Just Enough and Nothing More

Zen is the practice of choosing peace over drama, balance over dogma, and compassion over judgment.

Homeschooling is an extraordinary experience, but it can also be stressful and overwhelming. Bring a little Zen into your education at home, and use the power of experience, mindfulness, and acceptance to create an amazing homeschooling life.

Bring out the best in your children, and in yourselves, with Zenschooling.

That’s the premise of my upcoming book, Zenschooling: Living a Fabulous and Fulfilling Life Without School. I’m excited about this book because it brings together two things that I love, education and Zen.

In my years of studying Zen, and attempting to practice it, it has influenced the way I see education. It never stops being a delight to experience how Buddhist concepts such as acceptance, mindfulness, and non-attachment go together seamlessly with the experiences of educating children outside of school within the context of our modern world.

Buddhist stories challenge us to think about ourselves and how we interact with our work and other people. Here’s one of my favorite stories:

Two monks were returning to the monastery in the evening. It had rained and there were puddles of water on the road sides. At one place a beautiful young woman was standing unable to walk across because of a puddle of water. The elder of the two monks went up to a her lifted her in his arms and left her on the other side of the road, and continued his way to the monastery.
In the evening the younger monk came to the elder monk and said, “Sir, as monks, we cannot touch a woman?”
The elder monk answered “Yes, brother.”
Then the younger monk asks again, “But then Sir, how is that you lifted that woman on the roadside?”
The elder monk smiled at him and told him “I left her on the other side of the road, why are you still carrying her?”

Most of us are still carrying baggage from when we were young, including baggage from how we learned, how we were taught, how we were restricted or neglected or scared. We bring them with us into the world of teaching and living with our children at home. One aspect of Zen is learning how to put down the lady at the water’s edge.

This story and others are in Zenschooling. Putting into words what it’s like to be a homeschoolers is difficult, because so much of it is simply impossible to analyze or quantify. In Zenschooling, I attempt to capture this essense of what creates our dramas and how we can deal with these stories we create with compassion not only for our children, but for ourselves and the world we live in, while still being homeschoolers who have to make decisions about curriculum, socialization, and how to find time to do the laundry.

You don’t have to live in a monastary to practice Zen. You don’t even have to practice Zen to be more peaceful.

Don’t study Buddhism to be come Buddhist. Study Buddhism to become a better whatever you are. Take what works for you now, and leave the rest. But maybe, in the process, you’ll take one, or a few, tiny steps to becoming more patient, relaxed, and aware in our modern high pressure world where homeschoolers can expect far too much from themselves and be overwhelmed with input and possibilities.

Pre-order Zenschooling now and be sure to get one of the first copies in June 2010.

Related posts:

1. Call-Out from the Life Without School Blog
2. Creating Life Long Learners (In School or Otherwise)
3. The Zen of Education
4. Living As Though School Doesn’t Exist
5. Off to the CHN Conference This Weekend