Day 120. I am in Franklin, Tennessee for the Tennessee Tandem Rally. We are staying at the Embassy Suites, and they have rockin' great computers. My fantasy of floating around between hotels until management catches on and retires my key continues to flourish. I'll cast my vote for this one tomorrow, after I've tried the breakfast.
Last night's blog set a perfect stage for my first 30-minute sit. I think I bumped into something pretty helpful. If I sit in front of the White Space of Emptiness (aka the "new post" screen on this blog site) long enough, something seems to stream from my fingertips. I carried the thoughts from the blog straight to my cushion and experienced a unique half hour there.
I was impervious to how much my subconscious was wrestling with the concept of non-attachment. Apparently, in the past three months or so, I have become incredibly attached to avoiding non-attachment when I sit zazen. Talk about Monkey kibble. Flying under the radar of my thinking brain was an ongoing assessment and critique of my failure to attain some arbitrary depth of meditation. I wasn't even aware of the dialogue until last night, when the script abruptly changed. Making the distinction between "caring" and "being attached" in the blog powerfully altered my sitting. While sitting on my cushion, minding my own breathing business, an epiphany erupted like a teenager's face the night before prom. It doesn't feel like a big deal now that I am attempting to describe it ("you lose it if you talk about it); in fact I think I have written about it previously. I just LIVED it last night.
The ephiphany was this: I am already doing all I need to once I perform my bows and sincerely plop my sits bones on my cushion. Last night I felt with deep conviction that I CARE about my practice, and that is enough. That is ALL. I felt freed from attachment to any outcome whatsoever. It was liberating. This is such Basic Buddhism, it had evaded my consciousness like the meaning of X in Algebra 101. Yes, there was Monkey Chatter. Yes, I reflexively scratched my eye brow before I could stop myself. Yes, I even whispered harshly to Katy to stop scratching. What was absent was that subtle critic nestled deep within (I'm picturing a somber and intiminating primate) who kept up an evaluative tirade about my lousy zazen performance. Gone. Vanished. Good riddance.
The critic was replaced by a benevolent Voice of Reality. No judgment. No evaluation. No expectation. I recall specifically a rather humorous dialogue during my 30 minutes on the cushion. It went like this. Me: "Look! I left my Arbonne herbal foot cream right there on the coffee table. Man, I want to stop meditating and rub that into my feet." Voice of Reality: "You're having thoughts about foot cream. That's okay. It's not what is happening right now. Right now you are sitting 30 minutes of zazen for the first time. You might be putting foot cream on later." Me: "Who are you? You seem nice." Voice of Reality: "I am the essence of zazen. I may be a stepping stone to enlightenment. I am nonjudment, nonthought, nonexpectation. You welcomed me with your strong practice." Me: "Cool. This is much better than a nagging suspicion that I was a mediocre sitter. Not that I'm attached to how I sit. Wait! Oh yeah! I can sit here with EVERYTHING that occurs on this cushion - I can relinquish my constant vigilance for attachment. VERY cool!"
The 30 minutes flew by. Some moments I was extraordinarily quiet and empty; other moments were crammed full of playful Monkey interplay like my conversation above. A feeling of happiness, of release, of unconditional compassion toward myself bellowed up from my center. I knew I was on to something. It was a whole new sit.
Damned if that Critical Primate isn't ripping and tearing on me in this exact instant for insufficiently describing an incident of such import. I briefly was going to dignifiy his torment by noting in my defense that: a) I got up at 5:30 a.m. this morning and drove for eleven hours; b) I am on a new computer in a heavily frequented business center; c) I will again arise at 5:30 a.m. on the morrow to pedal my little stoker heart out on some ruthless hill around Nashville. Instead, I am choosing not to indulge his attempt at tyranny. Instead, I will go invest 30 minutes on my Embassy Suites sofa cushion, where I CARE about my practice, but have absolutely NO attachment to it.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
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