No Plan to Speak Of

There was no shame about it, she wanted to tell them. She imagined quoting that passage from Darwin at them, explaining that there was room in this world even for certain beings who could not eat or speak, whose only purpose was to find and call out the other side of their kind. She had been called here. There was no plan to speak of. - Barbara Kingsolver in "Prodigal Summer."

Day 200. Day Two Hundred. Day TWO HUNDRED?!? How did this happen? How could there be only 165 days left of my Blog and Sit Year? I thought I would have been to Nirvana and back several times by now. Put up a few billboards advertising my company along the way. Ooze Enlightenment like oil from my pores after an Italian dinner. Not so much. I've seen some dark shades of blue and black from behind my eyelids, silenced the Monkeys for a second or two, and momentarily washed along the ecstatic shores of a celestial sea of Love. Which was pretty amazing, by the way. I have always enjoyed the beach, though I haven't yet found my way back to that particular shore.

Plans of lesser grandiosity have also failed to come to fruition. I don't have a parental pass to all of the football games at my son's university. There has been no hardware from high-placing bicycle finishes added to the collection hanging from my dresser mirror. Curiously, home improvement at the country place ground to a halt around the time I quit living there, as did satisfaction with my love life. My autumn Durango mountain bike trip has been canceled. Book deal isn't signed; screen play hasn't been cast (or written, for that matter). I still wait far too long to repaint my toenails and color the gray in my roots ( for some mysterious reason, I don't have much gray since my son moved out and is fast approaching the final weeks of being a teen). My grass is dead, my garage still cluttered, my attic a darkened inferno unfit for human trespassing. Why was it that I dedicated myself to so much butt-on-the cushion time??

Oh, yeah. Absolutely no reason at all. There is nothing to attain. I imagine if there were a Division One meditation team within the NCAA, I would be on the Third String. Scout team. Junior Varsity. C-Squad. Always on the bench (though, come to think about it, the starters would be sitting down as well!) A measure of my two hundred days seems to be an utter and complete lack of concern about the current status of the aforementioned aspects of my life. So far, I feel amazingly successful. There was no plan to speak of; I simply made a commitment to engage in formal zazen every day for a certain length of time. And I have. Every single day. Two hundred sits. In different houses and several hotels, on a variety of sofa cushions, with legs numb from stoking the tandem and screaming from long rides alone, even while hurtling down the highway (twice!) Two hundred sits. In a row. Yeah, me.

I don't go back and read previous blogs. I am waiting until the final one is posted, and then plan to spend a year reading what I've written. I know that my experience on the cushion is not stagnant. In the beginning, I exuded a lot of effort on Proper Meditation Form. This is not to be confused with the rituals I perform at the start and finish of all zazen periods. My sequence of stretches and bows and compulsive timer behavior remains intact. Inwardly, however, things have shifted. I ask much less of my mind. It used to churn frenetically, neurons lighting one another up like the District in Amsterdam after sundown. Counting breaths, fixating on images like a distant horizon or slick cerebral cortex, consciousness journeying down to dwell in the lizard brain, burning through mantras like the songs in the Methodist hymnal with eight verses.

It is much easier now. I try to sit still and breathe. Watch and wait. Feel my butt bones on the cushion. Listen to crickets and train whistles and the whoosh of the central air conditioning. Allow room on the cushion for everything that drifts by and through and over me. Suspend judgment, goals, effort and expectation. Transcend time. Forget my name. Trust the timer. Surrender.

Oh, the Monkeys still chatter. A couple of times since sitting for forty minutes, I was certain I had fallen off the edge of the universe and snuck a peek at the timer. Two minutes and twenty-something seconds remained both times I looked. Sheepishly, I refolded my mantra and returned to breathing. Sometimes forty minutes feels like fourteen; others it feels like a day and a half. Every once in while I sense an ethereal calm followed by an engulfing feeling of loving connectedness. Most nights I just sit there. Meditation has become familiar and necessary and as intrinsic to my life as my heartbeat. Simultaneously, I could skip it in an instant and fall sound asleep. Such is Zen.

It sounds mystical and momentous and like maybe, if I tried out again, I might actually be a starter on the Meditation Team one day. I couldn't tell you what the coach is looking for. He just sits there on his cushion, smiling serenely over his nice round belly.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc