Get Your Butt on Your Cushion

"I have the attention span of a gnat." - Ryan Cocklin

Day Six. I suppose it's a little early in this endeavor to whine, but every fiber of my being is screaming, " I don't wanna! It's late, it's cold, it's cloudy, I'm tired!" To which my compassionate and caring teacher would respond, in his most empathic voice, "Get your butt on your cushion and sit" (or some words to that effect). I'm forever reminding my clients that suffering shouldn't require a litmus test of legitimacy, but . . . come on. It's only been six days. And it's not like I'm cooking my way through a French cookbook or something challenging like that . . .

Reflections on my last sit; let's see. Hmmmm. It occurred to me that if I happen to reach Nirvana, samsuri, or some other enlightened sense of eternal bliss, as the great Zen Masters of the past say, "Mind and body will fall away." So IF I ever actually have any readers, and IF I sit so intensely that I become One with my Universe or whatever level of transcendence envelopes me, my readers may discover on the following day that NOTHING IS WRITTEN on my blog, and now they will know that my mind and body have fallen away, and there is nothing left to say. In the mean time, stay tuned. If I were a bettin' woman, I'd bank on many, MANY posts yet to come.

I'm mortified to experience a waning of my Medi-Blog enthusiasm before I've completed a week of my goal. The first book my Zen teacher ever recommended to me was "Zen Mind Beginner's Mind" by his teacher, Suzuki Roshi. It was a great introduction to the practice of zazen. Roshi reminded us that, when we are brand new to something, we are in a remarkable state from which to learn. A "beginner's mind" is not yet cloudy with the burdensome and interrupting impediments of thought, opinion, evaluation and criticism. Watch a toddler encounter something for the first time. She will usually approach it with curiosity and wonder and perhaps a little caution -- all feeling states that enable her to more fully and authentically experience the new thing. Though the information explosion has provided us with many miraculous advantages, I've observed that a down side is our loss of wonder and astonishment. That's where zazen becomes relevant. If we learn to quiet our minds and pay attention, we can return to connecting with the world as it truly is. And the world TRULY IS astonishing.

That's why my teacher's solution to everything was, "Just sit." We didn't have to sit and like it or sit and be interested in it or sit and be particularly good at it, or necessarily improve our sitting from day to day. We were just expected to get our butts on our cushions. He used to tell us to "Sit with diligence. Sit as if your life depended on it." The beautiful thing was that getting your butt on the cushion was enough. Just drawing breath was enough. We Westerners tend to make something so utterly simple into such a complicated matter: What's the pay-off? Am I sitting better than the guy next to me? Will I achieve enlightenment today? Are my legs stronger, my back straighter, my posture more balanced? Is my memory clearer, my wife nicer, my checkbook balanced, my salary raised, my recycling sorted? What's in it for me? And why didn't I get that yesterday?

It was, and continues to be, a tremendous relief for me to grasp that "nothingness" is just that: Nothing. Do the bows, hold the mudra, and breathe. Might get relaxed, might not. Might quiet my mind, might not. Might have some terrific insight, might not. Might feel happy (sad, worried, angry, tired, sore, bored, frustrated, disappointed, hopeless, elated) -- or not. I'll always remember my teacher's answer to the question, "So what happens if I DO attain samsuri?" He just grinned and replied, "Then you come back tomorrow and get your butt on your cushion."

That's where my butt is headed right now.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc