How to become a Zen Master

How to become a Zen Master? Start photographing birds.

Bird photography is an excellent way to find equanimity and inner peace.

Bird photography involves having a favorite spot that you know birds frequent. You get comfortable, get your camera ready, calm your body and mind, focus on regular breathing and...

• you'll see a bird sitting on a nearby branch. Always with another branch or foliage hiding it.

• the bird sits on the branch in the ideal position. You raise the camera to your eye and the bird flies away.

• the bird sits down two metres from you and starts to show off. Unfortunately - you've got a long telephoto lens on, which focuses from 2.5 metres...

• the bird is sitting on a branch and it looks like it's going to last a while. Slowly, breathlessly, you raise the camera. You gently press the shutter button to bring the camera into focus. It takes about a second for the big tele-lens to come into focus. The bird flies away in 0.95 seconds.

And this doesn't happen to you once or twice, but 20 times. But one mustn't get upset about it. First of all, it doesn't help anything, and secondly, nature is sensitive and reacts to your state of mind. So you keep your cool. You've been squatting there for almost an hour, you've got two birds photographed, but you're keeping calm. Like a Zen master.

And suddenly all the birds make a mass takeoff. What's going on? Nothing, just a family of noisy kids at your favorite birding spot. They want to see the birds too, although their noisy behaviour doesn't help. You put your camera in your lap, put on an understanding smile, and meditate...

And when it's quiet again, you start again.

When a colleague comes to you at work and tells you that the network is down, half of the server room is burnt, the ERP database is down and nobody knows where the backup is, you can just smile. Shooting birds taught you to remain calm and composed at all times. You are a zen master.