The Zen Zone

Are you in the Zen zone? Being in the zone means you're totally in tune with whatever you're doing, whether it's drinking coffee, simply breathing, admiring a beautiful flower, cleaning your house, meditating, enjoying a sunrise, swimming at the beach, jogging, or anything else you do. The nature of Zen is in harmony with everything and everything is in harmony with Zen. You can be in the Zen zone in every moment. Simply allow yourself to flow into whatever you're doing with your full focus of awareness.

Look Inside Zen Coffee

Drinking a cup of coffee brings to mind various images ... sitting in a coffee house with friends, sharing great conversation ... waking up in the morning with a hot cup of java to open your eyes and get you going ... and quiet moments of contemplation over a mug of steaming coffee.

Zen Coffee is for people on the run ... an active approach to mindful meditation in every moment of your busy life. It offers you many ways to bring peace and a sense of serenity into all your experiences and activities.

As you race through the hectic pace of life with your coffee cup in hand, you'll find a moment or two to de-stress and drink in the essence of Zen ... the essence of your inner nature.

Inside the pages, you'll discover how to:

• Zoom into the zest of Zen to make your life more meaningful;
• Capture the essence of your inner nature in all your experiences;
• Use caffeine to wake up your inner self;
• Put the magic of mindfulness into every moment;
• Minimize stress and maximize happiness;
• Find peace, quiet, and harmony in hidden places in your mind where you never thought to look for them; and
• Create a meditation space--a Zen sanctuary and coffee zendo for a few mindful moments of meditation every day.

Capturing the essence of your inner self is as quick and easy as drinking your coffee and being mindful as you race through the ups and downs of all your experiences. A few moments of mindfulness scattered here and there puts the caffeine calm of Zen Coffee into your life.

Please visit Mystical Mindscapes and have a look inside the pages to see how coffee and calm combine to create a mindful state of mind.

Zen Coffee is Here

Zen Coffee has arrived in the present.
The birth of a book is always a very special thing to me, not just because I wrote it, but because part of me--part of my heart and soul--is in the pages.

I promised I'd answer the koan of meditating by coffee. The nature of how you experience Zen and coffee is unique
to each person. There is no right or wrong answer because the koan is whatever it means to you. The koan can't be explained with words; it must be experienced on an intuitive, feeling level inside you. That's what Zen Coffee is all about.

The paradox of meditating by coffee is that mindfully meditating is
not separate from any of your experiences; it is a basic, integral part
of everything in your life and can be incorporated into every thought, feeling, and experience you have, much in the same manner that caffeine and calm--which are seeming opposites--poured into the
same coffee cup are a perfect blend of meditation and mindfulness.

Everyone who left comments on the koan receives a free copy of the book! Please email me with your address so I can send the books out.

The Present is a Gift

Being present in every moment is a gift you give yourself. A gift that brings you peace, joy, calmness, and harmony. A gift that offers you the opportunity to just simply be and breathe, a present that gives you the chance to tune into yourself and discover all the many wonderful things about you.

Speaking of the present and a gift -- I have a gift for you. Just like the happy anticipation you feel when your birthday comes around, I'm going to have to make you wait for it--not because I'm trying to be mean, but because the gift hasn't arrived in the present.

Zen Coffee: A Guide to Mindful Meditation is nearly ready to be born. I expect my book to make its appearance in the world and on this blog sometime towards the end of this month. And when it arrives, I'll be giving away copies to the first ten people who have answered the koan of meditating by coffee. So take some time to be present and give yourself the gift of mindful meditation. And you may even win a book.

Here's the koan: You may be wondering how to meditate by coffee.
How can caffeine and calm, poured into the same coffee cup create a peaceful state of mind? How can you meditate if you're all stressed out or jazzed up on coffee? Well, it's a koan... that's the nature of Zen. A koan is a Zen Buddhist riddle that has no easy answer; it may be totally illogical in nature and it appears to be a paradox. A koan is a question that must be experienced in order to be understood. Zen and coffee don't seem to mix. Or do they? It seems they'd be completely opposite to one another, but part of the mystery of the koan is that they are truly in harmony. What do you suppose the koan means? How do caffeine and calm mix together in a cup of coffee?

Where's Your Zen?

Is your Zen lost? Misplaced? Gone? Does it only appear when you're feeling calm and peaceful? Is it next to impossible to find when you're stressed or angry? Do you mindlessly gulp down your coffee without giving Zen a second thought? Not to worry. You're not alone. All of us at one time or another have misplaced our Zen. It isn't lost, though it may have wandered off for a while, looking for you in the moment when you lost it.

Zen is everywhere, all the time. Your Zen is hiding in your coffee and is easily found when you look for it. Wherever you go, there you are. You can journey mindfully through life with Zen coffee. Zen is flexible. Zen is fluid. Zen fits your lifestyle. Zen is in every breath you take. Breathe and be present in the moment, no matter where you are, what you are doing, how you are feeling, or what is happening. Breathe and be completely present with your feelings in the moment you are experiencing. That's where your Zen is.

Zen Coffee: A Guide to Mindful Meditation

Zen Coffee is nearly finished. Just wanted to give you a look at the cover. My blogging buddy, Caroline, at The Zen in You, created the cover. We're almost ready to go to press; the book will be available by the end of this month. You can read what the book is about here. While you're waiting, take some time to just simply breathe and mindfully enjoy your Zen coffee.

We'll be revealing the answer to the koan of meditating by coffee and giving away free copies of Zen Coffee as part of our book launch. If you haven't pondered the koan, please mindfully meditate on it and post your answer.

Peace

There really are no words to describe the emotions we all felt so deeply on this day seven years ago. I hurt for all the people who lost their lives that day and for their families. Today, I choose to practice peace. In my own way, I hope to help with the healing in our hearts that will lead to loving kindness and peace.

Zen Sesshin

A sesshin means literally "a gathering of the mind." It is a period of intensive meditation, usually done in a zendo--a meditation hall. The daily routine requires many hours of meditation a day; during a sesshin, you devote yourself almost exclusively to zazen practice, which is simply sitting to peacefully meditate. The meditation periods are interwoven with short rest breaks and meals--all performed with the same mindfulness as meditating.

I'm engaging in a Zen coffee sesshin in the zendo of my office to mindfully finish writing my book, Zen Coffee:
A Guide to Mindful Meditation. I'm going to gather the thoughts in my mind and on paper together, and while drinking my coffee, work in a meditative frame of mind, taking time
for short breaks for meals, to walk my dogs, and cuddle with my cats.
I'll also be taking a break from posting on this blog so I can focus on my book. I'm going to sit zazen at my computer, meditating on the words, writing them, and growing them into a book.

While I'm finishing my book, maybe you'd like to meditate on the koan
of meditating by coffee. This was part of my first post: You may be wondering what Zen and coffee have in common and how to meditate
by coffee. How can caffeine and calm, poured into the same coffee cup create a peaceful state of mind and help you to mindfully meditate? How can coffee jazz your mind and bring you inner peace at the same time? Well, it's a koan... that's the nature of Zen.

A koan is a Zen Buddhist riddle, used to focus the mind during meditation; it is something that has no easy answer; it may be totally illogical in nature and it appears to be a paradox. A koan is a question that must be experienced in order to be understood. Zen and coffee don't seem to mix. Or do they? It seems they'd be completely opposite
to one another, but part of the mystery of the koan is that they are
truly in harmony.

What do you suppose the koan means? How do caffeine and calm mix together in a cup of coffee? If you're one of the first ten people to solve the koan, I'll give you a free copy of my book. If you're one of the next ten after that, I'll buy you a cup of coffee. If you're still wondering what the answer is, you'll have to wait until the book comes out. But I promise you, you'll engage your mind and spirit, and that's a much better gift you can give yourself than receiving a free book.

Monkey Mind

When you finally have and/or make the time to enjoy a peaceful moment all to yourself--just you and a cup of coffee--and you've decided you're going to mindfully meditate and be present in this moment of here and now, what usually happens? Your mind won't be quiet. A zillion thoughts rush and careen through your mind. All you wanted was peace and quiet, a mindful moment of silence to sip your Zen coffee. Instead, you're listening to all the chatter running through your mind. This is called a monkey mind. Not too flattering, I know, but it happens to all of us when we meditate. Our mind goes in a zillion different directions at once, like a crazy little monkey jumping from one thought to another.

The cute little monkey in the picture is holding a branch from a coffee tree. He, or she, has just had his/her Zen coffee by nibbling the coffee cherries. This monkey looks pretty calm, as if he/she is truly having a mindful moment. Probably doesn't have any thoughts running through his/her carefree little mind. Probably laughing at us humans who can't quiet the constant chatter in our minds.

So how do we quiet our mind so we can focus on the present moment?
By being accepting of our thoughts and being detached from them at the same time. Accept that thoughts are going to run through your mind but don't become attached to them by thinking about them. Calmly watch them come and go. Notice that you're having a thought, but don't pay attention to what the thought says. Without an audience, your thought will leave, and then another one will come running through your mind. Let the thought go, and the next one, and the next one, and so on.

Just breathe. Focus your mind on your breathing. Notice how you're breathing in and out, back and forth, inhaling and exhaling. Breathing in ... breathing out. No room for thoughts, only breathing in and out. Just breathing, being present with your breath.

Your mind will leave you alone when you don't pay any attention to it. Your monkey mind wants attention; it wants an audience; it wants you
to listen. When you simply notice that you're having a thought and don't focus on it, then the thought will wander away by itself, wondering why you're not listening, but hey--you're being mindful and breathing; you're not listening to thoughts, you're listening to your breathing. Just breathe. Just be present with your breath.

Sharing Zen Coffee

It's Sunday morning; perhaps you're just simply enjoying the Zen within your day, free from work and other obligations, maybe meeting friends for an iced latte or a Frappuccino at the coffee house.

Photo by carrielynn.

Coffee Zendo

A zendo is a meditation hall where it is
peaceful and silent, a place to quietly sit
in mindful meditation.

Zen Coffee has its own version of a zendo. It's a place in real life where you actively engage in mindfulness in and through all your activities. Take a moment or two and visit our coffee zendo with its array of coffees, espresso machines, and books on Zen and coffee.

Flowing Into Zen

The path of Zen is gentle, peaceful and flows like water, following its own course. In Zen coffee terms, simply go with the flow of life. Please enjoy this relaxing waterfall meditation. It�s very peaceful, very Zen. Created by Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University. Visit their website for more meditations.

Thomas Kohnstamm: Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?

Right on, Thomas. I'll join you in Hell. You sound like my kinda guy. Southeast Asia is my beat, so guess what: been there, done that. And your comments about the miserable pay of travel writers, and the need to cut corners, is entirely correct.

Right on, Thomas.

Best Article: Away on Business. Read it.

Thomas Kohnstamm Website

Thomas Kohnstamm MySpace

Thomas Kohnstamm Wikipedia

Lonely Planet Forum on Thomas Kohnstamm

Amazon Title: Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?

Amazon Books by Thomas Kohnstamm

The Age Australia April 13

Gadling April 13

Lonely Planet Profile April 14

Times Online April 14

WorldHum April 14

MediaBistro Profile

Brave New Traveler April 14

Away on Business April 15

Brave New Traveler April 18

Random House April 22

LA Times April 22

Jaunted April 22

New York Times Moment April 22

Vagabondish April 23

Simon Sellars: Lonely Planet Writer

No matter whether you are a freelance travel writer under contract with Lonely Planet or Rough Guides, you will be give strict guidelines on the places you must go, the research you must do, and the correct copy you must turn in on a determined date. And then you get the second payment.

Another report from a new LP travel guidebook contract author.

I feel one of the biggest misconceptions about Lonely Planet is that the company pays its authors to swan around on holiday and then do a bit of writing as an afterthought. The reality is that you are on your feet for twelve hours a day, during torrential rain or baking heat or whatever testing conditions you�ve parachuted into: coups; insurgencies; dealing with the horror of warm beer in Britain. There�s very little time for actual sightseeing. It�s actually hard work.

As I mentioned before, reviewing chain hotels is a special form of torture and definitely a grind. But, also, I must stress again that time is always at a premium when doing guidebook work. Although I say I like to listen and observe, in reality financial constraints make it almost impossible to linger at leisure for days on end like some kind of bohemian flaneur, so you are really just crunching as much as possible into your day: visiting 10 hotels, dropping into 10 bars and restaurants (and not necessarily eating or drinking in them, either), visiting the tourist office, the bus station etc. If there�s a moment for quiet reflection then that�s a bonus and you seize on it and make the most of it.

Well, I�ve already spoken about the fact checking. Guidebooks have become a very streamlined business and there�s less and less chance to �stretch your wings� as a writer these days. Again, this is also a consequence of the fact that there are far fewer untouristed places on the globe today compared to say 15-20 years ago, when the content of an individual guidebook could still be groundbreaking. I mentioned boxed texts earlier � these are a chance to write as much as 800-1000 words on a topic � but for the most part it is very much templated work, there�s no getting around that. As for the pay, agreed: it�s not an especially well-paid job, and as that NY Times article highlights, there will always be a pool of eager young writers who will do it for next to nothing � a highly attractive prospect for any employer with a tight budget and a year-round schedule.

Travel Happy

Chuck Thompson: Smile While You're Lying

The travel writing community rarely has hot issues to discuss among themselves, but the recent issue of a book called "Smile While You're Lying" by travel writer Chuck Thompson has them up in arms.

Not sure why. He claims he was encouraged by his magazine publishers to write positive or at least not totally negative mentions of the tourist infrastructure (hotels, restaurants, airlines) when he went on assignment.

Yeah, so what. I'm a travel writer, but very few writers sculpt their verbiage; the bad shit is sometimes dropped and you find something interesting to write about your cookie cutter place. I only slam famous places that have gone bad and need a warning, and that's very unusual....I'd say less than five percent. And I have reviewed several hundred, perhaps thousands, of hotel properties in SE Asia.

Chuck Thompson came to San Francisco a few weeks ago and I had a chance to meet him at an Irish pub of the Tenderloin, and Chuck was a friendly guy with no pretensions about his book, which is mostly about his travel adventures and not his existential philosophy about the great good of humankind, but he does resent reviews of his book from journalists who have betrayed his trust, such as Rolf Potts.

New York Times

Brave New Traveler Interview with Chuck

World Hum Opinion by Rolf Potts

Gadling Interview

Robert Reid Talks about the Future of Travel Guidebooks

Robert Reid is a Lonely Planet writer who publishes an amazing internet guide to Vietnam, and doesn't mince words in his recent interview with WorldHum. He laments the demise of experienced travel guidebook writers for novices who will work for peanuts under the illusion it will lead to fame and riches, and thinks internet travel guides will someday replace traditional published guides, when technology advances and handhelds can display the chief advantage printed guides continue to have over internet sources: maps.

Robert Reid: I used to think the most important thing we guidebook authors did for travelers was hotel reviews. People like to have some sense of security that the $5 or $300 place they�re staying in won�t be a brothel or rat-infested dump. But the Internet has already completely changed this. Previously if I had a new budget hotel in a town center, or a mid-ranger with pool, travelers would have to wait nine or 12 months from the time I �discovered� it until it appeared in a guide.

Now Internet booking sites often get them immediately. When I went to China a couple years ago, I stayed at a brand new hostel in Beijing that the Trans-Siberian author had just found, but that hadn�t yet appeared in the guide. It was already full! I was amazed at how nearly all the people there had found it online, and were booking their full China trip�s accommodations online.

At a Lonely Planet workshop a couple years ago, I asked a high-up at LP who they saw as their biggest competitor, and they immediately answered �Google.� I was impressed. So publishers like LP definitely see the Internet as a growing competitor, and have for a while. When the BBC bought LP a couple months ago, one of the key things they cited for future development was online content.

Another thing is that many sites with travel content online don�t have maps. And maps are HUGE. I sometimes think seasoned travelers need only a map, with barebones details of few places to stay, and barebones details of what to see and where to eat. If they trust the author�and that�s a big if, of course�not as much needs to be said as some people think. This, again, is for seasoned travelers only.

The only other thing I fear regarding online guidebooks is if they follow the �I stayed here and it was great� TripAdvisor or Amazon.com model. Those are useful, no doubt, but they�re only based on isolated experiences. If publishers turn things over at some point to reader-generated content, you won�t have the authoritative overviews that guidebook writers can offer, and it�ll end up with deeper beaten tracks, with more travelers doing the same thing.

But I do want to say David Stanley is right, it�s sad and reckless if an old author who did good work on several editions is cut for a new author. In my opinion, in-house editors don�t completely understand what goes into researching these guides�I was an editor for years, and only figured it out once I started writing full time. The best experience for writing a guidebook to X is not living in X but actually having written a guidebook to X. Sometimes publishers forget that a bit.

Sometimes I think we�re living a doomed profession, and that we�ll look back on the wacky wild period from the 1970s to the 2000s when scores of notebook-toting travelers went and sought out the mysteries of places that are no longer mysterious. People will look back on the era like reading Graham Greene books about far-flung places at wilder times.

Will guidebooks in book form die? Probably so. But to be honest, I think there will always be room for the perspective of the �guidebook author,� at least online. Once hand-held devices get even more sophisticated, so that maps and reviews are more easily referred to�or we old folks die out and the younger generations who are not so soft on books take over�things will probably go online completely.

But I sometimes think people like holding those books. So far, though, the TripAdvisor-type sites are excellent resources, but don�t account for perspective. One person goes to Y hotel and says �it�s super!� But they don�t realize A, B, C are similar and $40 less. Who goes to all 15 museums in Bucharest but a guidebook author? So only they can tell you that something like the Romanian National Museum of the Peasant is about the best museum in the world?

WorldHum Interview with Robert Reid

How to be a Travel Writer in Five Easy Pieces

Robert Haru Fisher is a New York based travel writer and author of the guidebook pictured above, available at Amazon at London Off-Season And On : A Guide To Special Pleasures, Better Rater And Shorter Lines. He also wrote the Crown Insiders Guide to Japan, which is from his own publishing company. Fisher also contributes to the Frommer website and has, over the last few months, published a series of "so you wanna be a travel writer" articles with enough positive spin to keep the dreamers happy, and enough reality to discourage all but the most brave. It comes in five parts.

I haven't mentioned money yet, so will say only that you should have resources of your own, or a spouse/partner with a regular job, so someone can pay the bills. The travel writers who have good incomes are either on the staff of some publication and drawing a salary, or have honed the art of freelancing well, usually after many years of hard practice. Newspapers pay chicken feed (e.g. $75 for a column of print), magazines maybe $1 a word at best for writers without a famous following, websites little, and books smallish advances (if any, maybe $5,000) or flat fees not much more than that for a small book.

Part One

Part Two is a short history of travel writing, with a well deserved plug for Arthur Frommer, a man I have great admiration for and was once interviewed by on The Travel Channel.

"You have a dream job!" Half the people I meet for the first time tell me that, and I agree. It's heaven for me because I am intensely curious, always wanting to know what's around the next corner. When you travel, there's always a new next corner, a new surprise. It's no way to get rich, and it can be hell on family and other relationships because you seem never to be home, from their point of view, anyhow. You can't be a new parent, for instance, or taking care of an ailing family member. The most prolific travel writers are away at least a quarter of the time, I believe, sometimes half the time.

Part Two

Part Three tries to define what is travel writing.

Anyone can be a travel writer. You can write your blog, your memoir, your diary of a trip, and the only difference between you and, say, Pico Iyer, is that he writes more beautifully than almost anyone, and he may publish in Harper's and The New York Times while you are just broadcasting your thoughts on your own website, perhaps.

Part Three

Fisher in Part Four espouses the advantages of having a travel blog, and claims he is not trying to sell anything to anyone these days, including his travel writing seminars in Key West as advertised at the bottom of each of these posts.

(Full disclosure here: I don't have a site or a blog myself, as I am not trying to sell anything to anybody these days.)

If you are freelancing, you should also be working on a book, as having a book under your belt makes you an expert, ipso facto.

Part Four

Fisher in Part Five finishes with his analysis of the history of travel writing to reveal a few facts about the income side of the average travel writer. Finally.

"Get paid to travel" reads one headline. "How to Make a Six-Figure Income Traveling the World" is another. In the last few years, several websites have popped up urging you to learn how to become rich while writing about travel. For fees of several hundred dollars, they promise to teach you how to lead the good life.

It's a life I don't recognize as being anywhere near the reality of those led by many friends of mine who are freelance travel writers. To me, the freelancer is a knight errant, the leaderless samurai, a solo gun-slinger, and my hero much of the time.

My first advice to aspiring freelance writers is to marry rich, or otherwise obtain a partner who has, at least, a steady income. Markets are hard to break into, payment is often laughably cheap. One young writer for a major series of guidebooks approached me on a press trip a few years ago and asked me if I had worked for the series and what they paid. I mentioned some figures, and he said, "Good, I'm working for nothing right now, but they told me if I did a good job, they would pay me next time." The figures I mentioned then were a range from $75 for updating a small chapter of a book through a few thousand to revise the entire book up to about $15,000 for the original writing of a new, fairly small title (under 300 pages of print).

Your writing in a newspaper can pay as little as $75, in a magazine $250, though there are higher and lower figures, depending on the publication. When you are successful, you can command a figure of $1 a word or even higher, however. Traditional print outlets (general purpose newspapers) are down, but niche print publications (birding, ballooning, kayaking, etc.) are up. The Internet is fraught with possibilities, very few of them paying much, if anything, though. You may have to self-publish, and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Moreover, one site has its sample author writing "In fact, my own editor is crying out for correspondents to report on destinations throughout the world ... and she's not the only editor seeking fresh talent. To be honest, I have to turn work down -- there simply aren't' enough hours in the day to take up all the writing commissions I'm offered." Not bloody likely, as many of my freelancer friends would say.

Part Five