann and interview her for an upcoming SHELTER blog. Michelle has not only explored new ways of creating sustainable housing, but she is also fixing our buildings so they aren’t killing us. (“Officer, I’d like you to arrest that building for murder.”) I also met Nipun Mehta of Charity Focus, KarmaTube, and Karma Kitchen — all projects that are world-changers. Nipun makes awesome chai without needing to measure any of his ingredients. He also knows how to make social change by measuring social capital. I’m up nightly thinking about how I might make films that way, using creative people paid in karma bucks. More on that soon – and more about KarmaTube coming soon as I discuss a project with Birju Pandya, one of the guys behind it.
For now, let’s look at this staying up at night business. Actually, it starts in the morning when I am busy walking into walls. By ten I am able to form sentences, at least in my head. By six in the evening I am fully on, and by midnight ready to create great meaning. One in the morning – pure genius. Surrendering to sleep seems like defeat.
As Lisa Russ Spaar wrote in the New York Times recently, “For the insomniac Vladimir Nabokov, I think that sleep, which he called ‘the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals,’ meant turning off, even for a few hours, his quicksilver, voracious consciousness.”
Um, I don’t know if I have a quicksilver consciousness, but voracious works for me, and once I start the big thinking machine it’s really hard to turn off. As a result, we’ve instituted a few rules. No computers after 10 pm. No media unless it’s Sesame Street or Shirley Temple films. My wife likes to welcome sleep by reading in bed. Not me, so I spend many minutes flossing to give her time to concentrate on a few pages. Then the sleep boat leaves the dock.
Well, nighttime isn’t what it used to be, anyway. Way back when, night was dead calm if you wanted it that way. No emails, no phones. Your timekeeper was the groan of a garbage truck signaling 5 am; time to hug your pillow for an hour or two before work. Now, always, there’s Somebody Out There. Somebody’s Twitter feed to check, or Facebook statuses to poke through like dirty laundry on a dorm room floor.
Staying up all night doesn’t guarantee solitude, but it’s worth it if you like to chase words across a screen or make a jumble of video clips sing their song. For that, I’ll skip a few Z’s.
Written by Lee Schneider, founder of DocuCinema.
Spiritual seekers may spend decades working to detach from their ego. Buddha meditated under a Bodhi tree for 49 days when he did it. But I think I’ve managed it in just .2 seconds. All I had to do was Google myself. There are 8,900,000 different results for Lee Schneider. I can already feel my sense of self slipping away into 8.9 million little pieces. In yoga we’re often reminded that it’s a good thing to surrender the ego. Buddhism teaches that the self is only an illusion. But what does that really mean?
As I examine myself under Google’s microscope, I can verify that I was once a writer of “ThunderCats” cartoons. How did I juggle that with my job as project manager at the Computer Sciences Corporation in Dallas/Fort Worth? It seems like a good living, I just don’t remember going into the office this morning.
Then again, I do move around. This week I’m living in Alexandria, KY, Morrison, CO and Batavia, OH all at the same time. Perhaps, upon dissolution, my ego is now able to be in several places at once. In his book “Autobiography of a Yogi,” Paramhansa Yogananda described one Swami Pranabananda who was able to do this. That seems like pretty advanced yoga and I don’t think I’m there yet. I’m not even doing handstand anymore.
When I started this blog I said I would never join Facebook. But it looks like I have anyway and I really like horses. 
I also like to Twitter, have 124 followers and live in Boston. Whole chunks of my life are kind of different from the life I thought I was living. For instance, I married Elyssa Korez on December 20th, 2008. Sorry, I don’t remember that wedding at all. 
Thing is, I’m getting married again in Los Angeles on June 20. Could I be practicing polygamy? I don’t remember being Mormon but then I don’t remember signing up for the Navy Reserves in Auburn, Washington either. 
I don’t know how I fit the Reserves in with my job as a photographer of tall ships. I published a calendar of them in 2002. It’s for sale at Amazon, anyway, and it has my name on it.
In Buddhism it’s said that attachment to ego leads to suffering. Right now, I’m getting the opposite effect. As my ego splits apart I’m hyperventilating.
If people are looking for me online, they might connect with one of my other selves instead of the one typing this right now. What is my name good for if so many others are using it? I need to run an online background check on myself to get back in touch with who I really am, but that costs $39.95.
Maybe finding myself isn’t as easy as clicking on a link. Maybe I’m not ready to completely surrender my ego, but if I nudge it out of the way a little I might have better access to the interior life that goes on whether my Google ranking looks good or not.
