Hide and Non-Seek

A Buddha is one who does not seek. This is the principle of non-seeking: When you seek, you lose it. - Pai-Chang in the Zen Calendar (September 28, 2006).

Day 138. Oh, yeah. This blog was born to focus on my year of zazen. How effortlessly I can veer off, chasing life's distractions. So many shiny things.

My cushion has been a happening place of late. It would probably spew sparks if Buddhism allowed for such frivolity. Oh, wait. It does. There is room for everything. I hope I don't burn my butt.

I'm tempted to calculate the correlation coefficient representing the relationship between deeper sitting and shorter blogs. Alas, as soon as I defended my dissertation, I vowed never to calculate my own statistics ever again. That's why we have ESPN. I have noticed, incontrovertibly, that my blogging brain goes mushy following deeper experiences with meditation. Tickling my keyboard can't compare to some really stellar cushion time.

Unlike practicing the piano, where (optimally) there is evidence of cumulative improvement, every day is a new day as I bow deeply and nestle in behind my mudra. Quite like practicing the piano, paying attention is invaluable. I've discerned that paying attention and seeking an outcome are entirely different processes. I'm learning not to seek. Last night zazen took me somewhere new. My hands sustained a respectable mudra and simultaneously felt weightless - almost as though they were no longer attached to my arms. My spine was erect, supporting the broad expansion of my ribs with each breath, yet it felt as though my head was suspended in space, requiring absolutely no effort to balance it on my neck. The floaty, distant bodily sensations were accompanied by a profound sense of emptiness in my skull. That's probably why it felt like my head was levitating a few inches off my shoulders.

The cerebral emptiness felt ancient yet familiar. Oddly, I had a sense that images from the Hubble telescope were swirling around where my brain used to be. Sort of intergalactic, Milky Way, Auora Borealis images. Lots of black space at the edges. I stayed with it much longer than in past sits. It was tempting to swagger off into analysis and speculation, but I resisted without resisting. Meaning, I just passively kept sitting, being mindful of what occurred.

Yup - when you seek to describe it, you lose it. It's as though I'm breaking some sacred rule when I try to reduce these new and unfathomable experiences to words. There is nothing to do it justice -- not to mention it sounds weird and dangerously similar to the rants of crazy people. I don't feel crazy. I feel like my practice is widening and deepening. I would highly recommend it. This is the best game of hide and non-seek I've every played.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc