Dwelling in the Pause

I think Dr. Seuss was the first rapper. - My mom

Day Nine. Tomorrow I will be a Blogger with Blogs in the Double Digits. Feels like a bit of a milestone.

Usually, I try to open with a quote that is at least remotely related to the content of my blog entry. Not so tonight, though I'm always open to the serendipitous unveiling of an unintentional connection. My mom just popped out that amazing idea during a phone conversation we had tonight. I thought it definitely worth preserving.

I realize that my commitment is to simply sit every day for 20 minutes. No expectation. No reward. No promise. No payoff. And certainly, NO attainment. However, I can't help but notice that it feels differently to sit on Day Eight than it did on Day One. Naturally - the moments on Day One came and went and were unique to that particular block of 20 minutes. What I mean is, I think I'm getting better at zazen. Blasphemy! Sacrilege! Impiousness! This is NOT something to be getting better at -- it is simply something I Do! Oops, I mean NOT do. Oh, what a tangled web I weave, cup I wash, wood I chop, water I carry, single hand I clap, (all while failing to hear the tree falling in the woods 'cause I'm not there). The world of Zen can definitely hurt your brain sometimes. But I try not to get attached to the pain. . . .

Hmm. That was weird. That was Blog Monkey Chatter comparable to the best Zazen monkeys I've heard so far. I must be particularly tired and not up to my usual level of editorial hypervigilance. Better make this short. What I planned to write about was the seemingly increasing time I'm spending in "The Pause" - that moment when your exhale is complete and your inhale hasn't begun. When I first began to sit, I watched my inhale rush in with a frenzy, almost blowing my mudra apart, gulping down air like it was the last molecule of oxygen in a scuba tank at 95 feet, and flush it back out again before I could even feel my ribs expand. If there even WAS a pause, it was miniscule. Last night after my tremendous, protracted exhales, I sort of just - well - hung out. Watched that space in between the exhale and the inhale. Observed it from afar, like, "No big deal. Just chillin' here for a while, not breathing, killing time in the space when breath is neither coming nor going." The observing brought on a tremendous calm. When my brain tried to have a thought about it (I staved off those dang thoughts for as long as I could -- approximately 2.5 seconds) it produced a certainty that I had discovered the space where both life and death dwell. Couldn't really distinguish between the two. It felt sort of like just merging with everything outside of me and all I encounter when I'm not sitting zazen. I found myself just concentrating on that Pause Place, and with each exhale, the pause seemed to become the teeniest bit more prolonged, and my acceptance of it just a tiny bit more complete. A sense of gratitude and release and surrender filled the pause, right up to the moment when my inhale, in much less of a hurry, ever so gently ushered in my next breath.

Upon reading over that last paragraph, it sounds pretty Out There and Intense and Significant. Except that none of those words fit the sensation at all. It just Was.

I'm thankful I've been practicing my Steady States.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc