Five Minutes More

Make your saddle your sitting cushion; make the mountains, rivers and great earth the sitting platform; make the whole universe your own personal meditation cave. - Hakuin in the Zen Calendar (August 21, 2004)

Day 59. Week's end. Yahoo.

Last night I took my awareness of all things physical to my cushion. A bodily focus came effortlessly; perhaps because my body was so fatigued, and my limbs so sore. I felt a sense of relief as I concentrated on the tangible, immediate reality of my physical self. That made it much easier to re-center when my thoughts started swirling. The contrast between the abstract, elusive nature of my brain and the concrete nearness of my body was stark. I've discovered a new barometer of the essential and nonessential.

By the end of a long work week, I feel like a container filled to the brim. There is a theory of psychotherapy that directly addresses the role of the therapist as a "container" for the client's experiences and emotions. I like that idea, and often talk about it explicitly with my clients. What I don't like is being filled to overflowing with the day-to-day excesses of modern culture. I've noted before that I err strongly on the side of being uninformed, of filtering and de-selecting to a much greater degree than most people. Even with my strongest insulation, however, I frequently quake from the chaos around me. Sometimes it's like my Being is reverberating with the clamor of the irrelevant. There is such an abundance of nonessential to sort through. I recognize that my brain is a bizarre mix of ADD, obsessive-compulsiveness, uncharted intellect and festering creativity. It's a genetic Perfect Storm for Chattering Monkeys. It's also fertile ground for requiring the entire universe to be my meditation cave.

I know I'm not alone in perceiving that The World is currently comprised of Too Much. I'm probably a bit above average in motivation to ratchet it down a few notches. Traversing the abyss between "containing" for a living and being "empty" through meditation requires a quantum leap indeed. Sitting is proving to be the most reliable bridge.

When I began to sit last night, I wondered what five more minutes of stillness would be like. I expected to be distracted and preoccupied by the timer. For a Monkey Minded person like me, five minutes more has the potential to open the cerebral floodgates so the chatter pours forth. Remarkably, the time was fleeting. I just kept sitting smack dab in the heart of the moment. Immersed in the immediate. Crouched on the concrete. And when the time expired, I experienced an unprecedented elation. It wasn't at all relief that zazen had ended. On the contrary, it was certainty that five minutes more was a very, very good thing.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc