BIO: Patricia Mullen is a Zen Buddhist who leads a Zen Introduction class in SaddleBrooke each Friday morning at HOA2 from 9:00–10:00 a.m. in the Agate Room of the Arts and Crafts Building. Please register via email at zenintroduction@gmail.com.
Does it seem like your to‑do list never ends?
Even as we finish one thing, three more appear, demanding our attention.
We often imagine that contentment will come once everything is finally completed, but accomplishing things can feel elusive—and life is not meant to be an endless series of tasks.
When our lives are focused solely on getting to the next thing, we never truly arrive. In a very real sense, there is no next thing to get to. This very task, this very moment, is it. Here and now there is a wholeness, a completeness in life—wherever we are and whatever we are doing.
This wholeness and completeness are what Confucius speaks of. They are the source of profound contentment, even in the face of death.
Such contentment is not complacency. We can be deeply content and still hold hopes, set goals, and work hard to achieve them. Contentment does not depend on finishing tasks. It arises when we see that our hopes and goals for the future are already part of our completeness today. With this understanding, we can enjoy our hopes and goals instead of becoming slaves to them—wearing ourselves out trying to reach a future that never quite arrives.
In this way, instead of constantly rushing to the next thing and the next thing after that, we can experience the contentment of completion right where we are—by practicing completing a single breath, a single step, a sip of tea, or a single word.
Plans floated to reopen San Manuel Mine as part of regional copper development
