Cat on the Cushion

Great faith, great doubt, great determination. - Three Prerequisites for Zen Practice (Zen Calendar, August 6, 2004).

Day 323. I am trying to type softly because there is a college sophomore snoozing behind me. After all, this is his room. I am trying to resist the urge to keep checking to see if he is breathing. I thought I gave that up when he was three. Nothing like some family togetherness. Living in a small house has its advantages.

Some funky stuff was going on during zazen last night. If I had sitting sessions like it more often, I bet my readership would increase dramatically. Put it this way: if we were to graphically depict it in the movie, some special effects would definitely be required.

So there I am, sedately nestled on my cushion, sitting still as granite with an arrow-straight spine. If you placed a level on my mudra, the bubble would have been dead center. Breath deep and rhythmic as it flowed through my mudra like a busy waiter through the swinging kitchen door. Eyes three-quarters shut. Monkeys relegated to a soundproof booth. Mind quiet. Thoughts at bay.

Gradually, my breath grew in depth and breadth. It was most uncanny. My mind was just distant enough not to interfere. The "I" of me stayed out of the way. The dimensions of my breath expanded into a vast and limitless openness. The space beyond space. Many minutes later, when conscious thought cropped up (as it habitually and frustratingly tends to do), my observation was that the entirety of existence and nonexistence dwells in my breath. Kind of freaky. All time, all space, all everything, all nothing, all that ever was, and never was, and has been and is and will be was encompassed in the air that entered and left my body. I was breathing some pretty durn enormous breaths.

It gets freakier. As the vastness expounded and magnified, my body disappeared. I am not kidding. I can think of no other way to describe it. Is that what is meant by " . . . mind and body fell away"? Bodily awareness and sensation vanished, and it didn't seem to bother me in the least. The disappearance began at my core, behind my mudra - almost as though my body had become a doughnut you could see straight through. From the doughnut hole center, it seems as though the molecules comprising the rest of me evaporated in quick succession, from the inside out. What seemed to remain was the tiniest bit of consciousness, suspended in the air just above where my neck had been. Words formed in that vicinity, and, humorous as it sounds, the image of the Cheshire Cat - when his body disappears and nothing remains visible but his wide grin - flickered in my mind.

Enlightenment? Maybe. I have read Suzuki Roshi say, so many times and in so many ways, that enlightenment is nothing to get excited about, that I actually DIDN'T get excited during those moments when my body vaporized into nothingness. Reflecting upon it now, it feels like the experience portrayed a deeper state of surrender -- of reclaiming the Truth that there is no separation. The presence of a body felt extraneous; perhaps I experienced it as the superficial and nonessential vessel that it truly is. When the timer sounded, there was definitely a body still sitting on the cushion. It bowed deeply, stretched to the side three times, and squatted to dust off the invisible dirt from my cushion. Just like it has for the past 322 days. Seemingly none the worse for wear during its absence.

My only other reflection is a brief curiosity about how strange this might sound to an outside reader. Perhaps it is not strange at all to readers who also sit. I know it is perfectly okay to have some doubts as I write this, but I am choosing to describe rather than analyze. I am also choosing to complete my year of zazen with great faith and great determination. Doubt, faith, and determination. Three prerequisites for Zen practice. I think I'm ready.

Gassho,
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