Thirty-Five Miserable Minutes

In zazen we do not expect anything. Zazen is not a technique to achieve anything. It is much more natural. And yet, somehow, the most natural thing is difficult to do. How come? Because we think. There is nothing wrong with thinking. Thinking is a very natural process, but we are so easily conditioned by our thinking and give too much value to it. - Maezumi Roshi in the Zen Calendar (June 19, 2004).

Day 156. The dinosaur may have joined his ancestors in the realm of extinction, though my son has promised a house call to determine if he can breathe life (yet again!) into the fossil. I will keep you posted. Meanwhile, it is proving very difficult to enter Blog Brain at my work place.

I have exercised caution to avoid my blog becoming a means for cyber-whining. There are wailing walls (and I don't mean the kind on Face Book) dedicated specifically to that purpose. I have noticed, however, that the occasional uncensored spew is an effective means through which I cleanse meditative discord, free up some creativity, and (best of all!) don't come off sounding like some cheesy Rah-Rah woman who greets every day with cheerful obedience and undying compassion. Yeah, right. Like that's an attainable goal. If nothing else, I am Human - complete with the entire gamut of human reactions and emotions. Personally, I think it makes me more endearing. Generally, we all connect with some good old fashioned suffering.

I am fighting my thirty-five zazen minutes like a 16-year-old with a curfew. How could five extra minutes catalyze such a struggle? This is ridiculous, but like other instances when Reality doesn't match my prefered version of it - it exists anyway. Last night I was absolutely certain that the timer was broken, and I had been sitting into, oh, about mid-October. My legs and feet actually hurt a bit less (evidently, body has surrendered before brain); however, my Monkey Mind spilled over the banks and flooded into every molecule of my being. The chatter was ruthless, negative, resistant, and LOUD!

I have tried everything I know to enter some decent meditation. I've Hamed and Sahed and chanted the Om and a variety of other mantras. I've focused on breath at my nostrils, breath through my mudra, breath through my windpipe. I've counted endless sets of ten breaths. I've sunk past my amygdala and imagined an empty skull. I've focused on the sounds of the room, straightened my spine, rested squarely on my sits bones. I've pictured my being as a swinging door while breath entered and left my body. The Monkeys chattered on. Chatter, chatter, chatter.

Chatter about the past, the future, the incredible suckiness of the present. Chatter about blog titles and blog materials (useful, perhaps, except that it is gone the minute the timer sounds). Last night the chatter kept circling back to how frickin' HARD this sitting can be. It's the hardest thing in the world! An American sitting still with a quiet mind for 35 minutes?! COME ON! What could be more difficult? It runs counter to everything taught me, shown me, occuring around me. What's the benefit? Where's the payoff? When do I get there? Where is "there?" Why would I take on such an absurd endeavor? Who else cares? What does it matter? What do I get? What do I have to show for it? Who is going to be impressed? Where will it lead? What comes next?

The answers are, of course (and in order): Nothing, Nothing, Never, Nowhere, No reason, Noone, Doesn't, Nothing, Nothing, Noone, Nowhere, and Nothing. Sitting is hard PRECISELY because those are the real and true answers to the legitimate questions the Monkeys raise. It throws me off track when I lose sight of both the questions and the answers. Listing them here has been strangely cathartic. It centers me in true meditation - which happens to be whatever state I find myself in when I sincerely approach my cushion and sit. Sometimes it feels one way, sometimes it feels another. Always, it is what it is. Just this. That's what I need to focus on.

I'm going to stretch and bow and set the timer for 35 more minutes. It will probably suck. But it's not supposed to mean anything anyway.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc