Shaking Mudra, Flickering Flame

Each of you is perfect the way you are . . . and you can use a little improvement. - Shunryu Suzuki in the Zen Calendar (September 12, 2009)

Day 13. The necessity of blogging has me robbing AA batteries out of the TV remote to fuel my hungry mouse. To think that I used to avoid all things electronic . . . .

As I sat in zazen last night, I tried to really concentrate on the basics -- on my "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind." Back straight, shoulders relaxed (a difficult combination for me) eyes two-thirds shut and cast down. Inhale through my nose, exhale through my nose. Count my breaths to 10. Begin again. Vaguely notice that I have mastered the technique of counting my breaths to 10 while STILL the Monkeys chatter. Not the kind of multi-tasking I'm shooting for. I've had a couple of images come to my mind that seem to help still the cacaphony in my brain. One is a carryover from my zen practice of years ago. I simply imagine all the curvy, bumpy, jolting, gyrating gray matter in my mind becoming very smooth -- actually so absolutely slick that any thought that tries to stick just slides off into the abyss somewhere around the top of my spinal chord. For some reason the image of a smooth cerebellum halts my scratching synapses and fills me with calm.

So I'm concentrating like mad on doing some "good" zazen (which, by definition, breaks every definition of whatever "good" zazen is) and my awareness shifts to my mudra. My hands are beginning to tremble. I feel tension in my wrists and fingers, and my thumbs won't stay poised where that mythical rice paper could slide through. In the moment, a shaking mudra feels like a serious thing to me. I observe that my hands have slipped forward and away from me, rather than nestling closely by my belly, where my breath enters and exits my body. In one of those weird insights that can only come while sitting in a half-lotus on a couch cushion, I interpreted my mudra message as something like this: "Hey, scoot me back in, closer to your body. I've drifted out away from your center, and it feels shakey out here. Pull me back in, next to you."

Like solving a tricky koan (which, by the way, was NOT emphasized by my teacher in our practice), I suddenly intuited an understanding of every "shakey" circumstance in which I've ever found myself. Feeling shakey -- getting the shakes -- ALWAYS occurs when I have drifted away from center. From spiritual center. From self center. From relational center. I feel shakey when I'm uncertain, when I'm cold, when I'm exhausted, when I'm scared, angry or lonely. Each of those feeling states involves getting off centered, or away from that which centers me -- from something I've learned, from warmth, rest, and familiarity, from rational thought and loving connectedness.

In the instant following this realization, the solution to the uncomfortable feeling of shakiness lit through me. Like pulling my mudra in close to my body, so that my arms, wrists, hands and fingers could relax and hold firm, the anecdote to "shaking" is always to Pull Back In. To Return to Center. We hold upset babies close to our breast and they are soothed. We embrace our friends, lovers, children, parents and sometimes perfect strangers to still their fears or comfort their despair. Watch Olympians before the start of an event, and after a mistake or fall. Inevitably they draw inward - back to center- by shutting their eyes, taking a deep breath, or some other centering technique that may have been taught by a sports psychologist but is likely simply instinct. Watch a student look to her master, a toddler who has strayed too far from his mother, a soldier who loses sight of his sergeant in battle. When things start shaking, it's instinctive and adaptive to pull back. We look to that which centers us - to another human being, to a spiritual solidness, to a certainty within ourselves.

Writing tonight is giving me the shakes -- it feels so important and the words just aren't flowing. I think I need to go sit on my cushion. You know, to get centered.

Gassho,
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