Ordinary Zen

To imagine that Zen is mysterious is the first grave mistake which many make about it. - D. T. Suzuki in the Zen Calendar (August 6, 2007).

Day 180. I want to say something wrathful about the heat, but I've decided not to dignify it with keystrokes on my blog.

During the first few months of writing the blog, I put a tremendous amount of forethought into each day's posting. It was agony to sit down in the evening without a predetermined "topic." My method has changed in the course of almost six months of zazen. I flow more like an unimpeded river than a cement drainage ditch. Another four of five decades of sitting and I may take up poetry. Of course, it will have to be iambic pentameter. So symmetrical. No amount of zazen will ever fully eradicate my OCD!

I've enjoyed revisiting familiar memories through my Buddha lens, though it occurred to me during last night's sit that I haven't said much about the Present of late. So I thought I would share a few reflections from the cushion. It is, after all, the heart of this whole endeavor. Yesterday I paid particular attention to the ritual proceeding meditation. I performed my bows slowly and deliberately, focused on the sensations in my core during my side bends, and adjusted my mudra several times to perfectly align the knuckles of both hands. I started the timer and chuckled at a segment of the ritual I have not blogged about. I always set the timer with ten extra seconds (e.g. 35.10) to allow for the time it takes to do a final bow after I set my timer down. This is my obsessional way of sitting for EXACTLY 35 minutes - Buddha forbid I end meditation after only 34 minutes and 50 seconds. Remember my True Nature: Precision counts!

While I'm being transparent about meditation minutia, I'll fess up to a recent occasion when I concluded beyond a doubt that my phone had gone dead and I had been sitting for hours. I checked my timer and there was one minute twenty-six seconds remaining to sit. I was mortified. Felt like I had cheated somehow. I set the timer down and completed what is likely the most earnest minute and a half of zazen ever emitted from a cushion.

The only other time I didn't end zazen at exactly the second the timer wound down was an error in the other direction. Both calves, ankles and feet were numb, my mudra had floated out into orbit somewhere, and several vertebrae felt like they had been fused. I counted countless sets of ten breaths. At long last, I checked my timer. Who knows how much time had elapsed since it signaled the end of zazen. Sometimes I have the phone on silent; instead of beeping, it flashes when time runs out. Somehow I had missed the lengthy bright flashing and just kept right on sitting. I was sort of hoping that my mind and body had fallen away, but I think the phone just slipped under the blanket I rest my legs on and I couldn't see it flash.

I can't say exactly when the question of sitting ceased to be a question. Now I just know I will. I generally don't have much feeling about it at all. If nothing else, I have successfully internalized the "get your butt on your cushion" aspect of Zen Buddhism. I think much less. I employ far fewer "focus" strategies. Most nights, I don't use a mantra, I don't Ham and Sah, I don't picture an empty black space between my ears. The Monkeys chatter on and off. The volume, though not entirely muted, is much quieter. Sometimes an intense desire to be in my bed reading a book permeates my consciousness while sitting. That's about the only thing I'd ever rather be doing. I let the feeling hang with me for a while, and it dissipates of its own accord. I chuckle at all the mental and emotional energy I expended in my early weeks of zazen. What a Westerner. Work myself into a lather when all I really have to do is draw a breath. Not even that. My breath is learning to draw itself.

Unconsciously, I made Zen much more mysterious than it is proving to be. That's okay. My grave mistake makes the true ordinariness of it even more precious.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc