Crisp and Clear

We thought we were looking, but could not see what was before us. - Barbara Kingsolver in "The Poisonwood Bible."

Day 312. Two days post-op and I feel like a weenie. My razor-sharp mind feels like it couldn't slice yogurt. My lightening quick reflexes look like Tai Chi performed in slow motion. My sardonic wit hasn't produced a decent one-liner in 48 hours, and my elephantic memory can't even recall on which side of the car my gas tank is located. This is getting serious. With what concoction of medicinal wonders do they produce that mystical state called "conscious sedation?" I think mine may have been a double. That, or I am the world's slowest drug metabolizer. Which cannot be the case; I don't do ANYTHING slow!

I don't feel like me at all, which you might think I would interpret as a major Zen coup (being as how the central idea is to "lose myself.") Instead, I feel foggy and discomfited. Self conscious and timorous. Not a person with whom my ancestors would leave their sheep.

The Big R, previously so crisp and clear, is presently blurred around the edges. My precious state of equanimity (not that I was attached to it) has been upended - toppled by something as trivial as a botched maxillofacial procedure. Reality has an annoying and incessant habit of interrupting my mastery of it. Damn it to hell. This practice - this enigma called Zen - is the most humbling, infuriating, inciting, and disconcerting endeavor I have ever approached. With the slightest provocation, I could dash it on the rocks. Smash it to pieces. Grind it into ash.

Alas and alack! In the past 311 days, I have as yet to encounter anything that holds a candle to Zen when it comes to going head-to-head with Reality. Especially those frequent pieces of It that fail to commence according to my Preferred Version. Where else would I be provided with a method through which I can relinquish attachment, accept Reality exactly as It Is, and be freed from all suffering? Even the squirmy discomfort associated with (arghhh!) being human. All from the comfort of a sofa cushion.

Methinks I doth protest too loudly. This feels disingenuous: I am lauding the role of Zen in my life to avoid blasting out a keyboard purge of self-pitying drivel. Wash my cup, clap with one hand, listen for a tree falling in the forest. At the moment, it's all crap. My mouth hurts, my face hurts, my head hurts, my hope hurts. I want to sit on my cushion about as much as I want another scalpel inserted through my palate. I want to chant about as much as I want to go gargle with my prescription strength antiseptic. I want to bow about as much as I want to sign my next check to the IRS.

Oh - that's better! It's back. Reality. Crisp and clear!

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc