Ripping the Stuffing Out

Every day you must say to yourself, "Today I am going to begin." - JeanPierre de Caussade SJ in the Zen Calendar (May 9, 2004).

Day 268. I am glad I chose to begin today. When the alarm first went off, I almost chose not to.

Yesterday was an exceptionally challenging day. In anticipation of leaving for a tandem event tomorrow, I had scheduled myself far beyond my long established "rules of engagement" for any given day. The outcome of these strenuous therapy marathons varies. My status depends on the day's client constellation.

I have noticed that when I am deeply immersed in my practice, I tend to think in metaphors. Last night, as I lay on my couch, dishrag limp and too tired to press the buttons on the remote, an image of Ruby flickered behind my eyelids. As you may recall, Ruby is our serious, contemplative, Buddha dog. Her IQ exceeds that of most registered voters; her work ethic exceeds them all. I have watched her concentrate on her Kong (Ruby's reason for living is anything digestable) for, literally, almost an hour. She can extract treats from it faster than it took me (with two opposable thumbs) to insert them. Ruby will not abandon the Kong until it is definitively empty. Doesn't matter if there is one stubborn biscuit remnant in there (the one I crammed in with the palms of both hands) with a perfect dog's leg (pun intended) that restricts its exit. She will ultimately prevail. Her perseverance rivals my slinkie untangling fixation.

Ruby applies this same single mindedness to removing the stuffing from any and every toy she has ever been given. She sincerely believes that the sole purpose of receiving a new toy is to eliminate every shred of synthetic foam occupying its innards. Once "assigned" a new toy, she undertakes her job with somber intensity. Watching her reminds me of the shots of assembly line workers the auto industry allows to be aired on commercials. Systematic, methodical, efficient. Utter concentration. No motion wasted. Not one iota of misdirected movement. Stuffing extraction at its finest.

Imagine the remains of the toy after Ruby has satisfactorily performed her stuffingectomy, and you get a vision of me after work yesterday. We call the leftover fuzzy, barely recognizable, formless material scrap a carcass. There is a whole box of them in the hall closet (I grieved the warthog casualty most keenly). After collapsing on my sofa last night, I felt like I had been gutted and quartered like Ruby's warthog. More like sixty-fourthed. Chewed up and spit out. An empty carcass, left with my innards strewn about in great poofy piles of white foam. Methodically used and cast aside. Like the surgeons on Gray's Anatomy following a particularly absurd day at Seattle Grace.

That feeling does not happen often. I have practiced for over 20 years, and experience has built stamina. Like all Perfect Storms, I never saw this one coming. Nothing I could do to prevent it, so I just tied a knot and hung on. Stayed in the moment. One excruciating moment after the next. If ever I felt gratitude for the certainty of impermanence, it was yesterday. It didn't fail me. The day came to an end.

I considered elaborating on the details of my stuffing extraction, but that is not the point of the blog. If ever there was a day when I wanted to skip my blog and sitting, it was yesterday. I sat down at the keyboard, and the image of Ruby's carcasses flashed. As my fingers tickled the keys, however, the windsurfer story poured out. I don't know from whence it came, but the longer I typed, the easier the words poured forth. Unlike Ruby's thoroughness with her barren toys, there must have been a bit of stuffing remaining in me. A little something hidden in a far corner of my blogging bin. Wedged in tight, like a dog-legged shaped treat stuck in a Kong.

After posting the blog, I realized I was spent. Stuffingless. I considered sleeping at the desk because the walk down the ten foot hall to my room required energy I couldn't summon. It was at that moment that my mushy brain issued the stark reminder that I had not yet sat zazen. Forty minutes on the cushion awaited me. Straight posture, symmetrical mudra, bows and breathing would be required. I wanted to sob.

I thought about the number 266. The number of consecutive days, out of my goal of 365, I have sat so far. I thought about Suzuki Roshi, my teacher Frank, and the millions of monks over centuries that got their butts on their cushions at five a.m. and stayed there a lot longer than 40 minutes. So I got my butt on mine, bowed, formed a mudra, and remained conscious and upright. Somewhere during the next 40 minutes, "me" fell away and "no me" joined the cosmos for a few of the ecstatic, connected Breaths of the One that occasionally come during zazen now. The timer sounded and I bowed with gratitude and benediction. The number of consecutive days of sitting grew to 267.

When the alarm blasted NPR this morning, my carcass arm reached out to silence it. My first waking thought was I couldn't have been asleep for more than nine minutes. Excuses for remaining in bed pinged through my brain like a high scoring ball in a pinball machine at Arnold's. Somehow, I chose to begin. I had a really good day. Apparently whatever got ripped out, zazen stuffed back in. Gassho to my practice. All 267 days of it.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc