06/16/2009

Thich Nhat Hanh on the Energy of Anger


In 1995, one of America's respected spiritual leaders, Ram Dass, interviewed Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh, about anger, about violence, and about the simple -- not easy, but simple -- ways in which each of us may live better, and support a peaceful home, peaceful neighborhood, and peaceful nation. While it lasts, the interview from YouTube is linked below. I have transcribed the text, which can be found after the video.



RD   You spoke the other day about holding anger, and emotions like that, in a tender way. Could you speak a little bit more about that?

TNH   Holding anger like a mother holding a baby. Because lovingkindness is us, but anger is also us. So one part of us is taking good care of another part. Anger is a kind of energy that comes from ourselves, and lovingkindness or mindfulness is another kind of energy. That is why we should know that every time the energy of anger is there, we should invite the energy of mindfulness to be there, in order to take care of anger.

RD   And the vehicle to do that could be just three breaths.

TNH   Yes. Mindful breathing. It is better that we nourish mindfulness by continuously breathing mindfully.

RD   If you are continuously breathing mindfully, then you wouldn't experience that other energy as solid, like anger.

TNH   When you breathe mindfully, you are not ignoring anger. In fact, you are mindful also of your anger, you are practically taking care of your anger: "Breathing in, I know I am angry; breathing out, I am taking good care of my anger." Therefore the practice is called Mindfulness of Anger. Mindfulness of breathing, and breathing in order to be aware of your anger, and to embrace your anger with the Energy of Mindfulness. If we continue like that for some time, there will be a transformation in the heart of the anger. It's like sunshine with the flower: in the morning the flowers are not open yet, but the sunshine continues to visit, to shine upon the flower. And the sunshine is not only circulating around the flower, it is penetrating deeply into the flower. If the sunshine continues like that for a few hours, then the flower opens itself to the sunshine. Our anger is a kind of flower... that needs the care of the sunshine, namely mindfulness.

RD   Many people who are activists, whose heart hurts because of the pain of injustice or pain to the environment, often say to me that the attempt to be mindful of one's anger and hold it tenderly will dissipate the energy of the anger that they use for social action. Will you talk about that issue?

TNH   The Energy of Anger may be a source of energy, but when you use anger as energy there may be danger. Because when you are angry, you are not lucid, and you may say things or you may do things that can be very destructive. That is why it is better to use other forms of energy, like the Energy of Compassion, the Energy of Understanding. But the Energy of Anger can be transformed into the Energy of Understanding and of Compassion. We don't have to throw away anything. We need only to know how to transform one form of energy into another.

RD   There is such an overriding use of the energy of the intellect in this culture among political people or business people; and so little appreciation, or respect... but appreciation for mindfulness for the reflective mind. What are the vehicles for awakening that kind of valuing of mindfulness into a culture?

TNH   The intellect is not everything of our being. Sometime people understand what is going on and what should be done, and yet they don't act as if they have understood. Therefore, we have to practice, so that kind of understanding becomes a reality and not just a few notions in our mind. For instance, the reality of impermanence. It's easy to get people to agree that things are impermanent; they may understand it completely, but they act as if things are permanent.

RD   Including themselves...

TNH   Yes. And if they are able to keep alive the insight of impermanence within them, then they would not do the things that will destroy themselves and destroy the other people. They would do whatever they can do in order to make happiness in themselves and in the other person. Like many people cry and suffer when the person that they love disappears or leaves them; but when they were still alive, still alive and lived close to them, they did not treasure, they did not do what should have been done in order to make that person happy. So the insight of impermanence should be nourished in our daily life. And that is why we do not need impermanence as a notion, but as a samadhi, a concentration: you live your daily life in such a way that the insight of impermanence is there always with you.

RD   That's partly because of being in the present moment.

TNH   Yes.

RD   In which each thing then is a new moment, and a new moment, and a new moment.

TNH   Yes. When you are mindful, you touch deeply that which is there and who is there; because mindfulness is the capacity of being there, being in the present moment. and once you are there, you live deeply in that moment of your life, and you can see deeply into the heart of the reality of what is there, including the nature of impermanence, the nature of interbeing, the nature non-self.

RD   That's interesting about Annata... because non-self, that feels to me to be a very rarefied experience, for it gets at the mystic end of the continuum. I mean, interbeing still allows for entities, it doesn't require the surrender of separateness. I wonder whether you gear the way in which you communicate... I mean, Anicca is much easier to communicate, I think, than Annata, it seems to me.

by Mark T Schultz at 09:44:09 PM in Byfield, MA | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

04/25/2009

Follow the Leader

I found it hard to get through my morning exercises today, as thoughts kept knocking at the door of my attention: some smaller, some larger, some niggling, and some bullying. With all that crowd out there, it was difficult to give myself to my practice. Like trying to read when the baby is crying, or trying to sleep when the cat is meow-meowing for food or to be let out, with the incessant baby's-cry cats have perfected over long companionship with humans.

I was pretty much on top of the thoughts, since most of them were well known to me - mooching friends who always come to ask, never to give. Yeah, yeah, I'm coming...in an hour or so. There was one voice that was patient instead of petulant or petty, and because it cooed instead of cawed it caught my inattention. It simply said: Follow the leader?

~

A week ago friend and Odonatian Lyra, having understood that she really needed some fun time in good company, sent out an invitation for a Movie Night. Being in community is at least as important as working in community: not always, not only, to be laboring together. And: if we worked and worked and never played, the place where we arrive is hard and full of friction, instead of joyous and filled with arrival. That's my theory.

So last night, a dozen of us drove in or walked in, flopped down on the fold-out, curled up on couches or in chairs, and chatted and snacked and laughed together. The film itself didn't matter: it was pretext, a little container into which we could pour ourselves. That's what community is, too. Lyra and Peter were there, and PJ and Keun and Kyounghee (who gave PJ a lift, since she hurt herself and wasn't driving), and Christine accompanied by her sense of humor (or vice-versa?), and Davide and Kim (our Iowa office representative), and Becca and Mackenzie (future hopefuls from middle Mass.), and me.

Life is lighter when it is shared, and all but the most intransigent problems slink away from a circle of friends. We spoke of our "recents" and our "near futures": Kyounghee traveling to Korea to visit her homeland (well, I don't really have a homeland anymore; I live with one foot in one home and one foot in another); this weekend's literary festival, helped along by adjunct Odonatian and local hopeful Debbie Szabo; this good restaurant or that better recipe; a story from someone's childhood. The topic of community, our community, inevitably came up, and several mentioned interesting responses to our project from family and acquaintances: Well that'll never work, or Sounds like a cult to me, or Who're the people who started this thing, bet they're going to take it over.

Take it over... Now why does that phrase, or that thought, bring tears to my eyes? Partly, it is that fear seeds fear, and our hearts and our minds are fertile soil - my heart: my mind. A cloudy mirror reflects outlines, in which the eyes, squinting, make out a dagger where there was a pen, a grimace where there was a smile, and hazard in place of hope. When that seed is planted, you can have two reactions: recoil and clench into a fist - which is the shape of that black seed - or gently, carefully, you can push your fingers down into the hurt and, like a good gardener, remove the weed. I'll tell you what: whether a fist or a gardener's open hand, swallowing that seed is painful.

Another "part" is that the "take over" concept is in itself a violence, born naturally from a world where violence is common parlance... it spans all languages, leaps language to become a lack of touch, goes beyond lack of touch to become a "tragic expression of an unmet need", and finds its version of embrace in a slap. A slap in itself doesn't sadden you: it's when you know there is something better than a slap that the idea of it sickens, and aches, and plants that weed in your garden.

Mostly, though - for me - it is painful because the idea itself wants destruction. It wants gifts to be chains. It wants service to be cynical, and wants what is given to always expect a return. It wants action to be a tightening trigger, or a hand lifting the haft of a whip. It wants subordination, and for subordination to exist (that is the destruction) it needs subordinators. Someone or some ones have got to take it over, and those within their circle of influence have got to be taken over. I think that, when one of our number, one of the community of Humans on this tiny planet Earth, when one of our number cannot see a deity as a recognizable face... has not found there is Something Larger and Uplifting beyond this ephemeral self, in whatever form that takes, Christ or Buddha, Allah or Lao Tzu or Patanjali or Great Spirit (this being the order of my memory, not of importance)... then solitude is as heavy as a swallowed stone, relationship is an exchange of small stonings; and a group of people cooking good food together, or playing or writing music, or sitting quietly, or watching a movie, or building a bunch of houses (!) could be, I suppose, a cult.

I find in that seed of isolation a drop of poison so concentrated that my body instantly becomes a knot, and my heart contracts like a fist, a posture I know all too well... but with practice and as much gentleness, as patiently as I can, my trowel several paragraphs on a page, I work that seed out of me, and drop it in the dust.

I know there are more of them. Like foxtail seed blown in a Minnesota field. That's all right. Why else are we here, if not to become good gardeners?

~

Here's how the anti-cult works.

Any person who would be an authority loses all Authority; and any person who would forge chains from their gifts has those Gifts taken from them. The business of community is not as obvious as it seems: the good food, the music, the quiet companionship, the movie, the houses are all just pretext. Instead, it is Community itself which is the face of a deity, and being one arc of a circle which makes the circle whole. If I understand the teachings of ancient masters well enough, Mastery comes from surrender to something greater than the self, and leadership asks not for submission, but simply good company.

The Buddha, they say, did not call himself the teaching, but instead said "I looked out and found something. That something I now serve. If it seems, to you, that you live more gently this way, then accompany me. The road here is good." The Buddha, they say, was a master of martial arts, could wield a sword to make nations bow. Instead, he bowed, and lifted nations on his shoulders.

At Odonata we have created a vision and a mission to help us draw a Path through an open field. Each of us brings our gifts to decorate the travel. We commit to living with as much harmony as we can learn, even if that means stepping away from the comfort of habitual fear, and studying instead how to empower others, and to be supported ourselves.

If community is taken over, then there is no Community. If companions walk with you, it is a good road.

by Mark T Schultz at 08:58:56 AM in Byfield, MA | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

11/03/2008

Joyfully Together


I have not met Master Thich Nhat Hahn, though I was privileged to spend an afternoon in his presence. Even from a distance, in Boston's cavernous Hynes Auditorium, even without a microphone, his gentle strength touched every heart, man and woman, bhikshu and layperson alike: you knew that by fate or by accident (the difference between the two being simply one of belief) you had come into the presence of a great spirit, and gave thanks.

My mother, who has always been an avid explorer of the languages and the wisdom traditions of the world, had mentioned his name as someone she had been reading, someone she respected. As some form of fate or coincidence (the difference between the two being simply one of faith), I heard that Thich Nhat Hahn was going to be in town the same weekend as she was. I asked if she wanted to go, were I to find tickets; she said yes; I did; and we went.

In preparation for the event, I picked up a few of his books from the library, to learn something about the man and his teachings. One of them was a small paperback called Joyfully Together - The Art of Building a Harmonious Community.

Words can take many forms. They can rattle off our ears or rage against our hearts. They can be subtle seeds the sink down deeply, waiting the right moment to be understood. They can be spoken or sung in unison, weaving a soft fabric of togetherness, that might drift in the air or dissolve in rain when the song or the recitation has ended. They can also be an affirmation, a ripe fruit that falls into your hand as you walk beneath the branches of a life-tree, some tree-of-life. I read the words of Joyfully Together in this way: words I had almost formed myself, or was in practice of forming; words for which I had been waiting. Probably they were seeded in my Midwestern Lutheran childhood values, in mid-america's Bible stories, in fenceless German and Scandinavian farm towns.

This month the Odonata Community is reading Joyfully Together as a shared study. It is a wonderful companion to building a circle of humans and a village, an excellent guide to growing in compassion, and I am delighted to revisit it, these years later, in a different context, as though sitting quietly with an old friend:

"Ever since I was a young monk, my dream has been to build a happy Sangha. Now, after sixty years of monastic practice, I continue to feel that Sangha building is the most precious work that we can do as practitioners. The Sangha is our community of practice, and it is also our refuge. We rely on it and trust it to support our deepest aspirations and to give us energy and inspiration on the path of practice"
  ...
"Any group of people can practice as a Sangha, as a community that is determined to live in harmony and awareness. All we have to do is commit ourselves to going together in the direction of peace, joy, and freedom. Together, we benefit from each other's strengths and learn from each other's weaknesses. A family is a Sangha; the members of a monastic and lay practice center are a Sangha; even the United Nations is a Sangha! A Sangha is a family, a spiritual family connected by the practices of mindfulness, concentration, and insight. The Sangha may be Buddhist, or even non-Buddhist, so long as it is a community that walks the path of liberation together."
...
"Please be courageous in your efforts to apply these teachings to your own life for the benefit of yourself, your family, your community, and your world."

- Thich Nhat Hahn, from the Introduction to Joyfully Together

Sometimes I wish that I had read these words earlier; that perhaps my steps would not have taken me wandering so far afield, only to arrive back at what was in fact a beginning. But then, as coincidence, happy accident, fate, or faith would have it, I have landed here, here we are, with great guidance and good intentions to live now as well as we might. And I find that all my history of wisdom instruction echoes through me, as Thich Nhat Hahn's words do tonight: what greater purpose than to dedicate oneself to "living in harmony and awareness"? And what greater gift than to go there in good company?

by Mark T Schultz at 10:13:11 PM in Byfield, MA | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

10/15/2008

Crisis-proof Community?


The news in general, but this recent international article in the Economist in particular (link may not be permanent), suggests that we should look at the current financial turmoil as more than an eddy in the river: rather a waterfall which is a few short paddle-strokes downstream. One of the arguments for Community – as opposed to a collection of individuals – is that the ability of many to navigate difficulty is generally greater than the ability of the few. Or rather: united we are a grove of trees standing against the wind, while divided we may be wind-lodged wheat.

As we look to creating physical structure for community, we do well to consider how our social structure may use collective wisdom and the support of our gathering circle to create a haven for ourselves, perhaps adopting simplicity as a curative (and shared action as preventative) to chaos. There are tangible and intangible ways to respond to challenge, and the number and scale of those opportunities increase as the size of the dedicated group increases.

Experts agree that this is, this will be, Recession with a capital "R". Experts believe the "correction" may be deeper and longer than that. How do we take action, modest and consistent, vibrant yet balanced, that assures we live safely, fully, and soundly? Without doubt, eight years sowing the seeds of fear and impotence, as a political slogan and a cultural truism, has helped promote a season of scarcity and doubt. When we fall back to earth, we do find what we have, and see what we may impact, how long the reach of our arms may be. Sometimes, it is three feet, and no further. By joining together in small, local action, we create a foundation for ourselves and, as our Vision states, generate strength that may be offered outside of our Circle:
From this abundance and experience, we will offer what we have learned to the greater community, and contribute to the healing of the world.
The hope is that, by learning the art of sharing our lives, the simple addition of 1-plus-1, or 2-plus-2, brings a suprising and non-linear result, not 2 and 4, but 4 and 16: that human spirit combines geometrically or exponentially to create an abundance, which can be offered in one form or another to the circles of communities which surround us.

Ideas we entertain, sooner than later, will allow us to take steps, before we are forced to march.

by Mark T Schultz at 10:50:52 PM in Byfield, MA | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

10/08/2008

A call to this generation, and the next


As summer draws to a close, we have begun a membership drive -- after months of "getting ready" to build, we find ourselves "ready", and looking to gather a diverse community around a common investment of time, money and experience. During the month of October we focus on local schools, where our children or our children's friends are taught to navigate an American Life. As these groups hold similar values and goals, we hope to find some younger families, who would relish the thought of growing up (and growing old!) is a village such as ours.

Here's copy sent to the River Valley Charter School, a great learning community built by a few local families and founded on Montessori principals, going strong and growing larger every day:

Odonata Ecovillage invites you to “Build Your Future”

At RVCS we know the power of shared vision: get a few folks together with the right idea, and you have community; when you have community, you can build a School. For two and a half years, the Odonata Ecovillage community has been laying the foundation for a local collaborative housing project, creating the legal structures and group processes that will allow us to buy land and build homes, and attracting the experienced and visionary consultants and advisors who can help us manifest that dream.

The African adage, “It takes a village to raise a child” is particularly true, if you as a parent want to be supported in the process as well. This month we invite families of school-age children to explore the advantages and opportunities found in a residential neighborhood, where villagers share common values: low-energy building (near-zero heating costs, in New England!), collaborative financing, appropriately shared resources (not a commune, folks), and a commitment to (re-)learning the art of living in community. There is so much we can do, when the effort is spread across the shoulders of community, instead of resting completely on those of the nuclear family.

Odonata is ready to buy land! And you can be part of the team that shapes the houses and “Builds a Future”. Join us at our next Exploring Members meeting, which will take place on Sunday, October 19th, from 2 to 5pm at the West Newbury residence of Board member Jacalyn Bennett. Bring your good ideas, your questions, and your desire to live more simply and fully: we’re delighted to explain what we have accomplished so far, and share the road ahead. Childcare provided – parents not divided!

Please visit our website at odonatavillage.org, or drop us an email at Voice@OdonataVillage.org to let us know you will be joining us (at least for the afternoon).

by Mark T Schultz at 05:29:22 PM in Byfield, MA | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

08/26/2008

Sustain "Sustainability"


As has happened so many times over the course of the past years, so it has happened over the course of human history: the changes we affect often find their motivation in momentary and immediate influences, and not in "common sense" or accumulated wisdom. Current and pressing issues will make themselves known in the most excruciating fashion, and with great good will we set about removing the source of our discomfort; opportunities appear with a siren song -- often amplified to a deafening number of decibels by those who have made siren's music their specialty -- and with that Greater Good will we leave behind what previously was enough for a run on what may be better. Today's puffed-up panacea is anything and everything natural, organic, eco-friendly as though blessed by Mother Earth herself.

The problem with panacea is that it makes the mind comfortable, and gives the appearance of Doing Something, while having little effect on Cause. How we long, as individuals and as a species, to have control over this dizzyingly complex array of competing information and warring theories, to find security in a world without walls, and stability in change. Social evolution, seen through a Buddhist's lens, can be traced by history's finger from one violent repulsion to another violent grasping, with brief interludes where perhaps the spinning world says, Wait.

So it is with some mixed gratitude that I view this recent burst of commercial and social energy: to harness technology as though harnessing oxen, to turn the blade of Promise toward fallow soil, to paint the greenest picture that has ever been painted, to prove our present is wiser than our past. On the one hand, having travelled extensively and having lived abroad in a number of (by Western standards) less than flattering situations, this upswell of environmentalism at least gives lip service to simplicity, to a balance with the natural world that, in less material-laden societies, is either wisely tasted or forced down a nation's metaphorical throat. Tasted or force-fed, there is the constant reminder that consequence exists, and an easy equation -- like kindergarten math -- for calculating how much is lost for being foolish. That our new technologies nod to the sobering fact that we are literally torching our own house (and there isn't another one), suggests that this latest response to the harpys and the sirens may be built on a somewhat solid foundation.

Unfortunately, balance means moving toward the middle, and involves compromise. One dictionary defines balance as "The stable state characterized by the cancellation of all forces by equal opposing forces; the ability to maintain a stable position or stillness of the center, while either stationary (static balance) or moving (dynamic balance)." There is something breathless in the media's assumption that this is the Challenge of the Age. It feels not at all like stillness or the careful, precise cancellation of all forces. I find that I mistrust high winds, having seen their penchant for destruction and for sweeping objects away; and I doubt the staying power of the breathless. And there is something a little vile, slightly rotting around the edges of that bright, forever-green garden, as the greatest polluters on the planet line up with their freshly-painted and green-tinged placards, proclaiming a change of heart; something almost intolerable (why is it tolerable?) in watching the manufacturers of millions of discardable automobiles, as they wear their little green membership badges, parading boyscouts who are cutpurses in their spare time.

Despite my cynical simile, this is not to assign guilt: all who are trying to improve the lot of the Living Earth have nothing to be guilty about, whatever their motivation. Immediate results notwithstanding, our choices can still be wrong, held up against the broader canvas of history, or measured by any reasonably Golden Rule. When the movement of ideas and information is as fast as lightning, our ability to understand the consequences of a single bolt striking the earth can be difficult. Wait.

So where does the cofounder of an ecovillage get off, talking down change for the better? You mistake me, friends. I don't want to undercut sustainability, but rather encourage a sustainability that is sustainable. The mirror, if it reflects at all, would show this face: calm, sober, committed, content. What is enough? How do we gain mastery of the practice of balance?

The life of a nation is the life of a person: a series of attempts, not a series of arrivals. There is no earth-bound Eden, so long as you consider that place to be free of work, or the end of a road. But there are some very, very fine gardens I know, some of them wilderness, and many of them shaped by a human hand.

by Mark T Schultz at 12:00:00 AM in Byfield, MA | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

08/18/2008

Creating Privacy in the Midst of Community


"... the desire to spread out is understandable. The greatest fear of many people choosing community is that they won't have enough privacy. However, Danish cohousing residents, who've been living in densely clustered townhouse-style housing units since the late 1960s, and cohousing architects Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett know very well that not having enough privacy is rarely a complaint of people living in this kind of community housing. 'People find that once they close their door, their unit is as private as any private housing,' says Kathryn McCamant.

" 'It's much easier to get solitude in the midst of community than to get community in the midst of solitude,' observes Winslow Cohousing member Tom Moench."

Words to challenge automatic assumptions, from Creating a Life Together, by Diana Leafe Christian. Unexamined assumptions lead us to make decisions at the outset, that will affect our lives and the life of the community for years to come. While many of the motivations that drive us on are the fruit of deep and lasting desires and needs, other drivers can be quite transitory and superficial. Does a yearning for wide open space equate to a large lot size per unit? Or is it a reaction to something in our current situation, either physical or psychological, that will automatically be resolved by any new collective environment?

by Mark T Schultz at 12:10:50 AM in Byfield, MA | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

08/04/2008

What Isn't shapes what Is.


Interior and exterior spaces are shaped by walls, but the movement of energy through and among these structures is what makes spaces livable, heatable, or defensible. This quote from the East-West architectural book, The New Asian Home, by Kendra Langeteig:

"We pierce doors and windows in making a house; it is in these spaces, where there is nothing, that the usefulness of the house depends."

- Lao Tzu

by Mark T Schultz at 01:54:16 PM in Byfield, MA | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

08/03/2008

Lessons from the Masters


It has been many months without words on the page -- days so filled with Odonata and personal activity, a rush in the river of events, that there wasn't quite enough left over to write in our journal. There was plenty to say, but no one disposed to say it. To summarize:
  • Our Board of Advisors was brought together at the fine home of a close Friend of Odonata, together with a growing collection of supporters and consultants. We have a short list of developers, designers, architects, permaculturists and financiers, many of whom are weaving themselves into a strong and spirited design team, ready for collaborative work in a design charrette*.
  • We have downpayment funds in hand, and our sights set on a few parcels of local land, measuring the pros, cons and costs of each in preparation for purchase.
  • This close to being landed, we are beginning our membership drive in the fall, August being the month for preparing materials, venues, and first contacts, both locally and in the region. Of particular interest is the untapped greater Boston area, fecund with liberally-leaning professionals, who must jump at the chance to live in Ecovillage, 1 mile off the freeway, in a seaside town! Membership requirements, already outlined, will be fleshed out, with clear guidelines for both equity and associate membership. A newsletter will be started in September.
  • Community tenets for site planning and building design are being scripted, and with land in site, the Odonatian mariners are dreaming more and more vividly of things that don't float, and winds that don't move you...
Now that you are barely up to date, we sail back to the topic at hand: why Lessons, and from which Masters?

Lessons, because we know a whole lot and that is scarcely enough. We know what we have lived, believe some of what we have learned through reading, and can only extrapolate into those hazy if not pitch dark areas where we don't supply our own expertise. Site design? Clustered housing? I have lived in hyper-populated central Java, densely-packed urban Brazil, somewhat looser rural Brazil, spider-webby and elbow-to-elbow Central Square in Cambridge, and a 3.5-acre spread in coastal New England: I have never given much thought to the layout of housing developments -- never had much opportunity, frankly -- nor to the structure and layout of my own home.

But now... what an interesting and exotic horizon awaits us! Some Tahitian wonderland for a dried-up Gaugin, or a West Indies-that-ain't-the-Indies for an exploring european. Recently we visited a near neighbor to the south, the Island Cohousing community on Martha's Vineyard. Delightful and well-planned structures, eight years later a visually and functionally beautiful community, with many features and values that we have been nurturing in our own process.

Seeing an inspiring community gets you to thinking... so I bought a couple of books on Japanese architectural design. Speaking around the cliff-edges of my knowledge, the traditional culture in Japan was closely tied to the natural world, and through its continued growth in population and lack of growth in land mass, they have learned excellent ways to live in close community, using land features and social forms in their building and siting.

Since we are born and bred to wide-open spaces (I am from Minnesota, and spent some of my youth in the wheat fields of North Dakota), the intention use clustered development to minimize our footprint, and maximize open space, runs somewhat counter to our sensibilities. Look East. There are truly elegant and powerful patterns of design and style that might feed our imaginations, and soothe our need for wider personal space. If you'd like a few visuals to tease your own imagination to life, take a look at our new Design Gallery, where you can find photographs and review from the book Japan Style, by Geeta Mehta and Kimie Tada.

by Mark T Schultz at 09:37:40 PM in Byfield, MA | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

01/02/2008

Sustainability & Spirit


The eminent wisdom of the Home Power article on Conservation & Efficiency offers a rule of thumb for those building a life with lower consumption. "Paint walls before you lay carpet." "Till the soil before you sow seed." There is a natural order to things which, when not overridden by carelessness or ignorance, results in economies of effort, energy and capital; a natural order which becomes obscured when we employ energies whose costs are hidden -- such as fossil or nuclear fuel, foreign labor, or financial credit.

The difficulty of our current Western paradigm is that we are plump and comfortable, and don't know it. It is easy to react to your neighbors' complaining and the minor anxieties we face in our communities, without recognizing the great distance between our lives and what we might consider those lives' destruction. The loss of the smallest items or most minor conveniences clouds the mind and creates an anxiety of wants, which leads to a neurotic and sometimes violent response. Were our latest police actions inevitable? Would less dependence on the foreign sources that feed our material hunger have changed the rules of those engagements? Could we choose attainable and sustainable goals?

Not, perhaps, without changing how we view the world and live on it. A challenging article in the New York Times today offers some reflection on population growth, resource consumption, and global stability:

We Americans may think of China’s growing consumption as a problem. But the Chinese are only reaching for the consumption rate we already have. To tell them not to try would be futile.

The only approach that China and other developing countries will accept is to aim to make consumption rates and living standards more equal around the world. But the world doesn’t have enough resources to allow for raising China’s consumption rates, let alone those of the rest of the world, to our levels. Does this mean we’re headed for disaster?

No, we could have a stable outcome in which all countries converge on consumption rates considerably below the current highest levels. Americans might object: there is no way we would sacrifice our living standards for the benefit of people in the rest of the world. Nevertheless, whether we get there willingly or not, we shall soon have lower consumption rates, because our present rates are unsustainable.

Real sacrifice wouldn’t be required, however, because living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates. Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For example, per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of ours, yet Western Europe’s standard of living is higher by any reasonable criterion, including life expectancy, health, infant mortality, access to medical care, financial security after retirement, vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts. Ask yourself whether Americans’ wasteful use of gasoline contributes positively to any of those measures.


The author, Jared Diamond of UCLA, points to a missing element in many of these discussions: the resistance to changing patterns of living and patterns of thought, the difficulty in shifting from one paradigm to another. The developed world is flat, and those who have built empires of thought and wealth upon that plane, with an unacknowledged precipice at the edge of its Reason, will like any good Inquisition fight tooth and nail to protect itself. And like every good inquisition, will slowly bend under the weight of greater or clearer truths, until it breaks. As individuals who were born and raised with this view of the world - indeed, who helped create it in all of its glories - it is difficult if not impossible to leave the apparent shelter of its roof, while surrounded by its walls, or to think independently of a round world when all we can see is flat. As was the case in the earliest debate on the Center of the Universe (Us or not Us?): two perspectives rested upon the same observed evidence. One model was unsustainably complex, however, and the other intolerably challenging.

Difficult and perhaps impossible, while material wealth and comfort itself is the godhead. That phrase sounds overblown, but is actually much more mundane than it seems: two hundred years ago, on the farms and in the villages, when there were times of need, there was something larger, beyond objects, to sustain life and prop up the human spirit. There was a framework, a way of seeing and being, which allowed individuals and communities to continue to operate with scarcity, one which is certainly available to all of us today, but is not prevalent, unpracticed, and those who would be its speakers have not yet been made relevant by local events.

If the industrial world is to relax its greed and desire for oil-fueled speed, it must begin to bend the edges of its world; dare to look beyond its flat horizon, to see the blue-green globe spinning day on day; rediscover that sustainability is the same as spirit -- an ethical and unified vision of the world and its peoples -- so that, unfurling its fingers, unclenching its fist, it finds the empty hand is filled.

by Mark T Schultz at 09:26:42 AM in Byfield, MA | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

01/01/2008

Conservation & Efficiency


An excellent matter-of-fact article from Home Power Magazine: so you want to solve your problems with better technology? New tools fix nothing if the process is shot. Start by managing yourself better, and changing wasteful habits before you begin spending money on gadgets...

"Many people get entranced by RE technologies—solar-electric (photovoltaic; PV) modules, and microhydro and wind turbines. But the first focus of anyone wanting to invest in RE should be conservation and efficiency.

"Conservation involves changing your energy use behaviors from wasteful, inefficient habits (such as leaving on the lights when you leave a room) to energy-saving ones (turning off the lights every time you leave a room). This is a conscious choice—although you are using the same fixtures, you´re making an effort to minimize your energy consumption.

"Efficiency, on the other hand, is reducing energy consumption—without changing your lifestyle—by using efficient appliances. As energy efficiency expert Amory Lovins once said, energy efficiency is a "technical fix." Using the previous examples, the efficiency solution would be to swap out incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescents (CFs), which only use about a quarter of the energy.

"Both conservation and efficiency work hand in hand. Apply the basic principles of conservation and efficiency to all of your energy choices, before looking at harnessing renewable energy. It makes very little sense to put PVs on your roof before you have CFs in your light fixtures.

"Conservation and energy efficiency are low-hanging fruit, to be picked before moving forward with solar electricity or hot water systems. By reducing your energy demand, you will greatly reduce the cost of your RE systems when you´re ready to have them installed. Every dollar you spend on efficiency measures will save you roughly $3 to $5 on your renewable energy system costs."

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by Mark T Schultz at 09:46:41 PM in Byfield, MA | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

12/18/2007

Lessons in solar heating


When you begin to reasearch heat and energy systems for the home, it is common to hear measurements in degrees or BTUs, kilowatts or kilocals. Useful numbers to measure a system's maximum capacity, perhaps; but almost always applied as though the maximum were going to be required at all times and in all places throughout the living space.

It is similar to measuring the energy needed to move a boat through the water: I can look at the horsepower of a cruiser's twin inboard diesel engines and measure them against currents and tides, but my cruiser is the most ignorant vessel available, which burns far more fuel than required because its owner insists on traveling a straight line, across all currents and waves, at any time of day. At the helm of a sailboat, even the most amateur navigator learns quickly how to minimize the effort required to move through water, and through that learning increases his or her mastery with every voyage, until the way of being on the sea is educated by the movements of the world itself. A wise voyager spends the least to go the furthest.

In my 1860s farmhouse, there are more ways for heat to escape than there are to keep it in. I am, in effect, a sailor whose boat is full of holes, and I am constantly working against the gravity of the situation, to pour the least amount of fuel into the system, that my savings doesn't go up the chimney with the inefficiency of oil. The two heating zones in my house are both managed by automated thermostats, whose temps go down to 58 degrees during the workday and sleeping hours (I might make that lower), rising to levels of comfort considered uncomfortable by some when the house is inhabited. That's not really a matter of choice, in a building that steams through several thousand dollars a winter just to keep the pipes from bursting.


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by Mark T Schultz at 01:22:39 PM in Byfield, MA | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)