Trust Your Timer

Ring the bell that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. - Jack Kornfield

Day Three. Hot Damn. Go Team Bloggitate. Or is that Mediblog?

I mentioned my aversion to American Narcissism in my last post. Blogging seems impossibly self-centered, but I'm not sure that is always a bad thing. I love to read books about writing (it's what we wannabe writers do rather than actually write) and one of my favorites is "Writing Down the Bones" by Natalie Goldberg. I'm also a huge fan of Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird." Both writers talk about the potential rawness of writing -- the uncensored, get out of your head, relinquish the "committee" that sits inside with its constant commentary and criticism style of writing. That's the kind of writing that I suspect is not as much self-centered as self-centering. I've been a shrink for 22 years now, which I figure is about 22,000 hours of client contact. A person gets to know a lot about humanity when she sits day after day in the privacy of the therapy office while people disclose the most intimate aspects of their being. Some universal truths emerge over the years. It's one of the great privileges of my profession: You are privy to constant reminders that we humans are much more alike than different. One of the truths I've learned is that we're all greatly soothed by the sharing of human experience. When someone writes honestly, bravely, boldly about this bizarre journey called Life, we all benefit. The most intricate and vast bonds of human connection are spread through words. It's why I love to string them together.

I planned on writing about my cyber-conquest after last night's meditation. I was quite excited that, after writing about my aversion to all things computeresque, I had located the alarm on my cell phone. I was terribly pleased with myself for embarking upon the risky exploration culminating in this discovery. "Wow," I thought smugly, "I can time my meditation right here from the floor, and my cell phone can signal when my time is up." Carefully, I calculated the correct alarm time for my 20-minutes of zazen, placed my phone at arm's reach beside my sofa cushion, and began to sit. Remembered tenderly the early instruction of my Zen teacher. Deep breath. Count 10 of them and start again. Watch my breath breathe itself in and out. Use my mudra to envision a swinging door through which my inhale and exhale pass. Back straight, crown of my head reaching up toward the sky. Watch my mind become still (or listen to the chattering monkeys inside. . . .) I'm feeling good, a bit cocky - which my teacher would find amusing and unacceptable - because I actually make it to 10 a couple of times without my breath sequence being interrupted by my usual frenzied flight of ideas. I focused on "The Pause" - that magic space of silence when my exhale is complete and my inhale hasn't started yet. So tuned into my body that I felt the reflexive expansion of my stomach just before my inhale -- as though my body were making room for the incoming air. Very cool. I sat. And sat. And sat. Heard the dog next door bark his soprano shriek, and didn't even shudder. Exhaled my annoyance and just kept sitting. My cockiness began to wane, and the inevitable obsession with time snuck in. Whew, I've been sitting a long time. How long can 20 minutes be? It HAS to be past 20 minutes. Breathe some more. What happened to my alarm? Hang in there, time always slows in meditation. I want to look I want to look I want to look. Surely it's been 20 minutes. Ten more breaths and the alarm will sound. I know I set it to go off in 20 minutes.....

The alarm never went off. With my predictable electronic ineptitude, I had set the time, but not saved the changes to activate the alarm. I got up off my cushion with the usual creaking of bones and tore into the den to check the time on the cable box. 27 minutes had elapsed. I had meditated seven minutes longer than intended, though I'm pretty sure the extra seven minutes were devoted to worrying about, well, the extra seven minutes. I began to chuckle, and remembered my early understanding of why the Buddha smiles. Silly human. So much for mastering a new form of time keeping. Reality always sitting right beside me, calmly licking its chops. This meditating year is going to be some adventure.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc