Things Had Been Going So Well

Just read about yer ribs. F***. Sorry. Don't laugh breath or sneeze for a few weeks. - Text message from my beloved little brother after reading yesterday's blog.

The most important point is to accept yourself and stand on your two feet. - Shunryu Suzuki in the Zen Calendar (August 13, 2002).

Day 279. Not to be competitive, but I am starting to suspect that my karma return is the fastest in the cosmos. I will definitely refrain from making future comments about my family's discomfort with infirmity, as it appears that I am becoming increasingly infirm with each passing day. Today I learned of a surgery I will be having in December (unrelated to the current status of my ribs). Part of it involves bone grafting. When I asked from where this bone would likely be harvested, the doctor cheerfully replied, "Oh, part of it from you, and the rest from cadaver bone." My first thought was, "Cool. That is a whole new level of inter-connectedness with my fellow beings." I was then invited to ask questions, and she seemed a bit taken aback when my first one was, "Will I be able to blog? I can't miss a day of blogging." Her recommendation was to plan ahead. My plan is to have a lengthy consult with my somewhat erratic ghost writer, with particular emphasis on posting in a font other than "Not There."

So . . . mountain bike season is not exactly off to the start I had envisioned. Or should I word that sentiment as, "My preferred version of the start of mountain biking is slightly at odds with Reality." Actually, I plan to ride like a bandit between now and the required time off in December. I discovered on Sunday that ribs can be taped in ways that markedly reduce pain while thundering over rock strewn mountain trails. Unfortunately, said taping procedure simultaneously tends to drastically reduce my ability to inhale (thereby proportionately decreasing the necessity of exhaling). Thus, achieving lessened pain carries the price tag of rather reduced cardiovascular capacity. This is proving to be a difficult cost/benefit ratio to calculate. Think I'll choose to go with the taping and let the breathing thing work itself out. So far, that strategy has worked quite well on the cushion.

Though I tried to remain detached from the content of last night's Monkey chatter, I had to resist the urge to label myself as a Drama Queen. The chatter consisted of a monotonous word stream that flowed something like: "My hip hurts my thigh hurts my scrapes hurt my ribs hurt that bruise takes up seventy percent of the skin on my upper leg, how did all those bruises on my shins get there, the scrapes look pretty cool, dried blood makes you look like a real mountain biker, I want to describe my wipeouts to everyone at work, I sure rode well in between falling off, gotta work on my carving, wish I was on the trail right now, wonder why the bike was ghost shifting so badly on the climbs, need to distribute my weight differently on the downhills, man I can descend a lot faster than last year, gotta quit over thinking on the bike and just flow..." Imagine about 37 minutes of chatter in a similar vein, and that was zazen for me last night.

In all honesty, I must embarrassingly admit that I spearhead my family's preference for healthy, athletically superior bodies and bodily functioning. I am obscenely impatient when it comes to bodily flaws in structure or form impeding my athletic endeavors. These recent spills from the bike combined with my upcoming convalescence (I plan to make it exceedingly brief) are certainly challenging my ideas about mastery of non-attachment.

I had been noticing for several weeks that I have measurably changed my expectations about what I will "get" from all this dedicated, sincere, uninterrupted sitting. The concept of some form of payoff or reward no longer enters my consciousness. Astonishingly, this doesn't bother me in the least. It has no bearing on feelings about sitting or not sitting. I just know I will sit, and have finally firmly grasped that getting my butt on my cushion is possible even in the presence of an infinite variety of thoughts and feelings to the contrary. The outcome of desiring no outcome is most assuredly not a goal I had at the onset of this endeavor. Ego aside (or at least shoved over a centimeter or so), I feel pretty good about overcoming this particular obstacle to ongoing sitting. Even when the Monkeys chant a few feeble verses of "I don't want to" and "I don't feel like it" it has become an established fact that zazen is going to happen. Every day. Unless Reality determines otherwise.

Figures that, just as I successfully relinquish attachment in one area of my life, I am confronted with attachment in another arena. The "I really want to be healthy and ride my mountain bike like a stud" attachment arena. How uncannily Zen. So much grist for the practice mill. So much carry-on baggage when I board my cushion. So much opportunity to accept myself and stand on my own two feet. Even when I prefer them to be attached to a couple of pedals.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc