First Pox On My Blog

May the rising sun caress and bless your soul for all your life . . . . . . .Bruce Springsteen

Greetings and Salutations!

Today I am composing my First Post on my First Blog on my Forty-Ninth Birthday. Two things precipitated the launching of my blog: 1) I watched the movie "Julie and Julia" and am flagrantly and unashamedly and non-creatively borrowing from Julie's idea, although with a twist that I will detail later; 2) last night I read the poem titled "The Journey" by Mary Oliver and it gave me the nudge I needed to step boldly into my life. So here goes. I've blogged in my mind for the past year, and couldn't help but notice that none of my thought broadcasting made it to cyberspace. Perhaps you actually have to pound some keys to make that happen.

Here is the twist on the movie plot: Rather than cooking my way through a cookbook for a year (I can barely cook my way through instant oatmeal) I plan to meditate EVERY SINGLE DAY for a year - in part to prepare for my fifth decade and, in larger part, to challenge myself to resume a meditation practice in a serious fashion. I'm pretty sure that I am qualified to author this blog because: 1) I can fairly consistently construct a grammatically correct sentence (yeah, like THAT'S required to be a blogger!) and 2) I have training in Zen meditation from a gifted teacher. Really. Truly. I won't give his name at this time; suffice it to say that he studied with the great Suzuki Roshi at the San Francisco Zen Center in the 1960's and 70's. I sat with him for about five years in a town in a state where one would not expect the privilege of access to such a magnificent teacher. We sit in very formal and traditional Zen style: on a zafu, facing a wall, hands poised in a traditional mudra, back straight, legs in as close to a full lotus as our ligaments permit. Still, silent, eyes cast down and half shut (or is that half open?). Forty minutes of silent zazen that begins and ends with a chime on my teacher's ancient gong. My teacher would be abashed, but my goal is to sit for 20 minutes per day from now until my half birthday on August 3rd, and then for the traditional 40 minutes per day from August 3rd until I turn 50 on February 3, 2011. Wish me luck. Americans are not known for our talent at sitting still and watching our minds be quiet. I will blog this adventure, and maybe one day my audience will consist of more than one. . . .

Here's my commitment to my blog and my (as yet nonexistent) audience: 1) I will blog every day about my meditative experience; 2) I will be truthful about the status of my meditating; 3) I will construct grammatically correct sentences.

My blog will always end with "Gassho" - a word for the formal bow with which we begin and end our zazen.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc