In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while. - Henry David Thoreau in the Zen Calendar (July 1, 2004). * This is from my top ten favorite quotes EVER, though I couldn't tell you why! *
An intense love of solitude, distaste for involvement in worldly affairs, persistence in knowing the Self and awareness of the goal of knowing - all this is called true knowledge. - The Bhagavad Gita in the Zen Calendar (November 3, 2002).
When you come right down to it, all you have is yourself. The sun is a thousand rays in your belly. All the rest is nothing. - Pablo Picasso in the Zen Calendar (April 16, 2009).
There is only one great adventure and that is inwards toward the self. - Henry Miller in the Zen Calendar (May 31, 2006).
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be one's own self. - Montaigne in the Zen Calendar (March 9, 2009).
Self is the true refuge of self. - The Buddha in the Zen Calendar (December 13, 2006).
I am free when I am within myself. - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in the Zen Calendar (June 26, 2009).
You are what you is. - Frank Zappa in the Zen Calendar (October 4, 2007). * Is that not the coolest thing EVER?! Frank Zappa being quoted in the Zen Calendar! *
Day 363. Three blogs to go! I am precariously close to writing a sequel to the "Too Many Dumbasses" blog. In the interest of at least mildly appearing to have gained something during this stupendous year, I will refrain. Suffice it to say, the 17,000 moronic shoppers at my local Homeland grocery better be glad I spent the weekend at a Zen retreat. (Breathe, Doc, breathe!) So it is going to snow hard and get really cold for the next 48 hours. Big friggin deal. In my Preferred Version of Reality, this does not constitute an event of catastrophic proportion. Certainly not one requiring every Okie in the state to lay in provisions like the mushroom cloud is already billowing over our wheat fields. I suspect many hardy Minnesotans get a good laugh (guffaw?) out of Oklahoma's hysterics over winter weather.
One would think Oklahomans could be a bit more robust in the face of brief climactic hardship. After all, our very recent ancestors survived the Dust Bowl. I think, perhaps, we do better with tornadoes. After the F5, just about everyone has a healthy and fairly proportionate respect for them. Hysterical or not, we go to our cellars. Or safe rooms. Or closets in the interior of our homes. Or the bathtub. Ask an Okie - we will be more than happy to describe our personal Twister Plan. Make sure you allow plenty of time for an answer, though. We are not known for succinct story telling.
Enough about the weather already. Though I might as well add: It is presently sleeting like crazy. I am about to pause and perform nine or more of my best prostrate bows in thankful observance of this gift from the Buddha. I cannot imagine a more perfect gift for my 50th birthday than a blizzard, which effectively shuts down my state of residence. Hallelujah and drip the faucets! Isolated, secluded splendor for the next couple of days. My partner is in Florida (yeah, the man truly has exquisite timing) so I am alone at the country house with my two favorite canines. Three hundred sixty-three days of sitting zazen, and Nirvana comes to me! Go figure!
I pulled out my quotes saved under the heading "Self," proceeded to type them to begin tonight's blog, and realized there were a total of eight. Eight quotes about Self. EIGHT! For a calendar supporting a practice aimed at transcending the self, relinquishing ego, culminating in mind and body falling away, and dissolving separateness to join with the One, that seemed like a lot. Good thing this particular Buddhist has learned a little about non-dualism and the Middle Path. Otherwise, all that emphasis on Self may have been a bit confusing.
Speaking from the perspective of spending a year on an adventure quest looking inwards toward my Self, I am a big fan of the Zen authors who endorse personal introspection. Seeking refuge from within, knowing my Self, learning how to BE myself does, indeed, seem like the Most Important Endeavor in which I have ever engaged.
Here are some things I have discovered during my journey within:
1) Honest self examination is humbling. Learning to apply the idea of "Just This!" in relation to my Self was one of the most difficult things I have ever encountered. Illusions were stripped away. I discovered many things I am: a harborer of exceptionally robust Monkeys, an occasional Dumbass, neurotically obsessive, incurably introverted, mudra-ly challenged, attached, chronically tempted to attain, episodically ego bound and competitive - as well as resilient, loyal, committed, trustworthy, curious, joyful, aware, compassionate, smart, funny, grateful, and the owner of freakishly strong legs. I discovered things I am not: extroverted, patient, focused, egoless, enlightened, a Board president, a published author, a professional cyclist, - and also not selfish, dependent, fearful, wimpy, or materialistic. I learned that "Just This" means, at any given instant, everything I listed under "am" simultaneously applies to "am not." That is what giving birth to each moment entails.
2) Accepting the Reality of my Self taught me Self Compassion. I learned to be merciful. I realized this is the point from which all compassion originates.
3) The idea of Self is the biggest Illusion of all. It is the source of all suffering. To grasp No-Self, I had to examine Self most diligently. Ultimately, Self awareness is the only way to transcend Self. Thank you, Zen, for another epic paradox. Continuing to grasp this glorious absurdity will require an eternity on my cushion. That's okay. I have time.
4) Where Self ends, Enlightenment begins. This year of sitting offered precious slivers of bliss during those nanoseconds in which I stepped outside of my Self into Emptiness. Original Self never suffers. She is sublime.
5) Frank Zappa was right: I am what I is!
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Back to Basics
Zen practice emphasizes being present with your actual experience. By placing our attention with the minute details of our physical posture, we get to know our selves, where we have tension, where we are crooked, where we are holding, where we let go, where we are at ease. Our body reveals who we are. Through this awareness, we enter the path of practice. - Pat Phelan in the Zen Calendar (June 2, 2004).
When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely - the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears - when you give your whole attention to it. - Krishnamurti in the Zen Calendar (September 14, 2006).
In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn than to contemplate. - Rene Descartes in the Zen Calendar (October 3, 2007).
Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence. - Charles Dickens in the Zen Calendar (June 30, 2006).
Day 362. Four blogs remain. I am just home from a seven-hour day of zazen, chanting, kinhin, and spiritual connection with a dedicated sangha. It was an incredibly peaceful and meaningful day. What a lovely celebration of closure to my sit/blog year. Gassho, Jiun Hosen Osho, Nick, and the attending members of Windsong Innerspace sangha for including me in a loving, inspirational weekend retreat.
I cannot express the perfection manifested in the zazen retreat. It occurred to me yesterday that I was able to participate in four weekend meditation retreats this year - one for each season. They all augmented my year's endeavor, mainly through the simple and wondrous reminder that others have also embarked upon a spiritual journey. In unique ways, each retreat contributed to and enriched my practice. Worship with others enhances spirituality in ways a singular practice simply cannot. For me, the quintessential introvert, writing these words represents a shift of tectonic plate proportion.
Jiun Hosen gently, kindly offered some suggestions for improving my zazen posture. She noted that a more stable base is formed when my legs are not crossed at the ankle, which enabled my knees to fall closer to the floor. She further observed that, in my exaggerated effort to tuck my chin in, the crown of my head tipped forward slightly rather than reaching for the heavens. I lowered my knees, relaxed my chin, and stretched my crown to the sky. Indeed, I felt rock solid -- anchored to the cushion like a mountain. This subtle feedback and attention from a teacher felt like gold showering down around me. Back to basics. Posture, mudra, breath. Paying steady attention to the moment-to-moment intricacies of sitting meditation. I felt warm and centered as I refocused on those sitting fundamentals -- like glowing embers pooled in my belly. Zazen practice at its finest.
We walked kinhin in a manner slightly different from the style of my teacher Frank. Jiun Hosen led us in a gently moving line as we put one mindful foot in front of the other. With the lifting of each slow, methodical footstep, she struck a rhythmic CLAP with the two small pieces of wood she carried. We moved in a deliberate, purposeful, symmetrical line. Back to basics. As we alternated walking meditation with session after session of zazen, the sensation of moving my cramped, tingly legs shifted from stretching to relief to something bordering on deliverance. Kinhin is a powerful way to get out of my head; for some reason the Monkeys are easier to mitigate while standing on my feet. At one point I had the crystalline thought that, anything -- literally anything -- can be accomplished by simply putting one foot in front of the other. If Jiun Hosen had headed out the door, saying, "Follow me! We are walking kinhin to Argentina," I am certain I would have replied, "Bueno! Vamonos!" and followed right behind her.
Chanting with a sangha is always a powerful and moving experience for me. Today, however, was probably the first time I ever engaged in aerobic chanting. Forget competitive cycling -- I may start going to Windsong for major cardiovascular workouts. Sometimes we intoned those stoic Japanese syllables so fast they blurred together like a Louisiana auctioneer at a plantation sale. Other times, we articulated the disparate sounds so slowly, I died a death in between each one. Only to be reborn with the next syllable. It helps tremendously that most of us don't have the remotest idea about the chant's content. Forming the sounds at the staccato, rapid-fire rate with which Nick strikes his drum is challenging and consuming enough. I can't imagine trying to grasp their meaning. Which, I believe, is the point. Back to basics.
The day ended with a somber, breathtakingly beautiful ceremony honoring Nirvana Day - the day of Buddha's death. It is usually performed on February 15th, but Jiun Hosen provided us with the great honor of conducting the ceremony while she was here. The ritual, precision, and ancient sacredness of it all brought tears to my eyes. I overflowed with gratitude at the life and teaching of the Great Compassionate Buddha.
I hoped to capture the events of today in writing so that I can remember it always. Interesting aspiration, for someone who just spent an entire weekend practicing being in the moment. Though I attempted to stow my ego with my shoes in a cubby hole as I entered the dojo, I couldn't help but personalize the timing of the retreat just a little. Through a remarkable synchronization of events that only a Perfect Universe could orchestrate, my year of zazen culminated in the most profound day of sitting I have experienced to date. Enlightenment? For a second or two. Nirvana? For a second or two. The Reality of zazen, i.e. an infinite number of cycles of breathe - distract - observe - accept - refocus - breathe? Damn near seven hours. Ah, such is Zen. Thank the Buddha!
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely - the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears - when you give your whole attention to it. - Krishnamurti in the Zen Calendar (September 14, 2006).
In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn than to contemplate. - Rene Descartes in the Zen Calendar (October 3, 2007).
Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence. - Charles Dickens in the Zen Calendar (June 30, 2006).
Day 362. Four blogs remain. I am just home from a seven-hour day of zazen, chanting, kinhin, and spiritual connection with a dedicated sangha. It was an incredibly peaceful and meaningful day. What a lovely celebration of closure to my sit/blog year. Gassho, Jiun Hosen Osho, Nick, and the attending members of Windsong Innerspace sangha for including me in a loving, inspirational weekend retreat.
I cannot express the perfection manifested in the zazen retreat. It occurred to me yesterday that I was able to participate in four weekend meditation retreats this year - one for each season. They all augmented my year's endeavor, mainly through the simple and wondrous reminder that others have also embarked upon a spiritual journey. In unique ways, each retreat contributed to and enriched my practice. Worship with others enhances spirituality in ways a singular practice simply cannot. For me, the quintessential introvert, writing these words represents a shift of tectonic plate proportion.
Jiun Hosen gently, kindly offered some suggestions for improving my zazen posture. She noted that a more stable base is formed when my legs are not crossed at the ankle, which enabled my knees to fall closer to the floor. She further observed that, in my exaggerated effort to tuck my chin in, the crown of my head tipped forward slightly rather than reaching for the heavens. I lowered my knees, relaxed my chin, and stretched my crown to the sky. Indeed, I felt rock solid -- anchored to the cushion like a mountain. This subtle feedback and attention from a teacher felt like gold showering down around me. Back to basics. Posture, mudra, breath. Paying steady attention to the moment-to-moment intricacies of sitting meditation. I felt warm and centered as I refocused on those sitting fundamentals -- like glowing embers pooled in my belly. Zazen practice at its finest.
We walked kinhin in a manner slightly different from the style of my teacher Frank. Jiun Hosen led us in a gently moving line as we put one mindful foot in front of the other. With the lifting of each slow, methodical footstep, she struck a rhythmic CLAP with the two small pieces of wood she carried. We moved in a deliberate, purposeful, symmetrical line. Back to basics. As we alternated walking meditation with session after session of zazen, the sensation of moving my cramped, tingly legs shifted from stretching to relief to something bordering on deliverance. Kinhin is a powerful way to get out of my head; for some reason the Monkeys are easier to mitigate while standing on my feet. At one point I had the crystalline thought that, anything -- literally anything -- can be accomplished by simply putting one foot in front of the other. If Jiun Hosen had headed out the door, saying, "Follow me! We are walking kinhin to Argentina," I am certain I would have replied, "Bueno! Vamonos!" and followed right behind her.
Chanting with a sangha is always a powerful and moving experience for me. Today, however, was probably the first time I ever engaged in aerobic chanting. Forget competitive cycling -- I may start going to Windsong for major cardiovascular workouts. Sometimes we intoned those stoic Japanese syllables so fast they blurred together like a Louisiana auctioneer at a plantation sale. Other times, we articulated the disparate sounds so slowly, I died a death in between each one. Only to be reborn with the next syllable. It helps tremendously that most of us don't have the remotest idea about the chant's content. Forming the sounds at the staccato, rapid-fire rate with which Nick strikes his drum is challenging and consuming enough. I can't imagine trying to grasp their meaning. Which, I believe, is the point. Back to basics.
The day ended with a somber, breathtakingly beautiful ceremony honoring Nirvana Day - the day of Buddha's death. It is usually performed on February 15th, but Jiun Hosen provided us with the great honor of conducting the ceremony while she was here. The ritual, precision, and ancient sacredness of it all brought tears to my eyes. I overflowed with gratitude at the life and teaching of the Great Compassionate Buddha.
I hoped to capture the events of today in writing so that I can remember it always. Interesting aspiration, for someone who just spent an entire weekend practicing being in the moment. Though I attempted to stow my ego with my shoes in a cubby hole as I entered the dojo, I couldn't help but personalize the timing of the retreat just a little. Through a remarkable synchronization of events that only a Perfect Universe could orchestrate, my year of zazen culminated in the most profound day of sitting I have experienced to date. Enlightenment? For a second or two. Nirvana? For a second or two. The Reality of zazen, i.e. an infinite number of cycles of breathe - distract - observe - accept - refocus - breathe? Damn near seven hours. Ah, such is Zen. Thank the Buddha!
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Saturday, January 29, 2011
A Matter of Character
Meditation is not a difficult task. It is a way to lead you to your long-lost home. - Soen Shaku in the Zen Calendar (January 28, 2002).
I raise my hand; I take a book from the other side of the desk; I hear the boys playing outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighboring woods - in all these I am practicing Zen, I am living Zen. No wordy discussion is necessary, nor any explanation. - D. T. Suzuki in the Zen Calendar (December 15, 2007).
Zen is a matter of character, not a matter of intellect. - D. T. Suzuki in the Zen Calendar (October 28, 2007).
Zazen is itself enlightenment. - Dogen in the Zen Calendar (September 28, 1999).
Day 361. Five blogs remain. I spent the day with a sangha of ten as we sat zazen, performed kinhin, and shared dharma talk with Jiun Hosen. A zazen retreat with an inspiring, compassionate Bodhisattva. I am filled with inarticulable gratitude and delight over this gift. What a miraculous weekend with which to usher out my 40's.
I raise my hand; I take a book from the other side of the desk; I hear the boys playing outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighboring woods - in all these I am practicing Zen, I am living Zen. No wordy discussion is necessary, nor any explanation. - D. T. Suzuki in the Zen Calendar (December 15, 2007).
Zen is a matter of character, not a matter of intellect. - D. T. Suzuki in the Zen Calendar (October 28, 2007).
Zazen is itself enlightenment. - Dogen in the Zen Calendar (September 28, 1999).
Day 361. Five blogs remain. I spent the day with a sangha of ten as we sat zazen, performed kinhin, and shared dharma talk with Jiun Hosen. A zazen retreat with an inspiring, compassionate Bodhisattva. I am filled with inarticulable gratitude and delight over this gift. What a miraculous weekend with which to usher out my 40's.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Skid Recovery
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. - Edward Abbey in the Zen Calendar (August 5, 2004).
Like dew that vanishes,
like a phantom that disappears,
or the light cast by a flash of lightning -
so should one think of oneself. - Ikkyu in the Zen Calendar (August 20, 2001).
At any given moment, I open my eyes and exist. And before that, during all eternity, what was there? Nothing. - Ugo Betti in the Zen Calendar (August 14, 2002).
Right now a moment of time is passing by! . . . We must become that moment. - Paul Cezanne in the Zen Calendar (October 2, 2006).
One chance, one encounter. - Zen Saying in the Zen Calendar (July 4, 2009).
Day 360. Six blogs to go. Sort of boggles my mind. My little mind. Big Mind is boggle proof.
Peak Experience! On this, the last weekend of my blogging year, Nick of Windsong Dojo, with gracious and perfect timing hosted his teacher, Jiun Hosen Osho, for a weekend zazen retreat. It began tonight with dharma talk and zazen. When Jiun Hosen was talking about attachment, she said, " . . . and you develop attachment to your kids and your parents and your dog and your IPad -- Man, those things are cool, aren't they? I have a Droid." I cracked up, and interpreted it as a sign that I am, indeed, meant to purchase an IPad of my own.
Before I went to the dojo this evening, I rode another spectacular two laps at Draper. Who knew so much enlightenment awaited me on the twisting, sandy trails less than three miles from my home? I rode with my friend Shellye (Gassho, Shellye, for being a female badass on your bike!) on one of the laps. It was during my first solo lap, however, that something Zen-like and therefore blog-worthy occurred.
The incident itself was totally mundane: my back tire skidded sideways on a fast downhill curve, and I almost crashed. As mountain biking goes, this is by no means a noteworthy event. The reason I am describing it now is because of the thoughts that arose about it during meditation with Jiun Hosen. Reflecting upon my skid recovery in the silence of the dojo imbued it with significance.
The essence of zazen is being fully conscious of the present moment. So conscious, in fact, that consciousness falls away and I merge with the moment - such that we both disappear completely. In her answer to a question I posed about the innumerable times I have to refocus my attention during zazen (thank you, Robust Monkeys), Jiun Hosen said that in any given meditation session we are constantly giving birth to each moment. And the next one, and the next. I asked her about ". . . discontinuity versus continuity of the moments in which I remain fully in the present. . . " i.e. I humbly disclosed that I have a nagging attachment to the idea that my "second" of fully entering a moment will eventually expand to, uh, maybe five seconds. Jiun Hosen said that, through years of zazen, one may develop a shift from the "consciousness state" of our unenlightened self to a more ongoing state of "un-conscious" -- meaning that we experience increasingly longer segments of life while being fully in the moment, surrendering the illusions that usually crowd our perspective and distort our reality. Wow - if I hadn't so magnificently mastered the idea of no attainment, that sounds like a state I definitely want to attain.
Back to recovering from a mountain bike skid. On sandy trails, I probably average four or five "almost" crashes per ride if I am going all out. When I am riding with my partner, he usually says, "Nice save!" when I execute the automatic, instantaneous reflex my body has learned to avoid crashing. Then we ride on. This particular skid recovery, however, probably would have prompted something like, "Holy crap! I can't believe you saved that! I thought you were going down!"
I was ripping around a curve on a fast descent when my back tire skidded in loose sand, my bike slid sideways, the front tire lost traction, and my handlebars twisted and dipped toward the ground. My right hip and knee almost grazed the dirt. It was in that instant that I gave birth to a moment. My instinctive save was a rare and likely unrepeatable maneuver. I didn't think about it, anticipate it, or consciously control it. I cannot recall, describe, or analyze it because I WAS it. In the next moment, I was upright and flying on down the trail. Naturally, there was nobody behind to bear witness. But if there had been, I bet he would have yelled, "Hell of a save!!"
I am beginning to understand that my skid recovery was a sliver of enlightenment. All this time I've been sitting on my cushion looking everywhere else for Nirvana when the miraculous Reality of it sits on ME - calmly licking its chops. Enlightenment is there -- in every single instant -- if I can simply stay out of its way with my thoughts, my intentions, my effort, my noise, my self consciousness. The skid metaphor is sublime: I could NEVER do that move if I planned it or consciously tried to repeat it. It belonged to that moment! The only reason it happened was PRECISELY because I DIDN'T effort or intend or try. My experience and "practice" at mountain biking simply manifested itself. In effortless, thoughtless, consciousless action. I didn't have to do a thing. It was there all along.
A sandy curve on a dirt trail became my One Chance, One Encounter. Whatever my body did to prevent the crash took less than a second. If I count the second or two before the skid and the second or two after it, I may have just strung together five seconds of Enlightenment for the very first time. Not bad, for 360 days on my cushion.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Like dew that vanishes,
like a phantom that disappears,
or the light cast by a flash of lightning -
so should one think of oneself. - Ikkyu in the Zen Calendar (August 20, 2001).
At any given moment, I open my eyes and exist. And before that, during all eternity, what was there? Nothing. - Ugo Betti in the Zen Calendar (August 14, 2002).
Right now a moment of time is passing by! . . . We must become that moment. - Paul Cezanne in the Zen Calendar (October 2, 2006).
One chance, one encounter. - Zen Saying in the Zen Calendar (July 4, 2009).
Day 360. Six blogs to go. Sort of boggles my mind. My little mind. Big Mind is boggle proof.
Peak Experience! On this, the last weekend of my blogging year, Nick of Windsong Dojo, with gracious and perfect timing hosted his teacher, Jiun Hosen Osho, for a weekend zazen retreat. It began tonight with dharma talk and zazen. When Jiun Hosen was talking about attachment, she said, " . . . and you develop attachment to your kids and your parents and your dog and your IPad -- Man, those things are cool, aren't they? I have a Droid." I cracked up, and interpreted it as a sign that I am, indeed, meant to purchase an IPad of my own.
Before I went to the dojo this evening, I rode another spectacular two laps at Draper. Who knew so much enlightenment awaited me on the twisting, sandy trails less than three miles from my home? I rode with my friend Shellye (Gassho, Shellye, for being a female badass on your bike!) on one of the laps. It was during my first solo lap, however, that something Zen-like and therefore blog-worthy occurred.
The incident itself was totally mundane: my back tire skidded sideways on a fast downhill curve, and I almost crashed. As mountain biking goes, this is by no means a noteworthy event. The reason I am describing it now is because of the thoughts that arose about it during meditation with Jiun Hosen. Reflecting upon my skid recovery in the silence of the dojo imbued it with significance.
The essence of zazen is being fully conscious of the present moment. So conscious, in fact, that consciousness falls away and I merge with the moment - such that we both disappear completely. In her answer to a question I posed about the innumerable times I have to refocus my attention during zazen (thank you, Robust Monkeys), Jiun Hosen said that in any given meditation session we are constantly giving birth to each moment. And the next one, and the next. I asked her about ". . . discontinuity versus continuity of the moments in which I remain fully in the present. . . " i.e. I humbly disclosed that I have a nagging attachment to the idea that my "second" of fully entering a moment will eventually expand to, uh, maybe five seconds. Jiun Hosen said that, through years of zazen, one may develop a shift from the "consciousness state" of our unenlightened self to a more ongoing state of "un-conscious" -- meaning that we experience increasingly longer segments of life while being fully in the moment, surrendering the illusions that usually crowd our perspective and distort our reality. Wow - if I hadn't so magnificently mastered the idea of no attainment, that sounds like a state I definitely want to attain.
Back to recovering from a mountain bike skid. On sandy trails, I probably average four or five "almost" crashes per ride if I am going all out. When I am riding with my partner, he usually says, "Nice save!" when I execute the automatic, instantaneous reflex my body has learned to avoid crashing. Then we ride on. This particular skid recovery, however, probably would have prompted something like, "Holy crap! I can't believe you saved that! I thought you were going down!"
I was ripping around a curve on a fast descent when my back tire skidded in loose sand, my bike slid sideways, the front tire lost traction, and my handlebars twisted and dipped toward the ground. My right hip and knee almost grazed the dirt. It was in that instant that I gave birth to a moment. My instinctive save was a rare and likely unrepeatable maneuver. I didn't think about it, anticipate it, or consciously control it. I cannot recall, describe, or analyze it because I WAS it. In the next moment, I was upright and flying on down the trail. Naturally, there was nobody behind to bear witness. But if there had been, I bet he would have yelled, "Hell of a save!!"
I am beginning to understand that my skid recovery was a sliver of enlightenment. All this time I've been sitting on my cushion looking everywhere else for Nirvana when the miraculous Reality of it sits on ME - calmly licking its chops. Enlightenment is there -- in every single instant -- if I can simply stay out of its way with my thoughts, my intentions, my effort, my noise, my self consciousness. The skid metaphor is sublime: I could NEVER do that move if I planned it or consciously tried to repeat it. It belonged to that moment! The only reason it happened was PRECISELY because I DIDN'T effort or intend or try. My experience and "practice" at mountain biking simply manifested itself. In effortless, thoughtless, consciousless action. I didn't have to do a thing. It was there all along.
A sandy curve on a dirt trail became my One Chance, One Encounter. Whatever my body did to prevent the crash took less than a second. If I count the second or two before the skid and the second or two after it, I may have just strung together five seconds of Enlightenment for the very first time. Not bad, for 360 days on my cushion.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Thursday, January 27, 2011
This Much I Know
Learning and thinking are like being outside the door; sitting in meditation is returning home to sit in peace. - The Buddha in the Zen Calendar (September 4, 2006).
Zen is like looking for the spectacles that are sitting on your nose. - D. T. Suzuki in the Zen Calendar (October 9, 2007).
To manage your mind, know that there is nothing, and then relinquish all attachment to the nothingness. - The Hua Hu Ching in the Zen Calendar (November 6, 2003).
Day 359. Seven blogs left to write. Bummer, because I have over a hundred quotes sitting on my desk. Perish the thought I write a SINGLE day after my birthday. We'll see. That moment is not Now.
I find myself sitting in the need of making a list. A list of the rather persistent truths arising while sitting zazen. The list is titled: This Much I Know:
I know all of Creation originates in Love.
I know Life perpetuates itself with the momentum of ceaseless perfection.
I know suffering exists in the distance between Reality and my Preferred Version of It.
I know that dwelling in Reality alleviates suffering.
I know there is nothing to be afraid of.
I know I am afraid.
I know there is no separation between me and the rest of Life.
I know I feel separate.
I know to relinquish all attachment.
I know I am attached.
I know the difference between Sitting and Intending to Sit.
I know the timer will eventually sound.
I know I may not hear it.
I know 40 minutes can feel like 40 years.
I know my left side bends are deeper than my right.
I know that blood continues to flow even when my body parts are numb.
I know Emptiness is endless.
I know nothing is permanent.
I know there is no Knowing.
Just This.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Zen is like looking for the spectacles that are sitting on your nose. - D. T. Suzuki in the Zen Calendar (October 9, 2007).
To manage your mind, know that there is nothing, and then relinquish all attachment to the nothingness. - The Hua Hu Ching in the Zen Calendar (November 6, 2003).
Day 359. Seven blogs left to write. Bummer, because I have over a hundred quotes sitting on my desk. Perish the thought I write a SINGLE day after my birthday. We'll see. That moment is not Now.
I find myself sitting in the need of making a list. A list of the rather persistent truths arising while sitting zazen. The list is titled: This Much I Know:
I know all of Creation originates in Love.
I know Life perpetuates itself with the momentum of ceaseless perfection.
I know suffering exists in the distance between Reality and my Preferred Version of It.
I know that dwelling in Reality alleviates suffering.
I know there is nothing to be afraid of.
I know I am afraid.
I know there is no separation between me and the rest of Life.
I know I feel separate.
I know to relinquish all attachment.
I know I am attached.
I know the difference between Sitting and Intending to Sit.
I know the timer will eventually sound.
I know I may not hear it.
I know 40 minutes can feel like 40 years.
I know 40 minutes can feel like a heartbeat.
I know my shoulders and knees are the first things to get cold when I sit zazen.I know my left side bends are deeper than my right.
I know that blood continues to flow even when my body parts are numb.
I know my mudra sags.
I know kinhin is my most potent Monkey Silencer.I know Emptiness is endless.
I know nothing is permanent.
I know there is no Knowing.
Just This.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Hovering Half-Lotus
Quote to follow. Blogging at work is a tremendous pain in my butt, but I certainly am not going to quit now!
The farther you enter into the truth, the deeper it is. - Bankei in the Zen Calendar (June 10, 2004).
Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; yet nothing troubles me less. - Charles Lamb in the Zen Calendar (May 13, 2003).
Day 358. Eight remaining blogs . . . AND a Peak Experience! I glanced at the followers number when I opened the blog just now (wow - additional evidence that my Ego is as robust as my Monkeys -- it crops up everywhere!) and Voila! Twenty-five followers rather than 24! I have consciously tried to comment less on my obsessive neurosis about the number 6, but don't think for a moment that my weirdness on this issus had dissipated. The fact that the number 24 adds up to 6 has disconcerted me far more than I will quantify on this public forum. Suffice it to say, I am ecstatic to discover there are now 25 followers. The number 25 adds up to a blissful, serene 7. Whew! That was close - 25 followers with only a week left to blog. My OCD feels salved like A&D ointment on a saddle sore.
Gifts from zazen have been wafting up from my cushion like a cloud of green smoke enveloping Led Zeppelin fans. This comes as a great relief, because the din of cerebral activity roaring through my skull last week rivaled the aftermath of last night's State of the Union address (okay, Doc, enough with the simile!) My point is that the initial bout of anxiety and apprehension and grandiosity regarding my final blogs has been replaced with a state representing what the whole year was supposed to be about in the first place. I am at peace. Calm. Not attached to a particular outcome or level of performance. Sitting at the juncture of Emptiness and Non-Dualism. If I write a magnum opus -- Cool. If I write crap -- Cool. The year was about sitting every day and writing about it every day. Done (almost). Noting the emerging byproducts of meditating every day is simply a bonus.
One of the byproducts is this miraculous realization that something has actually occurred over the past year. All this butt-on-the-cushion time has meaning. And the beautiful thing is that I would also be fine if I were typing, at this exact moment, that it had no meaning whatsoever. That is what I have learned. It is what I now know. I never could have predicted that, as I approached my final blogs, I would have the feelings and thoughts that I am presently attempting to describe. It feels a bit like our uncanny . . . bummer! I was interrupted at work, and now I am really curious to know where that sentence was leading. Alas! The remainder appears to have escaped me . . .
The feelings and thoughts I was attempting to describe center around the notion that I am unalterably changed through a steady zazen practice and, simultaneously, I am perpetually myself. Such is Zen. Strangely, I feel extraordinarily prepared to wrap up the blog endeavor and focus my writing energy on another project. Though fear and trepidation are, at the moment, nonexistent, I know they will ebb and flow and, frankly, I don't care. Sitting every day has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt (and the clap of one hand) that I can take action regardless of the transient thoughts and feelings that waft across the sky of my mind. Feeling anxious, exhausted, bored, distracted, or sick is NOT synonymous with avoiding a sitting session. My butt can plunk down on the cushion regardless of the seemingly substantive counter notions and Monkey persuasion that raucously detonate my brain cells. I can separate the essential from the nonessential. I can distinguish illusion from Reality.
Some zazen sessions shimmer so brilliantly I half expect to look over and see a fat, smiling, peaceful guy sitting on a zafu next to me. It is like all my Instruments of Emptiness actually succeed in creating a vacuous space where my mind used to be. Every once in a great while, I am able to enter "Just This," and the Monkeys actually refrain from shouting, "Just This!" so the emptiness and nothingness are actually silent, too. For a few seconds, I transcend myself and disappear into bliss, ecstasy, and oblivion.
Last night, I stepped outside the chatter and inside the Palace of Origin for a few seconds. Simultaneously, I had the strangest sensation of levitating off my cushion about a foot, and simply hovering, in a sensationless but perfect half-lotus, above my cushion. Mind fell away, but apparently body just lifted off the floor a bit. I guess all that Empty and Nothing rendered me weightless, and I floated right up. Earlier in the year, this would have been an astonishing, stupendous event - due cause for ego centered celebration and an extra long blog. Instead, I just kept breathing. Focused on where the breath entered and exited my nostrils. Consciousness didn't rush in like the Calvary, rescuing me from the unfamiliar strangeness of it all.
It amazes and puzzles me that I create such persistent barriers to executing my life from this place of pristine and remarkable clarity. Enter zazen practice. The beautiful thing about it is its unceasing necessity. At least, if I am to have the remotest chance of living Life the way it wants to be lived. Instead of job security, I guess I have Sitting Security. Because I plan to stick with it for a long, long, time.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
The farther you enter into the truth, the deeper it is. - Bankei in the Zen Calendar (June 10, 2004).
Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; yet nothing troubles me less. - Charles Lamb in the Zen Calendar (May 13, 2003).
Day 358. Eight remaining blogs . . . AND a Peak Experience! I glanced at the followers number when I opened the blog just now (wow - additional evidence that my Ego is as robust as my Monkeys -- it crops up everywhere!) and Voila! Twenty-five followers rather than 24! I have consciously tried to comment less on my obsessive neurosis about the number 6, but don't think for a moment that my weirdness on this issus had dissipated. The fact that the number 24 adds up to 6 has disconcerted me far more than I will quantify on this public forum. Suffice it to say, I am ecstatic to discover there are now 25 followers. The number 25 adds up to a blissful, serene 7. Whew! That was close - 25 followers with only a week left to blog. My OCD feels salved like A&D ointment on a saddle sore.
Gifts from zazen have been wafting up from my cushion like a cloud of green smoke enveloping Led Zeppelin fans. This comes as a great relief, because the din of cerebral activity roaring through my skull last week rivaled the aftermath of last night's State of the Union address (okay, Doc, enough with the simile!) My point is that the initial bout of anxiety and apprehension and grandiosity regarding my final blogs has been replaced with a state representing what the whole year was supposed to be about in the first place. I am at peace. Calm. Not attached to a particular outcome or level of performance. Sitting at the juncture of Emptiness and Non-Dualism. If I write a magnum opus -- Cool. If I write crap -- Cool. The year was about sitting every day and writing about it every day. Done (almost). Noting the emerging byproducts of meditating every day is simply a bonus.
One of the byproducts is this miraculous realization that something has actually occurred over the past year. All this butt-on-the-cushion time has meaning. And the beautiful thing is that I would also be fine if I were typing, at this exact moment, that it had no meaning whatsoever. That is what I have learned. It is what I now know. I never could have predicted that, as I approached my final blogs, I would have the feelings and thoughts that I am presently attempting to describe. It feels a bit like our uncanny . . . bummer! I was interrupted at work, and now I am really curious to know where that sentence was leading. Alas! The remainder appears to have escaped me . . .
The feelings and thoughts I was attempting to describe center around the notion that I am unalterably changed through a steady zazen practice and, simultaneously, I am perpetually myself. Such is Zen. Strangely, I feel extraordinarily prepared to wrap up the blog endeavor and focus my writing energy on another project. Though fear and trepidation are, at the moment, nonexistent, I know they will ebb and flow and, frankly, I don't care. Sitting every day has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt (and the clap of one hand) that I can take action regardless of the transient thoughts and feelings that waft across the sky of my mind. Feeling anxious, exhausted, bored, distracted, or sick is NOT synonymous with avoiding a sitting session. My butt can plunk down on the cushion regardless of the seemingly substantive counter notions and Monkey persuasion that raucously detonate my brain cells. I can separate the essential from the nonessential. I can distinguish illusion from Reality.
Some zazen sessions shimmer so brilliantly I half expect to look over and see a fat, smiling, peaceful guy sitting on a zafu next to me. It is like all my Instruments of Emptiness actually succeed in creating a vacuous space where my mind used to be. Every once in a great while, I am able to enter "Just This," and the Monkeys actually refrain from shouting, "Just This!" so the emptiness and nothingness are actually silent, too. For a few seconds, I transcend myself and disappear into bliss, ecstasy, and oblivion.
Last night, I stepped outside the chatter and inside the Palace of Origin for a few seconds. Simultaneously, I had the strangest sensation of levitating off my cushion about a foot, and simply hovering, in a sensationless but perfect half-lotus, above my cushion. Mind fell away, but apparently body just lifted off the floor a bit. I guess all that Empty and Nothing rendered me weightless, and I floated right up. Earlier in the year, this would have been an astonishing, stupendous event - due cause for ego centered celebration and an extra long blog. Instead, I just kept breathing. Focused on where the breath entered and exited my nostrils. Consciousness didn't rush in like the Calvary, rescuing me from the unfamiliar strangeness of it all.
It amazes and puzzles me that I create such persistent barriers to executing my life from this place of pristine and remarkable clarity. Enter zazen practice. The beautiful thing about it is its unceasing necessity. At least, if I am to have the remotest chance of living Life the way it wants to be lived. Instead of job security, I guess I have Sitting Security. Because I plan to stick with it for a long, long, time.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Divots and Their Derivatives
Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge. - Winston Churchill in the Zen Calendar (July 12, 2003).
The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are. - Marcus Aurelius in the Zen Calendar (June 17, 2003).
Day 357. Nine blogs to go. Nine days left of my forties.
During zazen last night I recalled a topic I intended to blog about that dated back to the retreat I attended with my teacher Frank several weeks ago. Since it was traditional zazen, we sat facing the wall. For the entire day, my three-quarters downcast eyes kept fixating on a tiny, divot-shaped dimple in the cinder block directly in front of my cushion. Somehow, that tiny dimple catalyzed some powerful insight into the nature of things. Their essence. The bare bones of original purpose and functionality. In my meditative state, I comprehended the nature of divots. What seemed important (then and now) was realizing that "essence" remains fixed regardless of outer appearance or packaging. A dimple is a dimple - it's a rounded indention that interrupts a smooth plane by dipping inward. The essence is the same, whether contained in the divot left by a golf club or the crater left by a meteorite.
My sequence of associations last night led to listing items that have been pared down to their essence. The first list included lead pencils, rubber bands, postettes, paper clips, rope, pulleys, sticks, sharp edges (i.e. anything that cuts or scrapes), and flat, even surfaces. From there, images from ancient cultures rose to my awareness, and it occurred to me that the essence of most household utensils (plate, bowl, cup, spoon, knife, fork, skillet, pot, lid) and tools (hoe, rake, shovel, trowel, bucket, axe, spear, arrow, wheel, cog, funnel) hasn't changed in thousands of years. The functional essence of an object doesn't change over time. The original nature of things is unalterable.
Here is my emerging theory (recognizing, of course, that in actuality it is not "my" theory -- I realize every thought I come up with has been pre-thunk, and - most likely - the book has already been written and made a profit for its author): The further I get from the original essence of something, the more problems are likely to arise. The theory applies to objects (I have yet to discover something that performs the function of a rubber band better than a rubber band), my self (when I try to be an extroverted Rah-Rah who likes mornings, all hell breaks loose), and my relationships (when I try to conduct my relationship with my partner according to the paradigm that applies to my friends, uh - all hell breaks loose).
The theory is holding up in my work context as well. Cutting to the essence of things is highly conducive to productive and efficient therapy. Reality lives at the same address as the original nature of things. It's not even a duplex; they occupy the exact same spot. This is where life happens, this is where truth happens, this is the beginning and end of All. Can't cheat it, can't skip it, can't alter it, can't hide it, can't pass it off for something other than what it is. At least, not for long. Because, like crabgrass in Bermuda, it will emerge eventually, no matter what lengths you exert to stave it off.
In the past few days, this proclivity for sighting essence has astounded me. It feels like, if energy expenditure were measured in BTU's, I used to expend 20,000 units per day, whereas now I break off about a hundred. Makes me marvel at the depth of wastefulness I have indulged in the past. Makes me giggle as I watch people try to improve upon the rubber band. Makes me twitch as I observe myself and others engaging in the futility of ignoring essence. Makes me damn excited about the future. Because I am going to have of an awful lot of energy to devote to something new.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are. - Marcus Aurelius in the Zen Calendar (June 17, 2003).
Day 357. Nine blogs to go. Nine days left of my forties.
During zazen last night I recalled a topic I intended to blog about that dated back to the retreat I attended with my teacher Frank several weeks ago. Since it was traditional zazen, we sat facing the wall. For the entire day, my three-quarters downcast eyes kept fixating on a tiny, divot-shaped dimple in the cinder block directly in front of my cushion. Somehow, that tiny dimple catalyzed some powerful insight into the nature of things. Their essence. The bare bones of original purpose and functionality. In my meditative state, I comprehended the nature of divots. What seemed important (then and now) was realizing that "essence" remains fixed regardless of outer appearance or packaging. A dimple is a dimple - it's a rounded indention that interrupts a smooth plane by dipping inward. The essence is the same, whether contained in the divot left by a golf club or the crater left by a meteorite.
My sequence of associations last night led to listing items that have been pared down to their essence. The first list included lead pencils, rubber bands, postettes, paper clips, rope, pulleys, sticks, sharp edges (i.e. anything that cuts or scrapes), and flat, even surfaces. From there, images from ancient cultures rose to my awareness, and it occurred to me that the essence of most household utensils (plate, bowl, cup, spoon, knife, fork, skillet, pot, lid) and tools (hoe, rake, shovel, trowel, bucket, axe, spear, arrow, wheel, cog, funnel) hasn't changed in thousands of years. The functional essence of an object doesn't change over time. The original nature of things is unalterable.
Here is my emerging theory (recognizing, of course, that in actuality it is not "my" theory -- I realize every thought I come up with has been pre-thunk, and - most likely - the book has already been written and made a profit for its author): The further I get from the original essence of something, the more problems are likely to arise. The theory applies to objects (I have yet to discover something that performs the function of a rubber band better than a rubber band), my self (when I try to be an extroverted Rah-Rah who likes mornings, all hell breaks loose), and my relationships (when I try to conduct my relationship with my partner according to the paradigm that applies to my friends, uh - all hell breaks loose).
The theory is holding up in my work context as well. Cutting to the essence of things is highly conducive to productive and efficient therapy. Reality lives at the same address as the original nature of things. It's not even a duplex; they occupy the exact same spot. This is where life happens, this is where truth happens, this is the beginning and end of All. Can't cheat it, can't skip it, can't alter it, can't hide it, can't pass it off for something other than what it is. At least, not for long. Because, like crabgrass in Bermuda, it will emerge eventually, no matter what lengths you exert to stave it off.
In the past few days, this proclivity for sighting essence has astounded me. It feels like, if energy expenditure were measured in BTU's, I used to expend 20,000 units per day, whereas now I break off about a hundred. Makes me marvel at the depth of wastefulness I have indulged in the past. Makes me giggle as I watch people try to improve upon the rubber band. Makes me twitch as I observe myself and others engaging in the futility of ignoring essence. Makes me damn excited about the future. Because I am going to have of an awful lot of energy to devote to something new.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Monday, January 24, 2011
A Good Combo
" . . . It's like everybody is moving, and not thinking." - N.A.T. on 12/8/2010
Day 356. Tonight's blog marks an extremely significant milestone: 10 Remaining Blogs. Ten, TEN, TEN!! This marker makes all the "fractions thereof" I referred to over the past year pale by comparison. Let the countdown begin!
Today I received a meaningful compliment from a dedicated reader. She acknowledged my effort over the past year, and validated the accomplishment of keeping my commitment to write a blog every day. She also offered her congratulations at the impending completion of the year. Gassho, B.F. for your kind words. I received them with much love and gratitude. Thank you for another reminder of how good it feels to be on the receiving end of kindness.
I have an escalating sense of elation as my birthday draws near. I cannot tell you what I am elated about, especially since I have so fully accomplished not feeling attached to any particular outcome for the blog (I write, with a deep sigh and simultaneous sarcastic chuckle). Emotions of liberation and relief bubble up from my hippocampus as I anticipate some extra time at the end of my day. I don't know how I will allocate the time. I can't help but wonder if my sex life will be impacted when I no longer crawl into bed two hours after my partner retires. One thing I know for certain: my partner also has an emerging sense of elation as my birthday creeps closer -- and he can tell you EXACTLY what he is elated about!
Today was a good one for being a shrink. My office was resplendent with Zen energy. My answer for all that ailed my clients boiled down to radical acceptance of what Is. Closing the gap between Reality and their Preferred Version of It. When I am centered in that knowledge, it is much easier for me to access it with my clients.
Perhaps this is a current bias and/or filter through which I hear and interpret client's depictions of their suffering, but it feels as though they are overwhelmed with the pace and complexity of life. The yardstick with which we gauge expectations and make comparisons has become horribly miscalibrated. I used the example of the "working person's paradigm" from the 1950's through the '80's or so. It was acceptable to conceptualize a work day as lasting about eight or nine hours. It was also acceptable to experience and label a day in which one worked that amount of time as a full and complete day -- one deserving of rest and ease during what remained of it. The caricature is something along the lines of Ward Cleaver, who boldly strode through his door each weeknight with an air of loving entitlement that June fix him a drink (although, come to think of it, did the Cleavers ever have alcohol in their home?), prepare his dinner, and leisurely process the days' events.
Metaphorically, today's yardstick seems to have lengthened from 36 inches to . . . oh, say around 48. The current paradigm might be attainable if somehow we could stretch the amount of hours in a day from 24 to 38 or so. I have many clients who conceptualize their "day" as 8 to 10 hours of "formal" work followed by two to three of additional obligatory activity followed by two to four hours of some medium of recreational interaction and connection. By my math, that approximates 16 hours of dedicated time out of our allocated 24 per day. Some people thrive with this ratio. For many others, it seems to bear a price tag in the amount of, "Stop the world I want to get off." Sometimes I feel like we are all seven-year olds twirling feverishly on the playground. We intentionally spin and spin and spin, and then - even when we stand still - we feel dizzy as the outer world keeps whirling frenziedly around us. As kids, a lot of us liked the sensation, which is probably why we twirled around like maniacs all the time. Now it makes me nauseous.
A wise and observant client uttered tonight's quote during a session last month. She said it in the context of her job, in which she works as a high ranking administrative official for a huge international agency. I immediately jotted it down. I think she inadvertently described the essence of all that ails the world. We are moving, and not thinking. It is a bad combination. Moving and thinking probably go best together. On the other hand, not moving and not thinking are a wonderful combination. I am headed to my cushion to practice that combo right now.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Day 356. Tonight's blog marks an extremely significant milestone: 10 Remaining Blogs. Ten, TEN, TEN!! This marker makes all the "fractions thereof" I referred to over the past year pale by comparison. Let the countdown begin!
Today I received a meaningful compliment from a dedicated reader. She acknowledged my effort over the past year, and validated the accomplishment of keeping my commitment to write a blog every day. She also offered her congratulations at the impending completion of the year. Gassho, B.F. for your kind words. I received them with much love and gratitude. Thank you for another reminder of how good it feels to be on the receiving end of kindness.
I have an escalating sense of elation as my birthday draws near. I cannot tell you what I am elated about, especially since I have so fully accomplished not feeling attached to any particular outcome for the blog (I write, with a deep sigh and simultaneous sarcastic chuckle). Emotions of liberation and relief bubble up from my hippocampus as I anticipate some extra time at the end of my day. I don't know how I will allocate the time. I can't help but wonder if my sex life will be impacted when I no longer crawl into bed two hours after my partner retires. One thing I know for certain: my partner also has an emerging sense of elation as my birthday creeps closer -- and he can tell you EXACTLY what he is elated about!
Today was a good one for being a shrink. My office was resplendent with Zen energy. My answer for all that ailed my clients boiled down to radical acceptance of what Is. Closing the gap between Reality and their Preferred Version of It. When I am centered in that knowledge, it is much easier for me to access it with my clients.
Perhaps this is a current bias and/or filter through which I hear and interpret client's depictions of their suffering, but it feels as though they are overwhelmed with the pace and complexity of life. The yardstick with which we gauge expectations and make comparisons has become horribly miscalibrated. I used the example of the "working person's paradigm" from the 1950's through the '80's or so. It was acceptable to conceptualize a work day as lasting about eight or nine hours. It was also acceptable to experience and label a day in which one worked that amount of time as a full and complete day -- one deserving of rest and ease during what remained of it. The caricature is something along the lines of Ward Cleaver, who boldly strode through his door each weeknight with an air of loving entitlement that June fix him a drink (although, come to think of it, did the Cleavers ever have alcohol in their home?), prepare his dinner, and leisurely process the days' events.
Metaphorically, today's yardstick seems to have lengthened from 36 inches to . . . oh, say around 48. The current paradigm might be attainable if somehow we could stretch the amount of hours in a day from 24 to 38 or so. I have many clients who conceptualize their "day" as 8 to 10 hours of "formal" work followed by two to three of additional obligatory activity followed by two to four hours of some medium of recreational interaction and connection. By my math, that approximates 16 hours of dedicated time out of our allocated 24 per day. Some people thrive with this ratio. For many others, it seems to bear a price tag in the amount of, "Stop the world I want to get off." Sometimes I feel like we are all seven-year olds twirling feverishly on the playground. We intentionally spin and spin and spin, and then - even when we stand still - we feel dizzy as the outer world keeps whirling frenziedly around us. As kids, a lot of us liked the sensation, which is probably why we twirled around like maniacs all the time. Now it makes me nauseous.
A wise and observant client uttered tonight's quote during a session last month. She said it in the context of her job, in which she works as a high ranking administrative official for a huge international agency. I immediately jotted it down. I think she inadvertently described the essence of all that ails the world. We are moving, and not thinking. It is a bad combination. Moving and thinking probably go best together. On the other hand, not moving and not thinking are a wonderful combination. I am headed to my cushion to practice that combo right now.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Thoughts and Non-Thoughts
I owe everything in my life to Ann and my two terrific children - Devin and Jack. Let's face it - the only reason I wrote this book is because both of them wanna go to college. So thanks for helping to further their education by purchasing this fine piece of literature. Wow. I wrote a whole book. Well, it's SHAPED like a book. Anyways - enjoy. - Denis Leary in "Why We Suck."
Day 355. Peak Experience! PEAK Experience! I am now the proud (pleased? I am trying to keep my ego out of it) owner of an Amazon Kindle. I received it today as an early birthday present. Ego wrestling aside, I am feeling a bit smug at my technological savvy. I had the little marvel unpacked, charged, registered, nicknamed, and mastered the Quick Start concepts within the space of an hour -- all without a single second of outside consultation. Even The Sophomore will be impressed (Correction: Said Sophomore recently informed me he now has sufficient collegiate hours to qualify as a Junior. That's going to take some getting used to).
In the first 30 seconds following registration, I promptly went to the Kindle Store and ordered Denis Leary's book as my first Kindle conquest. It had been on my que for several months. As I read the first couple of pages, I was struck by his casual, conversational writing style. It gave me pause as I reflected upon the rather formal, fairly tyrannical "committee" that has resided in my brain since I began the blog. I tend to write as though my doctoral committee still gets a vote. Obviously, one can languish in infinite sentence fragments and grammatically incorrect expression and still be a published author. Duly noted. I shall agonize less in future writing projects. Bet l will bring my next piece of writing to fruition in a far shorter span of time.
As the sit/blog year draws to a close, it is interesting to watch my thoughts about the blog and zazen. In some ways, Blog Thoughts do not reflect my zazen practice whatsoever. I start spinning maniacally about what is left to say, as though there is still a chance I will write The Big One in this last week. Maybe. Probably not. And who cares, anyway? What, exactly, would writing The Big One entail? My thoughts and ideas about the blog keep gravitating toward embarrassingly Western, ego-driven, attached, cerebral, intellectual, analytical themes. I reflect upon the blog content with an evaluative, critical mindset that is antithetical to what I have learned about Zen. Enter the Monkeys, with their incessant prattle: "Check the stats! Who is reading this!? Why haven't there been more comments? You didn't generate much discussion! You haven't been available to your readers! You forgot to tell the story of building the shed with your dad! You weren't funny (smart, clever, witty, informed, provocative, interesting, stimulating . . .) enough! You could have written more about psychology! Where's your agent? Book deal? Movie contract? Rename the blog! Advertise it! Spruce it up! Color! Pictures! Video! Sound! Bigger, Faster, Louder . . . . . MORE!
Bite me, Monkeys! I can perform a few bows, chant the Heart Sutra (in English AND Japanese!), form a mudra, and squelch you all like bugs (although, Good Buddhist that I am, I would never REALLY squelch you). Point is, I can silence you - at least to a much greater extent than 51 weeks ago. Because whirling around the Blog Thoughts as they caper through Big Mind, there are also endless Zen Thoughts. And Non-Thoughts. And quiet, empty Breaths. A certainty that I will continue to sit zazen long after I strike my last letter on a keyboard. A beginning to something powerful and lasting. A foundation upon which I will build my eternal sitting practice.
Thoughts come and go about that, too, but there isn't much the Monkeys can wrap their opposing thumbs around. Because when my consciousness rests upon my practice, there is an absolute absence of evaluation, urgency or attachment. Instead, I sense a formless, timeless vastness that stretches beyond comprehension. Yet somehow I grasp it. If only fleetingly, I have entered the vastness and it feels like Home. I found the gate. And sometimes I even walk through it.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Day 355. Peak Experience! PEAK Experience! I am now the proud (pleased? I am trying to keep my ego out of it) owner of an Amazon Kindle. I received it today as an early birthday present. Ego wrestling aside, I am feeling a bit smug at my technological savvy. I had the little marvel unpacked, charged, registered, nicknamed, and mastered the Quick Start concepts within the space of an hour -- all without a single second of outside consultation. Even The Sophomore will be impressed (Correction: Said Sophomore recently informed me he now has sufficient collegiate hours to qualify as a Junior. That's going to take some getting used to).
In the first 30 seconds following registration, I promptly went to the Kindle Store and ordered Denis Leary's book as my first Kindle conquest. It had been on my que for several months. As I read the first couple of pages, I was struck by his casual, conversational writing style. It gave me pause as I reflected upon the rather formal, fairly tyrannical "committee" that has resided in my brain since I began the blog. I tend to write as though my doctoral committee still gets a vote. Obviously, one can languish in infinite sentence fragments and grammatically incorrect expression and still be a published author. Duly noted. I shall agonize less in future writing projects. Bet l will bring my next piece of writing to fruition in a far shorter span of time.
As the sit/blog year draws to a close, it is interesting to watch my thoughts about the blog and zazen. In some ways, Blog Thoughts do not reflect my zazen practice whatsoever. I start spinning maniacally about what is left to say, as though there is still a chance I will write The Big One in this last week. Maybe. Probably not. And who cares, anyway? What, exactly, would writing The Big One entail? My thoughts and ideas about the blog keep gravitating toward embarrassingly Western, ego-driven, attached, cerebral, intellectual, analytical themes. I reflect upon the blog content with an evaluative, critical mindset that is antithetical to what I have learned about Zen. Enter the Monkeys, with their incessant prattle: "Check the stats! Who is reading this!? Why haven't there been more comments? You didn't generate much discussion! You haven't been available to your readers! You forgot to tell the story of building the shed with your dad! You weren't funny (smart, clever, witty, informed, provocative, interesting, stimulating . . .) enough! You could have written more about psychology! Where's your agent? Book deal? Movie contract? Rename the blog! Advertise it! Spruce it up! Color! Pictures! Video! Sound! Bigger, Faster, Louder . . . . . MORE!
Bite me, Monkeys! I can perform a few bows, chant the Heart Sutra (in English AND Japanese!), form a mudra, and squelch you all like bugs (although, Good Buddhist that I am, I would never REALLY squelch you). Point is, I can silence you - at least to a much greater extent than 51 weeks ago. Because whirling around the Blog Thoughts as they caper through Big Mind, there are also endless Zen Thoughts. And Non-Thoughts. And quiet, empty Breaths. A certainty that I will continue to sit zazen long after I strike my last letter on a keyboard. A beginning to something powerful and lasting. A foundation upon which I will build my eternal sitting practice.
Thoughts come and go about that, too, but there isn't much the Monkeys can wrap their opposing thumbs around. Because when my consciousness rests upon my practice, there is an absolute absence of evaluation, urgency or attachment. Instead, I sense a formless, timeless vastness that stretches beyond comprehension. Yet somehow I grasp it. If only fleetingly, I have entered the vastness and it feels like Home. I found the gate. And sometimes I even walk through it.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Two Laps and a Band
When you are convinced that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it. The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous. - Henry Miller in the Zen Calendar (April 14, 2001).
May you live all the days of your life. - Jonathan Swift in the Zen Calendar (October 4, 2002).
Day 354. It just occurred to me that tonight's post may get 45,000 hits because the title looks like it has something to do with weight loss. But it doesn't.
For the first time ever, I rode two consecutive laps at Draper. The feat in and of itself isn't that remarkable; I've ridden 20 miles at a time on the mountain bike many times. What was remarkable was the stellar Zen moment on the Red Trail when I popped into Nirvana without ever leaving my saddle. Way cool.
On a typical day, I am not a fan of the Draper trail. Too close to home, too crowded, too repetitious, the sight of one of my more expensive crashes (for body repair - the bike emerged unscathed). Today, however, Draper sizzled. My partner and I were pleasantly surprised to see teammates Ted and Sam pull into the parking lot just as we were strapping on our helmets. This is my dream team. The four of us have had some amazing mountain bike adventures. With a recent episode of "The Dog Whisperer" still echoing in my ears, I couldn't help but recognize the calm, assertive energy of our "pack." Cesar would have been proud. Ted was pack leader, and a fine job he did.
A new section of the Red trail at Draper was added just last year. It was obviously designed to help riders practice the technical skill of navigating tight, narrow twists and turns at rocket speed. The trail is fairly flat and smooth, but twists in and around itself like a nest of snakes riled up by Indiana Jones. To ride the section fast, a fair amount of technique is required. Generally, I pretty much suck on this piece of trail. Because of the close, consecutive, and relentless turns, a rider is constantly shifting her weight from side to side and (optimally) using her waist, balance, timing, momentum, and refraining from touching the brakes to smoothly navigate the tricky terrain.
The curvature of my spine is never as apparent as on this particular stretch of trail. Rather than sitting on the saddle with my weight evenly distributed, allowing an even split of 50/50 to divide between left and right curves, I am off by (this is an educated guess) about 8 degrees. To accomplish the smooth curves required to maintain speed, turning left requires 42 percent of what my brain and eyes tell my body to do, leaving the right turns requiring 58 percent of the effort. Yes, I was literally doing numerical acrobatics in my head as we raced through the Red section today. I was behind Ted, who flowed effortlessly, like spring melt to the sea. I chopped along behind, like a boulder ricocheting off tree trunks. My calm assertive energy was replaced by rigid, agitated tension. I was so far up into my head it's a wonder my cycle socks didn't leak out my ears.
Suddenly, my haggard forcefulness stopped. Of its own accord. One succinct thought fragment wafted through my mind before all cerebral movement ceased: You Don't Have To Be In Your Head. And just like that -- I wasn't. I have previously written about magical glimmers of Zen while on the mountain bike, but this was eons beyond those experiences. I wonder if this was the Big E. Enlightenment. On the bike. Mind and body fell away. It was splendid and sublime - the easiest, most effortless minutes of my life. It was everything and nothing. Bliss and perfection. Entering the now such that none of me remained. I flowed like Original Flow -- the essence of flowingness. Movement the way it has always been and always will be. The way movement was intended; the Reality of Movement. Everything about it was in the nature of the miraculous. I had been searching for "this" all year. And the sweet, sweet honey of simply stepping out of my cranial space was there all along. Right under my nose. I had been too busy searching for it elsewhere.
Cesar Milan says, "Life is easy." He repeatedly encourages pet owners to learn from their dogs how to be in the moment, because that is the only place dogs dwell. Amen and take a bow. After the Miracle Ride, my partner and I ate, showered, and headed to the Plaza District in Oklahoma City to watch my nephew play in his band. The kid is 17, and talented beyond belief. His band consists of he and another high school senior who plays the guitar. They play Math music - a genre I was utterly oblivious of until tonight. I watched them play their five songs in the back room of a super cool thrift shop on 16th Street, sensing that these two wonder teens have some stuff figured out that I, at the ripe old age of 50, didn't get. Until today. My nephew is the drummer. He rocked out. I have a sneaking suspicion he Wasn't In His Head. He couldn't be, not while slinging drum sticks like he was. He played the drums like I flowed through the Red trail. It was a good night for Enlightenment.
Everything about life IS in the nature of the miraculous, including throbbing drum sticks and flowing through trees on two knobby wheels. Let Life by easy. It wants to be. It is. So live all the days of your life. My advice for finding Enlightenment: Take Two Laps and Listen to a Band.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
May you live all the days of your life. - Jonathan Swift in the Zen Calendar (October 4, 2002).
Day 354. It just occurred to me that tonight's post may get 45,000 hits because the title looks like it has something to do with weight loss. But it doesn't.
For the first time ever, I rode two consecutive laps at Draper. The feat in and of itself isn't that remarkable; I've ridden 20 miles at a time on the mountain bike many times. What was remarkable was the stellar Zen moment on the Red Trail when I popped into Nirvana without ever leaving my saddle. Way cool.
On a typical day, I am not a fan of the Draper trail. Too close to home, too crowded, too repetitious, the sight of one of my more expensive crashes (for body repair - the bike emerged unscathed). Today, however, Draper sizzled. My partner and I were pleasantly surprised to see teammates Ted and Sam pull into the parking lot just as we were strapping on our helmets. This is my dream team. The four of us have had some amazing mountain bike adventures. With a recent episode of "The Dog Whisperer" still echoing in my ears, I couldn't help but recognize the calm, assertive energy of our "pack." Cesar would have been proud. Ted was pack leader, and a fine job he did.
A new section of the Red trail at Draper was added just last year. It was obviously designed to help riders practice the technical skill of navigating tight, narrow twists and turns at rocket speed. The trail is fairly flat and smooth, but twists in and around itself like a nest of snakes riled up by Indiana Jones. To ride the section fast, a fair amount of technique is required. Generally, I pretty much suck on this piece of trail. Because of the close, consecutive, and relentless turns, a rider is constantly shifting her weight from side to side and (optimally) using her waist, balance, timing, momentum, and refraining from touching the brakes to smoothly navigate the tricky terrain.
The curvature of my spine is never as apparent as on this particular stretch of trail. Rather than sitting on the saddle with my weight evenly distributed, allowing an even split of 50/50 to divide between left and right curves, I am off by (this is an educated guess) about 8 degrees. To accomplish the smooth curves required to maintain speed, turning left requires 42 percent of what my brain and eyes tell my body to do, leaving the right turns requiring 58 percent of the effort. Yes, I was literally doing numerical acrobatics in my head as we raced through the Red section today. I was behind Ted, who flowed effortlessly, like spring melt to the sea. I chopped along behind, like a boulder ricocheting off tree trunks. My calm assertive energy was replaced by rigid, agitated tension. I was so far up into my head it's a wonder my cycle socks didn't leak out my ears.
Suddenly, my haggard forcefulness stopped. Of its own accord. One succinct thought fragment wafted through my mind before all cerebral movement ceased: You Don't Have To Be In Your Head. And just like that -- I wasn't. I have previously written about magical glimmers of Zen while on the mountain bike, but this was eons beyond those experiences. I wonder if this was the Big E. Enlightenment. On the bike. Mind and body fell away. It was splendid and sublime - the easiest, most effortless minutes of my life. It was everything and nothing. Bliss and perfection. Entering the now such that none of me remained. I flowed like Original Flow -- the essence of flowingness. Movement the way it has always been and always will be. The way movement was intended; the Reality of Movement. Everything about it was in the nature of the miraculous. I had been searching for "this" all year. And the sweet, sweet honey of simply stepping out of my cranial space was there all along. Right under my nose. I had been too busy searching for it elsewhere.
Cesar Milan says, "Life is easy." He repeatedly encourages pet owners to learn from their dogs how to be in the moment, because that is the only place dogs dwell. Amen and take a bow. After the Miracle Ride, my partner and I ate, showered, and headed to the Plaza District in Oklahoma City to watch my nephew play in his band. The kid is 17, and talented beyond belief. His band consists of he and another high school senior who plays the guitar. They play Math music - a genre I was utterly oblivious of until tonight. I watched them play their five songs in the back room of a super cool thrift shop on 16th Street, sensing that these two wonder teens have some stuff figured out that I, at the ripe old age of 50, didn't get. Until today. My nephew is the drummer. He rocked out. I have a sneaking suspicion he Wasn't In His Head. He couldn't be, not while slinging drum sticks like he was. He played the drums like I flowed through the Red trail. It was a good night for Enlightenment.
Everything about life IS in the nature of the miraculous, including throbbing drum sticks and flowing through trees on two knobby wheels. Let Life by easy. It wants to be. It is. So live all the days of your life. My advice for finding Enlightenment: Take Two Laps and Listen to a Band.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Friday, January 21, 2011
Horseradish
And if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, why then now is the thing to praise and I am very happy with it. - Ernest Hemingway in the Zen Calendar (September 24, 2002).
Existence begins in every instant. - Fredrich Nietzsche in the Zen Calendar (May 5, 2006).
Day 353. Safely home from the bored - I mean Board meeting. There is a quote from the favorites pile that I pass up every single night, wondering what in the galaxy possessed me to qualify it as a "favorite." Now I know. It is the perfect quote for a post following attendance at a board meeting:
Existence begins in every instant. - Fredrich Nietzsche in the Zen Calendar (May 5, 2006).
Day 353. Safely home from the bored - I mean Board meeting. There is a quote from the favorites pile that I pass up every single night, wondering what in the galaxy possessed me to qualify it as a "favorite." Now I know. It is the perfect quote for a post following attendance at a board meeting:
To a worm in horseradish, the whole world is horseradish. - Yiddish Proverb in the Zen Calendar (August 19, 2006).
Wow. It it tempting to end the post right there. After several contemplative moments, I've decided that I will. I think this tiny sampling of writing is robust enough to stand on its own.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Thursday, January 20, 2011
What's Next?
What you want to acquire, you should dare to acquire by any means. What you want to see, even though it is with difficulty, you should see. You should not let it pass, thinking there will be another chance to see it or to acquire it. It is quite unusual to have a second chance to materialize your desire. - Buson in the Zen Calendar (April 14, 2003).
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in the Zen Calendar (July 25, 2003).
Work is much more fun than fun. - Noel Coward in the Zen Calendar (September 1, 2003).
Noel must have been an editor. - Me, tonight.
Day 352. Forget writing. I want to be an editor. I spent the better part of last night proof reading hard copies of several blogs. It was a blast. I will give up my red pencil when they pry my cold, dead fingers from it. Editing is so much easier than producing written words in the first place. The task channels and directs my obsessive proclivities like a bullet train to Tokyo. I always give my screen blogs at least a once over after I click "publish post," but computer editing isn't near as gratifying as marking up a hard copy. Paper and pencil are indisputably more Zen than a keyboard and monitor. Carving up my writing afterward just about justifies the immense amount of effort the original production requires. It's good to have a purpose.
Two weeks from today I will be half a century old. Very cool. The closer that finish line looms, the more difficulty I have with staying in the here and now. That's right: I am VERY attached to completion. The Monkeys chatter about "What's Next" like Blue Hair Day at the beauty shop. On the cushion, I try to sit like my head is on fire, which requires returning my focus to the moment about fifty-four times per minute. Nirvana feels as elusive as paying off my son's college loans. Strange how that fails to bother me in the least. A year ago, I thought by now I would board the enlightenment train as effortlessly as a spring graduate with a Eurail pass. Instead, I hardly even notice when I can't find the station. The one Zen concept I seem to have tentatively grasped is, "Just this!" And it only took me a year . . .
I was hoping perhaps the Monkeys could be diverted if I indulged some of their What's Next fanaticism in tonight's blog. Nothing like stringing words together to free up some empty space in my cranium. In addition, it can't be a bad thing to enter the second half-century of my life with a steady purpose. Buddha knows, I floundered about an awful lot during the first half. I don't really expect to flounder less in the next fifty years, but I bet it doesn't bother me near as much.
Here is what is next: I will proof and edit my blog like a madwoman, and then click on that mysterious ad that says, "Turn Your Blog Into a Book." I suspect that doesn't mean an actual published book, which is fine, because I am hoping it's simply a decent method I can employ to bind what I've written for myself and a couple of select supporters. This next may come as a surprise: I plan to strap myself to a jet-propelled ego rocket, rename the blog something that remotely captures its content, then read and study all the methods for increasing readership that have blipped across my screen for the past year. I will become a manic marketing machine for the blog. I plan to invite and cultivate comments and dialogue and interaction like a natural-born Rah-Rah. I'm going to meet people and initiate discourse with them. I'm going to purchase a new computer with massive memory devoted to Putting Myself Out There. Such attachment and ego manifestation felt contraindicated during the year I was actually sitting, but come February 4th, the paradigm shifts!
I'm going to contact many of the Zen Buddhist teachers and sanghas listed in the Buddhadharma Quarterly and let them know about the blog. I'm going to prolifically read Buddhist writing - both ancient and contemporary. I will follow other Buddhist blogs, and comment my heart out. After researching publishers, I'm going to compose and mail heaping quantities of query letters across three categories: the blog and other Buddhist writing, the novel, the nonfiction book I've outlined in my head. Guess I'd better outline it on paper if I'm going to send queries. In between querying, maybe I'll even do some actual writing on the projects to which the queries refer.
Meanwhile, I will sit zazen. Pedal bicycles. Attend tandem events. Keep my eyes more open and my mouth more shut. Mind my true nature. Mute the Monkeys, bask in impermanence, thrive in emptiness, drift in nothingness, surrender to simplicity, prosper in the present, attenuate attachment, relinquish myself to Reality. Goodness. I've learned a lot this year.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in the Zen Calendar (July 25, 2003).
Work is much more fun than fun. - Noel Coward in the Zen Calendar (September 1, 2003).
Noel must have been an editor. - Me, tonight.
Day 352. Forget writing. I want to be an editor. I spent the better part of last night proof reading hard copies of several blogs. It was a blast. I will give up my red pencil when they pry my cold, dead fingers from it. Editing is so much easier than producing written words in the first place. The task channels and directs my obsessive proclivities like a bullet train to Tokyo. I always give my screen blogs at least a once over after I click "publish post," but computer editing isn't near as gratifying as marking up a hard copy. Paper and pencil are indisputably more Zen than a keyboard and monitor. Carving up my writing afterward just about justifies the immense amount of effort the original production requires. It's good to have a purpose.
Two weeks from today I will be half a century old. Very cool. The closer that finish line looms, the more difficulty I have with staying in the here and now. That's right: I am VERY attached to completion. The Monkeys chatter about "What's Next" like Blue Hair Day at the beauty shop. On the cushion, I try to sit like my head is on fire, which requires returning my focus to the moment about fifty-four times per minute. Nirvana feels as elusive as paying off my son's college loans. Strange how that fails to bother me in the least. A year ago, I thought by now I would board the enlightenment train as effortlessly as a spring graduate with a Eurail pass. Instead, I hardly even notice when I can't find the station. The one Zen concept I seem to have tentatively grasped is, "Just this!" And it only took me a year . . .
I was hoping perhaps the Monkeys could be diverted if I indulged some of their What's Next fanaticism in tonight's blog. Nothing like stringing words together to free up some empty space in my cranium. In addition, it can't be a bad thing to enter the second half-century of my life with a steady purpose. Buddha knows, I floundered about an awful lot during the first half. I don't really expect to flounder less in the next fifty years, but I bet it doesn't bother me near as much.
Here is what is next: I will proof and edit my blog like a madwoman, and then click on that mysterious ad that says, "Turn Your Blog Into a Book." I suspect that doesn't mean an actual published book, which is fine, because I am hoping it's simply a decent method I can employ to bind what I've written for myself and a couple of select supporters. This next may come as a surprise: I plan to strap myself to a jet-propelled ego rocket, rename the blog something that remotely captures its content, then read and study all the methods for increasing readership that have blipped across my screen for the past year. I will become a manic marketing machine for the blog. I plan to invite and cultivate comments and dialogue and interaction like a natural-born Rah-Rah. I'm going to meet people and initiate discourse with them. I'm going to purchase a new computer with massive memory devoted to Putting Myself Out There. Such attachment and ego manifestation felt contraindicated during the year I was actually sitting, but come February 4th, the paradigm shifts!
I'm going to contact many of the Zen Buddhist teachers and sanghas listed in the Buddhadharma Quarterly and let them know about the blog. I'm going to prolifically read Buddhist writing - both ancient and contemporary. I will follow other Buddhist blogs, and comment my heart out. After researching publishers, I'm going to compose and mail heaping quantities of query letters across three categories: the blog and other Buddhist writing, the novel, the nonfiction book I've outlined in my head. Guess I'd better outline it on paper if I'm going to send queries. In between querying, maybe I'll even do some actual writing on the projects to which the queries refer.
Meanwhile, I will sit zazen. Pedal bicycles. Attend tandem events. Keep my eyes more open and my mouth more shut. Mind my true nature. Mute the Monkeys, bask in impermanence, thrive in emptiness, drift in nothingness, surrender to simplicity, prosper in the present, attenuate attachment, relinquish myself to Reality. Goodness. I've learned a lot this year.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
The Sheen of Truth
Truth is always paradoxical. - Henry David Thoreau in the Zen Calendar (June 28, 2004).
Without a rope, people bind themselves. - Zen Saying in the Zen Calendar (May 23, 2004).
Day 351. My mom had lunch with a friend today (someone I am honored to have as a follower of my blog). The friend does some blogging of her own, and mentioned that a recent post of hers received 45,000 hits on one day. Impressive. I suspect the topic was not cushion sitting or a derivative thereof. I also suspect that if my blog were to survive my next thousand lifetimes, it would still not have that many hits. Whew, what a relief. I would hate to have to wrestle my ego (AND my OCD) if I were to become attached to something as quantifiable as "number of hits on a post."
Speaking of hits, I took one today (ah, how a good segue makes my scalp tingle)! After my wordy renunciation of board membership in yesterday's post, it seems I have, in fact, been elected to the Board In Question. I received a call from the incoming President this morning. She was wondering about my tardiness in responding to the e-mail notifying me of my appointment. Oops. I never got the memo. Literally. She had a former e-mail address (will it take a sledge hammer upside my head to convince me to jump into this century and communicate like everyone else!?) I gave her my current e-mail address and thanked her for the appointment. I've been chuckling at myself ever since.
A Pox on My Blog! Especially the posts during which I must eat crow as I type. For it appears as though the quintessential non-Board member has accepted a position on a board. For a semi-straight chick, I'm pretty fickle. The possibility of omitting this particular turn of events from the blog flickered across my consciousness, but only temporarily. I have maintained my commitment to transparency (revealed, hopefully, through a filter of discretion and common sense) for this long; I'm not going to abandon it now.
So here I sit, fingers poised expectantly over the keyboard, brain racing in asymmetrical curves trying to reconcile yesterday's blog (written in all sincerity) with today's acceptance of being a Board member (uttered in all sincerity). I shall abandon attempts at reconciliation and slither under Thoreau's quote: Truth is always paradoxical. Truth can be a slippery concept, but less so if I stare it directly in the eye with my feet planted squarely on the solidness of Reality. Granted, the appointment was for something I am pretty good at and already do a great deal of (chairing the organization's Speaker Bureau). Oops - there it is: Truth just threatened to take on a bit of a sheen. I almost slipped right off that solid spot on Reality - the one on which I was standing so firmly. According to Reality, here goes: It was True I didn't want to be a board member when I hadn't been asked; it is True I accepted a board position when I was asked.
The Truth is that I likely would have accepted any position offered. The Further Truth is that I still won't be a Rah-Rah. The Furthest Truth is that I am closing tonight's post at this juncture. I have to prepare for a Board meeting.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Without a rope, people bind themselves. - Zen Saying in the Zen Calendar (May 23, 2004).
Day 351. My mom had lunch with a friend today (someone I am honored to have as a follower of my blog). The friend does some blogging of her own, and mentioned that a recent post of hers received 45,000 hits on one day. Impressive. I suspect the topic was not cushion sitting or a derivative thereof. I also suspect that if my blog were to survive my next thousand lifetimes, it would still not have that many hits. Whew, what a relief. I would hate to have to wrestle my ego (AND my OCD) if I were to become attached to something as quantifiable as "number of hits on a post."
Speaking of hits, I took one today (ah, how a good segue makes my scalp tingle)! After my wordy renunciation of board membership in yesterday's post, it seems I have, in fact, been elected to the Board In Question. I received a call from the incoming President this morning. She was wondering about my tardiness in responding to the e-mail notifying me of my appointment. Oops. I never got the memo. Literally. She had a former e-mail address (will it take a sledge hammer upside my head to convince me to jump into this century and communicate like everyone else!?) I gave her my current e-mail address and thanked her for the appointment. I've been chuckling at myself ever since.
A Pox on My Blog! Especially the posts during which I must eat crow as I type. For it appears as though the quintessential non-Board member has accepted a position on a board. For a semi-straight chick, I'm pretty fickle. The possibility of omitting this particular turn of events from the blog flickered across my consciousness, but only temporarily. I have maintained my commitment to transparency (revealed, hopefully, through a filter of discretion and common sense) for this long; I'm not going to abandon it now.
So here I sit, fingers poised expectantly over the keyboard, brain racing in asymmetrical curves trying to reconcile yesterday's blog (written in all sincerity) with today's acceptance of being a Board member (uttered in all sincerity). I shall abandon attempts at reconciliation and slither under Thoreau's quote: Truth is always paradoxical. Truth can be a slippery concept, but less so if I stare it directly in the eye with my feet planted squarely on the solidness of Reality. Granted, the appointment was for something I am pretty good at and already do a great deal of (chairing the organization's Speaker Bureau). Oops - there it is: Truth just threatened to take on a bit of a sheen. I almost slipped right off that solid spot on Reality - the one on which I was standing so firmly. According to Reality, here goes: It was True I didn't want to be a board member when I hadn't been asked; it is True I accepted a board position when I was asked.
The Truth is that I likely would have accepted any position offered. The Further Truth is that I still won't be a Rah-Rah. The Furthest Truth is that I am closing tonight's post at this juncture. I have to prepare for a Board meeting.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Scorpions Bite, and Yogis Help
Once a yogi, sitting on the banks of the Ganges, saw a scorpion fall into the water. He scooped it out, only to be bitten by the scorpion. It happened again, and again, with the same result. A bystander asked the yogi: "Why do you keep rescuing that scorpion, only to have it bite you?"
"It is the nature of scorpions to bite," replied the yogi. "And it is the nature of yogis to help others when they can." - Hindu Mondo in the Zen Calendar (April 30, 2004).
Don't be consistent, but be simply true. - Oliver Wendell Holmes in the Zen Calendar (September 15, 2003).
"For a semi-straight chick, you're pretty excellent." - Todd B.'s entry into my senior yearbook (May, 1979).
Day 350. Three Five Oh. Three hundred fifty blogs. Hard to imagine. Two weeks from tomorrow I will complete my year. Yippy! I plan to devote this weekend to a hard edit of the blogs lacking a quote and/or launching the handwritten blogs into cyberspace (come to think of it, they probably don't even quality as "blogs" until they have been electronically dispersed. Perhaps I should refer to them as "entries"). My OCD neurons have been twitching mightily at the lack of blog compulsivity and tidiness caused by the Dinosaur Death.
The best thing about a 24-hour-bug is that, generally, it is over in a day. Last night's zazen session may have been the most difficult I ever completed, but somehow I managed to keep my butt on the cushion. My mudra was a little saggy, my spine a little slacky, every breath sounded like a deep and protracted sigh (probably because it was), Nirvana didn't appear - even on the distant horizon. Nonetheless, forty minutes elapsed, the timer sounded, life goes on. Blessed impermanence. It solves everything.
I have been grappling with an ironic situation that serves as a stark reminder that daily life, indisputably and eternally, will always provide circumstances upon which to apply my practice. This particular event is also evidence that (at least for girls) we never entirely get over that brutal moment when we were excluded from the cool kids' table during 7th grade lunch. The trauma was precipitated by learning that my business partner had been elected to a position on a board that I was also being considered for. My ego took flight (and actually completed several stunning aerial loops) as it reminded me that I have practiced for 15 years longer than this partner, established her in a practice it took me 10 years to build, and contribute far more to the organization the board serves. Granted, I didn't want the position, dreaded being offered it and facing the discomfort of turning it down, had probably made these sentiments fairly well known, and am exquisitely relieved that I wasn't chosen. Still. I wasn't chosen.
Naturally, my feelings of betrayal, rejection, and competitiveness were a bit disheartening. After all, I have practiced Zen Buddhism for almost a year -- I should be impervious to such mortal feeling states. It took a day (and extricating myself from a virulent, though thankfully brief, virus) for me to gain perspective and examine the situation through the Buddha lens I have been cultivating. Here goes.
Scorpions bite, and yogis help others when they can. That is their nature. Along with it being the singular best compliment I ever received, I think Todd's entry into my yearbook was an accurate description of my true nature. Todd ran with a different crowd than I at our large, public high school, but we ended up in the same honors English class. There is nothing cooler than a really smart stoner. Todd was sort of a decade-younger Springsteen -- a little taller and with an Okie slant to the whole New Jersey swagger. Detached, quiet, low-key (read between the lines: probably high during most of his waking hours). We sat next to each other toward the back of the class. He figured out that his stereotype of a really smart, doesn't do drugs, Pep Club officer, Key Club Princess just didn't apply to me. I figured out that my stereotype of worthless, stupid, unmotivated, immoral, law-breaking airhead didn't apply to him. If that English class had lasted a few more months, we may have gone out. I think I really liked him.
The point is, Todd saw into the essence of me. I was straight, but only semi- (this was a time when "straight" meant "straight and narrow" rather than heterosexual). I could also be fairly cool, smart but not naive, mainstream but not boring, law-abiding but not nerdy, pretty but not stuck-up. I was definitely not in the inner circle with cheerleaders or Student Council representatives. A little too rebellious for elected positions of student leadership. Could have pulled it off, but didn't want to. First impressions aside, I was not a Rah-Rah.
I am still not a Rah-Rah. That is, most assuredly, not in my make-up. Cheerful, extroverted, popularity craving, impression seeking people that haven't mastered "Don't Give a Damn What Others Think" make me squirmy. I gravitate toward the table - nay, the patio - where the introverted, cynical, sarcastic, rebellious realists are picking apart the prom committee. I am not a Board member. The proportion of blowing smoke up one another's skirts minutes to actually getting something done minutes that constitute Board meetings is unpalatable to me. I am a direct service renderer. A behind-the-scenes executer. A performer of substantive rather than superficial acts. I have neither the patience nor the attention span for board meetings.
Enter Zen, with its infinite quantities of loving-kindness and non-dualism. I am learning to feel gratitude for the Rah-Rahs. There is a place and a purpose for keeping up appearances, staging flashy events to create the impression that something hopeful and useful is going to happen, setting a stage upon which ego and accomplishment can be flaunted in the service of catalyzing ever increasing competition, performance and progress. Organized society needs a balance of fluff and substance. Of cynical skepticism and groundless optimism. Of realists and idealists.
Scorpions bite, and yogis help others. Fortunately, beauty, harmony and bliss come from being True. True to our nature. I am a clinician. Not a Board member. I can live with that.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
"It is the nature of scorpions to bite," replied the yogi. "And it is the nature of yogis to help others when they can." - Hindu Mondo in the Zen Calendar (April 30, 2004).
Don't be consistent, but be simply true. - Oliver Wendell Holmes in the Zen Calendar (September 15, 2003).
"For a semi-straight chick, you're pretty excellent." - Todd B.'s entry into my senior yearbook (May, 1979).
Day 350. Three Five Oh. Three hundred fifty blogs. Hard to imagine. Two weeks from tomorrow I will complete my year. Yippy! I plan to devote this weekend to a hard edit of the blogs lacking a quote and/or launching the handwritten blogs into cyberspace (come to think of it, they probably don't even quality as "blogs" until they have been electronically dispersed. Perhaps I should refer to them as "entries"). My OCD neurons have been twitching mightily at the lack of blog compulsivity and tidiness caused by the Dinosaur Death.
The best thing about a 24-hour-bug is that, generally, it is over in a day. Last night's zazen session may have been the most difficult I ever completed, but somehow I managed to keep my butt on the cushion. My mudra was a little saggy, my spine a little slacky, every breath sounded like a deep and protracted sigh (probably because it was), Nirvana didn't appear - even on the distant horizon. Nonetheless, forty minutes elapsed, the timer sounded, life goes on. Blessed impermanence. It solves everything.
I have been grappling with an ironic situation that serves as a stark reminder that daily life, indisputably and eternally, will always provide circumstances upon which to apply my practice. This particular event is also evidence that (at least for girls) we never entirely get over that brutal moment when we were excluded from the cool kids' table during 7th grade lunch. The trauma was precipitated by learning that my business partner had been elected to a position on a board that I was also being considered for. My ego took flight (and actually completed several stunning aerial loops) as it reminded me that I have practiced for 15 years longer than this partner, established her in a practice it took me 10 years to build, and contribute far more to the organization the board serves. Granted, I didn't want the position, dreaded being offered it and facing the discomfort of turning it down, had probably made these sentiments fairly well known, and am exquisitely relieved that I wasn't chosen. Still. I wasn't chosen.
Naturally, my feelings of betrayal, rejection, and competitiveness were a bit disheartening. After all, I have practiced Zen Buddhism for almost a year -- I should be impervious to such mortal feeling states. It took a day (and extricating myself from a virulent, though thankfully brief, virus) for me to gain perspective and examine the situation through the Buddha lens I have been cultivating. Here goes.
Scorpions bite, and yogis help others when they can. That is their nature. Along with it being the singular best compliment I ever received, I think Todd's entry into my yearbook was an accurate description of my true nature. Todd ran with a different crowd than I at our large, public high school, but we ended up in the same honors English class. There is nothing cooler than a really smart stoner. Todd was sort of a decade-younger Springsteen -- a little taller and with an Okie slant to the whole New Jersey swagger. Detached, quiet, low-key (read between the lines: probably high during most of his waking hours). We sat next to each other toward the back of the class. He figured out that his stereotype of a really smart, doesn't do drugs, Pep Club officer, Key Club Princess just didn't apply to me. I figured out that my stereotype of worthless, stupid, unmotivated, immoral, law-breaking airhead didn't apply to him. If that English class had lasted a few more months, we may have gone out. I think I really liked him.
The point is, Todd saw into the essence of me. I was straight, but only semi- (this was a time when "straight" meant "straight and narrow" rather than heterosexual). I could also be fairly cool, smart but not naive, mainstream but not boring, law-abiding but not nerdy, pretty but not stuck-up. I was definitely not in the inner circle with cheerleaders or Student Council representatives. A little too rebellious for elected positions of student leadership. Could have pulled it off, but didn't want to. First impressions aside, I was not a Rah-Rah.
I am still not a Rah-Rah. That is, most assuredly, not in my make-up. Cheerful, extroverted, popularity craving, impression seeking people that haven't mastered "Don't Give a Damn What Others Think" make me squirmy. I gravitate toward the table - nay, the patio - where the introverted, cynical, sarcastic, rebellious realists are picking apart the prom committee. I am not a Board member. The proportion of blowing smoke up one another's skirts minutes to actually getting something done minutes that constitute Board meetings is unpalatable to me. I am a direct service renderer. A behind-the-scenes executer. A performer of substantive rather than superficial acts. I have neither the patience nor the attention span for board meetings.
Enter Zen, with its infinite quantities of loving-kindness and non-dualism. I am learning to feel gratitude for the Rah-Rahs. There is a place and a purpose for keeping up appearances, staging flashy events to create the impression that something hopeful and useful is going to happen, setting a stage upon which ego and accomplishment can be flaunted in the service of catalyzing ever increasing competition, performance and progress. Organized society needs a balance of fluff and substance. Of cynical skepticism and groundless optimism. Of realists and idealists.
Scorpions bite, and yogis help others. Fortunately, beauty, harmony and bliss come from being True. True to our nature. I am a clinician. Not a Board member. I can live with that.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Monday, January 17, 2011
I Miss the Dinosaur
Day 349. Sick with the stomach flu. Not thrilled about posting this particular byte - it borders on my "please use discretion" policy about how much personal information I launch into cyberspace. However, the dinosaur's innards are splayed across my son's room, so blogging at home is out. Current circumstances (and common sense) preclude blogging at work (speaking of splaying innards) . . . so I will head home, pull out the spiral notebook, and construct a blog from the sanctuary and privacy of my bathroom . . .
Until I transpose . . . .
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
(blah. . . . .)
Until I transpose . . . .
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
(blah. . . . .)
Sunday, January 16, 2011
"Help Me Up!"
One day Chao-chou fell down in the snow, and called out, "Help me up! Help me up!" A monk came and lay down beside him. Chao-chou got up and went away. - Zen Koan in the Zen Calendar (February 11, 2009).
Day 348. We took our first tandem ride of the year this afternoon (details to follow). As we headed out on our usual route when leaving from the country house, I was struck by the remaining devastation from the May tornadoes that missed our home by a half mile. Unfortunately, there were numerous homes that were not missed. That night several twisters touched down within a five-mile radius in the area north and east of Lake Draper. As we rode south on Westminster, my heart sank as I observed the desecrated acres of trees on both sides of the road. The stark silhouettes of several regal old survivors loomed above us, maimed and mutilated remnants of huge branches severed near the trunk like wretched amputations. Several blocks of desolation followed when we turned east on S.E. 89th Street. More stripped trees, barren of the branches that had been slashed and peeled away by whirling winds, stood like lonely sentinels in fields littered with debris.
I thought about how easily carnage can be forgotten when it is out of sight. Focused my attention on survivors of Katrina, the Haiti earthquake, the Indonesia tsunami, the earthquake and tsunami in Chile, innumerable tornadoes throughout the world, the current floods in Brazil and Australia, and other disasters across the globe. Sent white light to all sentient beings impacted by carnage. Reminded myself that people continue to suffer even when we cease to see the visual reminders.
I suffered during today's ride. Less than five miles into our route, I began having flashbacks to post- heatstroke attempts to cycle. It was confusing and terrifying. When I first had problems, I hadn't yet learned about the signs of adrenal disregulation, and arrived at the only obvious diagnosis I could glean from my symptoms: I was crazy. Or a wimp. Probably a crazy wimp. My head hurt, dizziness made the world spin crazily, nausea washed through me, my entire body was overcome with fatigue and aches characteristic of the flu, a bizarre and compelling insistence to pull over and lay down enveloped me, and - worst of all - an excruciating, unfounded sense of panic and doom consumed me with humming urgency. It sucked. Imagine my dismay when the symptoms arrived with a vengeance today.
In a calm and detached voice, I expressed some concern about my performance to my captain. He throttled back, and I managed to keep pedaling as I wrestled with the panic demons running sprints through my neural pathways. Around mile 12, I asked to pull over. It had dawned on me that I missed one of my medications for the past two days. Hmmm. Apparently, that particular medicine has an impact on the status of my health. Good to know. Twelve miles from home on a chilly tandem ride may not have been the best way to test its efficacy, but at least we weren't with a large group of impressive racers in the isolated hill country of Texas. I informed my captain about the suspected cause of my bonking. He backed my hypothesis (an educated wager from the man that dragged my pathetic Stoker self around for several months until I agreed to go a doctor) and talked the demons down a couple of notches. Slowly, steadily, we made for home.
When we rode up the driveway, I wanted to kiss the pavement. Dizzy and weak, I dismounted the bike, walked into the house, burst into tears. With acute awareness of my recent reference to Dorothy and Oz, I must indulge another one: all I wanted to utter was, "There's no place like home." I was a pile of emotional jello: overwhelmed, relieved, mortified at my regression. I rarely cry.
My partner bent down, loosened the clamps on my cycling shoes and eased them off my trembling feet. Set me down at the foot of the bed, stroked my back. Ruby anxiously discharged her best therapy dog skills, reassuringly attaching her solid presence to my leg. I quit crying, and began to make apologetic noises to my captain. He hushed me. Spoke a relaxed stream of calm words, reminding me that I had once been very sick, that we now knew how to keep that from happening again, and - with a grin in his voice - that we had still averaged over 17 mph. I grinned, too, noting that my legs could apparently pedal quite strongly even in the midst of massive mutiny on the part of every other bodily system. Then my captain - wise, patient, loving Bodhisattva that he is - just stayed beside me for a while. Soon I got up and went away. At least as far as the shower.
Tonight's quote has been in the "favorites" pile for the entire year. I open my conference presentation on therapy for self-harming clients with it. The quote captures an action that is far more healing than any formal therapy technique - that of simply lending a person in need your Being. Your presence. Your accompaniment. I always thought I would use it in a blog about being a therapist. In a typical Zen twist, the message found its way into a blog where I was the one who fell down, rather than the one who came to lay down beside. The lesson remains the same. "Help" comes in many forms. Including that most powerful one in which a person just lays down beside us. And waits. Until we can get up again.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Day 348. We took our first tandem ride of the year this afternoon (details to follow). As we headed out on our usual route when leaving from the country house, I was struck by the remaining devastation from the May tornadoes that missed our home by a half mile. Unfortunately, there were numerous homes that were not missed. That night several twisters touched down within a five-mile radius in the area north and east of Lake Draper. As we rode south on Westminster, my heart sank as I observed the desecrated acres of trees on both sides of the road. The stark silhouettes of several regal old survivors loomed above us, maimed and mutilated remnants of huge branches severed near the trunk like wretched amputations. Several blocks of desolation followed when we turned east on S.E. 89th Street. More stripped trees, barren of the branches that had been slashed and peeled away by whirling winds, stood like lonely sentinels in fields littered with debris.
I thought about how easily carnage can be forgotten when it is out of sight. Focused my attention on survivors of Katrina, the Haiti earthquake, the Indonesia tsunami, the earthquake and tsunami in Chile, innumerable tornadoes throughout the world, the current floods in Brazil and Australia, and other disasters across the globe. Sent white light to all sentient beings impacted by carnage. Reminded myself that people continue to suffer even when we cease to see the visual reminders.
I suffered during today's ride. Less than five miles into our route, I began having flashbacks to post- heatstroke attempts to cycle. It was confusing and terrifying. When I first had problems, I hadn't yet learned about the signs of adrenal disregulation, and arrived at the only obvious diagnosis I could glean from my symptoms: I was crazy. Or a wimp. Probably a crazy wimp. My head hurt, dizziness made the world spin crazily, nausea washed through me, my entire body was overcome with fatigue and aches characteristic of the flu, a bizarre and compelling insistence to pull over and lay down enveloped me, and - worst of all - an excruciating, unfounded sense of panic and doom consumed me with humming urgency. It sucked. Imagine my dismay when the symptoms arrived with a vengeance today.
In a calm and detached voice, I expressed some concern about my performance to my captain. He throttled back, and I managed to keep pedaling as I wrestled with the panic demons running sprints through my neural pathways. Around mile 12, I asked to pull over. It had dawned on me that I missed one of my medications for the past two days. Hmmm. Apparently, that particular medicine has an impact on the status of my health. Good to know. Twelve miles from home on a chilly tandem ride may not have been the best way to test its efficacy, but at least we weren't with a large group of impressive racers in the isolated hill country of Texas. I informed my captain about the suspected cause of my bonking. He backed my hypothesis (an educated wager from the man that dragged my pathetic Stoker self around for several months until I agreed to go a doctor) and talked the demons down a couple of notches. Slowly, steadily, we made for home.
When we rode up the driveway, I wanted to kiss the pavement. Dizzy and weak, I dismounted the bike, walked into the house, burst into tears. With acute awareness of my recent reference to Dorothy and Oz, I must indulge another one: all I wanted to utter was, "There's no place like home." I was a pile of emotional jello: overwhelmed, relieved, mortified at my regression. I rarely cry.
My partner bent down, loosened the clamps on my cycling shoes and eased them off my trembling feet. Set me down at the foot of the bed, stroked my back. Ruby anxiously discharged her best therapy dog skills, reassuringly attaching her solid presence to my leg. I quit crying, and began to make apologetic noises to my captain. He hushed me. Spoke a relaxed stream of calm words, reminding me that I had once been very sick, that we now knew how to keep that from happening again, and - with a grin in his voice - that we had still averaged over 17 mph. I grinned, too, noting that my legs could apparently pedal quite strongly even in the midst of massive mutiny on the part of every other bodily system. Then my captain - wise, patient, loving Bodhisattva that he is - just stayed beside me for a while. Soon I got up and went away. At least as far as the shower.
Tonight's quote has been in the "favorites" pile for the entire year. I open my conference presentation on therapy for self-harming clients with it. The quote captures an action that is far more healing than any formal therapy technique - that of simply lending a person in need your Being. Your presence. Your accompaniment. I always thought I would use it in a blog about being a therapist. In a typical Zen twist, the message found its way into a blog where I was the one who fell down, rather than the one who came to lay down beside. The lesson remains the same. "Help" comes in many forms. Including that most powerful one in which a person just lays down beside us. And waits. Until we can get up again.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Saturday, January 15, 2011
I Know Things!
"Put me down! I've taken Tae Kwon Do! I KNOW things!" - My son's girlfriend, all 5 feet 1 inch of her in my kitchen tonight, just after he picked her up and slung her over his 6'3" shoulder.
Day 347. Nothing like a visit from a couple of college sophomores to restore my perspective. These two are spectacular. Like several other couples I know, it appears as though they survived the ravages of 2010. There must have been exceedingly poor planetary alignment for romance last year. Gassho to all couples who weathered the challenge and emerged triumphantly in 2011. Me and my partner just may join their ranks (but that's another blog!)
The sophomores graciously asked me to see a movie with them this evening. We saw a most excellent flick, "The King's Speech." It was extraordinarily well acted. There was a moment in which I was, surprisingly, almost moved to tears. It occurred during a scene in which a newsreel depicted Hitler addressing thousands of his troops as they all saluted him, shouting, "Heil, Hitler!"
I was sitting next to my son's girlfriend, who has a rather unique ethnic heritage. Her mother is Jewish; her father is, interestingly, German and Japanese. I have seen numerous historical news clips of Hitler over the years, but tonight the images provoked an entirely novel reaction. From deep within me, something fundamentally primal, raw, and emotive stirred. I was engrossed in the movie plot at the time, and didn't attach much cerebral interpretation to the feeling. Reflecting upon it now, it seems that a primordial sense of maternal protectiveness and love flooded my gut as I sat by that lovely young woman watching Hitler entice his army. I was reminded that passion flows most fiercely in the presence of personal connection.
Passion is, indeed, flowing fiercely between these two young lovers. Watching my manchild tease and flirt and strut every molecule of his testosterone infused masculinity in the presence of this dark-haired beauty fills me with an emotion I can barely speak of. Love, pride, tenderness, poignancy, nostalgia (I remember my own 20-year-old lover -- we sailed to Catalina together on a 16-foot sailboat!) and a primitive, mother tiger ferociousness. I would take a bullet for these two. I would lay down my body on tracks vibrating with an oncoming train. I would be a Force to Be Reckoned With should anyone or anything threaten them with harm.
Attachment? Better believe it! Preference for a certain version of their future? Probably, but it is combined with a healthy respect for the Rule of Reality. Savage and primitive urges to protect? Absolutely. Funny thing, though. I have a hunch these two are pretty good at protecting each other. They are resplendent with Buddha Nature. He, with Scottish tenacity and aspirations to become a new version of the American Suit. She, with an astounding ancestral blend of courage, survival instinct, and original pluckiness. Astonishingly, both of them with Big Mind and even bigger Senses of Humor. Because, really, how many five foot tall girls out there reference their third grade martial arts class while hanging off the back of their gigantic football player boyfriend? I believe her. She truly DOES know things.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Day 347. Nothing like a visit from a couple of college sophomores to restore my perspective. These two are spectacular. Like several other couples I know, it appears as though they survived the ravages of 2010. There must have been exceedingly poor planetary alignment for romance last year. Gassho to all couples who weathered the challenge and emerged triumphantly in 2011. Me and my partner just may join their ranks (but that's another blog!)
The sophomores graciously asked me to see a movie with them this evening. We saw a most excellent flick, "The King's Speech." It was extraordinarily well acted. There was a moment in which I was, surprisingly, almost moved to tears. It occurred during a scene in which a newsreel depicted Hitler addressing thousands of his troops as they all saluted him, shouting, "Heil, Hitler!"
I was sitting next to my son's girlfriend, who has a rather unique ethnic heritage. Her mother is Jewish; her father is, interestingly, German and Japanese. I have seen numerous historical news clips of Hitler over the years, but tonight the images provoked an entirely novel reaction. From deep within me, something fundamentally primal, raw, and emotive stirred. I was engrossed in the movie plot at the time, and didn't attach much cerebral interpretation to the feeling. Reflecting upon it now, it seems that a primordial sense of maternal protectiveness and love flooded my gut as I sat by that lovely young woman watching Hitler entice his army. I was reminded that passion flows most fiercely in the presence of personal connection.
Passion is, indeed, flowing fiercely between these two young lovers. Watching my manchild tease and flirt and strut every molecule of his testosterone infused masculinity in the presence of this dark-haired beauty fills me with an emotion I can barely speak of. Love, pride, tenderness, poignancy, nostalgia (I remember my own 20-year-old lover -- we sailed to Catalina together on a 16-foot sailboat!) and a primitive, mother tiger ferociousness. I would take a bullet for these two. I would lay down my body on tracks vibrating with an oncoming train. I would be a Force to Be Reckoned With should anyone or anything threaten them with harm.
Attachment? Better believe it! Preference for a certain version of their future? Probably, but it is combined with a healthy respect for the Rule of Reality. Savage and primitive urges to protect? Absolutely. Funny thing, though. I have a hunch these two are pretty good at protecting each other. They are resplendent with Buddha Nature. He, with Scottish tenacity and aspirations to become a new version of the American Suit. She, with an astounding ancestral blend of courage, survival instinct, and original pluckiness. Astonishingly, both of them with Big Mind and even bigger Senses of Humor. Because, really, how many five foot tall girls out there reference their third grade martial arts class while hanging off the back of their gigantic football player boyfriend? I believe her. She truly DOES know things.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Friday, January 14, 2011
Strike the Match, Light the Fire
The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair. - Walker Percy in the Zen Calendar (January 14, 2006).
Journeys bring power and love back into you. If you can't go somewhere, move in the passageways of the self. They are like shafts of light, always changing, and you change when you explore them. - Jalal Al-Din Rumi in the Zen Calendar (May 8, 2004).
Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself. - Erich Fromm in the Zen Calendar (October 4, 2006).
Begin at once to live. - Seneca in the Zen Calendar (August 30, 2006).
Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment - the moment in which a man finds out once and for all who he is. - Jorge Luis Borges in the Zen Calendar (May 24, 2003).
Light, where is the light? Light the fire, if you have desire! Thunder, rushing wind, nothingness. Black night, black stone. Don't let your whole life go by in the dark.
Evidently the only way to find the path is to set fire to my own life. - Rabindranath Tagore in the Zen Calendar (January 27, 2002).
Day 346. Peak Experience! I just noticed that, I believe for the first time, the date of one of my quotes matches the date of the blog (notice the first quote for tonight - it is January 14th - same as today!) I totally didn't do that on purpose, which is (duh!) why it constitutes a Peak Experience. That is most excellent timing for a Peak Experience, because I was in a particularly snarly mood. Thankfully, for every negative, pessimistic, unpleasant, bitchy, raging, agitated, hormonal, hopeless, despairing, depressed mood state I find myself in, there seems to be a page from my trusty Zen Calendar that explains, clarifies, enlightens, redeems, balances, relieves, or otherwise alleviates my suffering.
Take tonight, for example. I had a good week at work, got some menial tasks done at home, and am looking forward to a visit from the Sophomore tomorrow. I should be in a downright pleasant state of mind. I am not. I feel an earnest, itchy restlessness scratching through my veins. A seemingly unfounded, tiresome irksomeness has taken up residence in my psyche. If you Googled images for "Disgruntled Malcontent," my picture would be the first to pop up.
Reading some of the pages from the Zen Calendar that I had grouped under the nebulous heading "Self" just explained why. In between being sunk in the everydayness of my own life, I have become aware of the possibility of "The Search." With this year of sitting and blogging, I am on to something. But life keeps tugging me back to its tedious repetitions, resulting in me NOT being onto something, which leaves me in despair. A few nights on my cushion, and Voila! I am reminded of the journeys I want to take - the ones that bring power and love back to me. These journeys, this exploration, is required so that I may give birth to myself. I think my "single moment" may have been when I read that very first poem - the one that inspired me to make the commitment to sit and blog for a year. In tiny blips and murmurs, I am finding out once and for all who I am. And now . . . NOW, for Buddha's sake . . . I know I don't want my whole life to go by in the dark. Evidently, I have to set fire to my own life. Just like the Zen pages say.
That paragraph probably sounds disjointed; I was obviously trying to construct it from the quotes I selected. Somehow, though, it feels exactly right (not "right" as in beautifully written English, "right" as in an accurate depiction of what I am trying to express). I wish I could just contentedly hunker down with my psychology practice and my home of 18 years and my partner and my habits and my comfortable, familiar rhythms. I wish I was more like the stoic Okies that surround me -- the ones that converse of little other than their families, their church, their sinus infections, Sooner sports, the Golden Corral with the closest parking, and - of course - The Weather. It would be SO MUCH EASIER.
Despite my robust efforts to portray myself as otherwise, I am NOT wired for risk, error, unfamiliarity, uncertainty, and imprecision. Tell that to the beast rattling my breast bone. The one who swipes up my complacency and smashes it to smithereens. The one who rouses the Monkeys into a cacophony of, "What about this? Try that! You could do it! Write something, make something, do something! Be more, know more, interact more! Learn! Grow! Evolve! Improve! Get out there! Go somewhere. Anywhere! Move, move MOVE!"
Those Monkey verses might be bearable if the chorus wasn't inevitably comprised of lyrics like: "What if it doesn't work out? Something will go wrong. You might fail. You'll give up. You never see things through. You are too tired. Too poor. Too old. Too neurotic. Too obsessive. Too alone. Not patient enough. Not smart enough. Not savvy enough. Not connected enough. Bag it, you big dreamer. It will never come to pass; you just leave things in your head. Too many ideas, too little action. Chill out. Maintain. Stick to what you know."
And so my inner controversy rages. A year ago, when I was still blissfully swaddled in naive ignorance and Beginner expectancy, I foresaw that a year of meditation would resolve this lifelong embitterment. Alas. Instead, it has given the Monkeys and their counterpart a fresh venue from which to ravish my soul. Clearly, a year on the cushion will not be sufficient to still my disquiet. Like a border collie herding triplets, I skitter between empty non-attachment, contented loving kindness, and a roaring imperative to set my life on fire. I believe it is possible to reconcile these seemingly disparate parts of myself. I know it is. I am just not sure how. Not yet.
My life, to date, has not prepared me for this segment of the journey. I have been too busy surviving. Earning the money, running the household, raising the child. Assisting others with finding the match to set their own lives on fire. It is tempting to, at last, sink into the safety and relative constancy of the life I have worked so hard to establish. Yet the very idea riddles me with despair. It won't happen: I have become aware of the possibility of The Search. I must embark upon The Journey. I have to strike the match that sets fire to yet another life. My own.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Journeys bring power and love back into you. If you can't go somewhere, move in the passageways of the self. They are like shafts of light, always changing, and you change when you explore them. - Jalal Al-Din Rumi in the Zen Calendar (May 8, 2004).
Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself. - Erich Fromm in the Zen Calendar (October 4, 2006).
Begin at once to live. - Seneca in the Zen Calendar (August 30, 2006).
Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment - the moment in which a man finds out once and for all who he is. - Jorge Luis Borges in the Zen Calendar (May 24, 2003).
Light, where is the light? Light the fire, if you have desire! Thunder, rushing wind, nothingness. Black night, black stone. Don't let your whole life go by in the dark.
Evidently the only way to find the path is to set fire to my own life. - Rabindranath Tagore in the Zen Calendar (January 27, 2002).
Day 346. Peak Experience! I just noticed that, I believe for the first time, the date of one of my quotes matches the date of the blog (notice the first quote for tonight - it is January 14th - same as today!) I totally didn't do that on purpose, which is (duh!) why it constitutes a Peak Experience. That is most excellent timing for a Peak Experience, because I was in a particularly snarly mood. Thankfully, for every negative, pessimistic, unpleasant, bitchy, raging, agitated, hormonal, hopeless, despairing, depressed mood state I find myself in, there seems to be a page from my trusty Zen Calendar that explains, clarifies, enlightens, redeems, balances, relieves, or otherwise alleviates my suffering.
Take tonight, for example. I had a good week at work, got some menial tasks done at home, and am looking forward to a visit from the Sophomore tomorrow. I should be in a downright pleasant state of mind. I am not. I feel an earnest, itchy restlessness scratching through my veins. A seemingly unfounded, tiresome irksomeness has taken up residence in my psyche. If you Googled images for "Disgruntled Malcontent," my picture would be the first to pop up.
Reading some of the pages from the Zen Calendar that I had grouped under the nebulous heading "Self" just explained why. In between being sunk in the everydayness of my own life, I have become aware of the possibility of "The Search." With this year of sitting and blogging, I am on to something. But life keeps tugging me back to its tedious repetitions, resulting in me NOT being onto something, which leaves me in despair. A few nights on my cushion, and Voila! I am reminded of the journeys I want to take - the ones that bring power and love back to me. These journeys, this exploration, is required so that I may give birth to myself. I think my "single moment" may have been when I read that very first poem - the one that inspired me to make the commitment to sit and blog for a year. In tiny blips and murmurs, I am finding out once and for all who I am. And now . . . NOW, for Buddha's sake . . . I know I don't want my whole life to go by in the dark. Evidently, I have to set fire to my own life. Just like the Zen pages say.
That paragraph probably sounds disjointed; I was obviously trying to construct it from the quotes I selected. Somehow, though, it feels exactly right (not "right" as in beautifully written English, "right" as in an accurate depiction of what I am trying to express). I wish I could just contentedly hunker down with my psychology practice and my home of 18 years and my partner and my habits and my comfortable, familiar rhythms. I wish I was more like the stoic Okies that surround me -- the ones that converse of little other than their families, their church, their sinus infections, Sooner sports, the Golden Corral with the closest parking, and - of course - The Weather. It would be SO MUCH EASIER.
Despite my robust efforts to portray myself as otherwise, I am NOT wired for risk, error, unfamiliarity, uncertainty, and imprecision. Tell that to the beast rattling my breast bone. The one who swipes up my complacency and smashes it to smithereens. The one who rouses the Monkeys into a cacophony of, "What about this? Try that! You could do it! Write something, make something, do something! Be more, know more, interact more! Learn! Grow! Evolve! Improve! Get out there! Go somewhere. Anywhere! Move, move MOVE!"
Those Monkey verses might be bearable if the chorus wasn't inevitably comprised of lyrics like: "What if it doesn't work out? Something will go wrong. You might fail. You'll give up. You never see things through. You are too tired. Too poor. Too old. Too neurotic. Too obsessive. Too alone. Not patient enough. Not smart enough. Not savvy enough. Not connected enough. Bag it, you big dreamer. It will never come to pass; you just leave things in your head. Too many ideas, too little action. Chill out. Maintain. Stick to what you know."
And so my inner controversy rages. A year ago, when I was still blissfully swaddled in naive ignorance and Beginner expectancy, I foresaw that a year of meditation would resolve this lifelong embitterment. Alas. Instead, it has given the Monkeys and their counterpart a fresh venue from which to ravish my soul. Clearly, a year on the cushion will not be sufficient to still my disquiet. Like a border collie herding triplets, I skitter between empty non-attachment, contented loving kindness, and a roaring imperative to set my life on fire. I believe it is possible to reconcile these seemingly disparate parts of myself. I know it is. I am just not sure how. Not yet.
My life, to date, has not prepared me for this segment of the journey. I have been too busy surviving. Earning the money, running the household, raising the child. Assisting others with finding the match to set their own lives on fire. It is tempting to, at last, sink into the safety and relative constancy of the life I have worked so hard to establish. Yet the very idea riddles me with despair. It won't happen: I have become aware of the possibility of The Search. I must embark upon The Journey. I have to strike the match that sets fire to yet another life. My own.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Shake Your Thought-Wings Free
One's real life is often the life that one does not lead. - Oscar Wilde in the Zen Calendar (March 14, 2002).
You knock at the door of Reality.
You shake your thought-wings, loosen your shoulders,
and open. - Jelaluddin Rumi in the Zen Calendar (May 25, 2002).
Day 345. I can't shake this feeling of being a short-timer. I am also trying to avoid interpreting "short-timer" as a synonym for "slacker." It is immensely difficult to remain at work to blog, but even more challenging to leave for a rest and dinner and then extract myself from home to return to the office. Blast my hesitancy to plunge into more debt and buy a flippin' IPad on credit. Blast my propensity for doing things the hard way. I blame years of picking up Christmas tree needles by hand while a perfectly good vacuum cleaner sat in the pantry . . .
Fortunately, I have a specific experience on the cushion to describe. Before chanting yesterday, I picked up the copy of "BuddhaDharma" given to me by my good friend Amy. This particular issue focused on women Buddhists and their contributions to the study of Buddhism, particularly in the United States. The quarterly publication was dramatically inspirational and somewhat intimidating. There is SO MUCH occurring in the world of Buddhism that reaches SO FAR beyond the sofa cushion facing the wall of my bedroom. I was torn between a sense of thrilled invigoration and daunted paralyzation. The sheer quantity of teachers, students, places to study, university programs, retreat opportunities, publications, and countless other Buddhist activities made my head swirl. Where should I go, who do I study with, what can I write, what do I possibly have to contribute, which events to attend . . . ?!? Buddhism in Oklahoma seems so . . . well . . . finite.
I put the magazine down and tried to still my beating heart, feeling a bit like Dorothy when she awoke in Oz.
Then I took the whirling mass in my cranium to my cushion and sat down. Stretched, bowed, formed a mudra, drew a breath. Drew another. And another. Softened my gaze to three/quarters shut. Sensed my meditative mind penetrating new terrain. Without exactly asserting my will, I followed it.
Perhaps it was the recent immersion, at least from an academic viewpoint, into the enormity of Buddhist thought and study through the magazine I had just perused that contributed to a quick and profound experience of vastness. At the fringes of my thinking self, I conceived that I had somehow entered (or was at least standing on the threshold of) Original Mind. The sense of enormity was incomprehensible. As I attempt to describe it in this moment, the image that comes to mind is one of those plastic, fake spills of ink (or worse) that can be purchased in novelty shops. Rather than the spill being eight inches or so in diameter, however, it was as though the ink "spot" expanded into infinity. It just spread and spread and spread, smearing to the outer edge of my being and then continuing beyond. And beyond Beyond. And beyond THAT.
Time fell away. Not my experience of it in the moment; rather, Time as a concept literally ceased to exist. In my deep state of, uh, whatever it was, I almost chuckled at the absurdity of something as fallacious and naive as measurements of time. From where I sat (literally), there was no such thing as discernible time. The dimension had become this immeasurable continuum of nothingness and meaninglessness. I could not distinguish the moment I was in from every single moment that had preceded it (beginningless time) to every single moment that would follow (endless future) -- and it completely didn't matter. A faint elation, accompanied by wary relief, accompanied my escape from the illusion of time. Very weird stuff.
This is the point in the blog where I hesitate to speculate or analyze further. I feel a strange guardedness, sort of like: What happens on the cushion STAYS on the cushion. Which is ridiculous. I don't feel an inclination to jubilantly shout, "At last!! Enlightenment!!" which is good, because my teacher Frank always admonished against such a response should we ever, in fact, arrive at Nirvana.
I do feel inclined to say that I may have knocked at the door of Reality, shook my thought-wings free, and opened. Opened right up. Opened wide. The gynormous vastness of Original Mind is super cool. Way cooler than the little cramped space of my tiny human brain that I usually occupy. I can say this for certain: In the Vastness there is Joy. Infinite Joy. Abundance. Infinite abundance. Solutions to every problem encountered since the dawn of time and well past infinity. And it is all right there waiting for us. At the door of Reality. We just have to step over the threshold.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
You knock at the door of Reality.
You shake your thought-wings, loosen your shoulders,
and open. - Jelaluddin Rumi in the Zen Calendar (May 25, 2002).
Day 345. I can't shake this feeling of being a short-timer. I am also trying to avoid interpreting "short-timer" as a synonym for "slacker." It is immensely difficult to remain at work to blog, but even more challenging to leave for a rest and dinner and then extract myself from home to return to the office. Blast my hesitancy to plunge into more debt and buy a flippin' IPad on credit. Blast my propensity for doing things the hard way. I blame years of picking up Christmas tree needles by hand while a perfectly good vacuum cleaner sat in the pantry . . .
Fortunately, I have a specific experience on the cushion to describe. Before chanting yesterday, I picked up the copy of "BuddhaDharma" given to me by my good friend Amy. This particular issue focused on women Buddhists and their contributions to the study of Buddhism, particularly in the United States. The quarterly publication was dramatically inspirational and somewhat intimidating. There is SO MUCH occurring in the world of Buddhism that reaches SO FAR beyond the sofa cushion facing the wall of my bedroom. I was torn between a sense of thrilled invigoration and daunted paralyzation. The sheer quantity of teachers, students, places to study, university programs, retreat opportunities, publications, and countless other Buddhist activities made my head swirl. Where should I go, who do I study with, what can I write, what do I possibly have to contribute, which events to attend . . . ?!? Buddhism in Oklahoma seems so . . . well . . . finite.
I put the magazine down and tried to still my beating heart, feeling a bit like Dorothy when she awoke in Oz.
Then I took the whirling mass in my cranium to my cushion and sat down. Stretched, bowed, formed a mudra, drew a breath. Drew another. And another. Softened my gaze to three/quarters shut. Sensed my meditative mind penetrating new terrain. Without exactly asserting my will, I followed it.
Perhaps it was the recent immersion, at least from an academic viewpoint, into the enormity of Buddhist thought and study through the magazine I had just perused that contributed to a quick and profound experience of vastness. At the fringes of my thinking self, I conceived that I had somehow entered (or was at least standing on the threshold of) Original Mind. The sense of enormity was incomprehensible. As I attempt to describe it in this moment, the image that comes to mind is one of those plastic, fake spills of ink (or worse) that can be purchased in novelty shops. Rather than the spill being eight inches or so in diameter, however, it was as though the ink "spot" expanded into infinity. It just spread and spread and spread, smearing to the outer edge of my being and then continuing beyond. And beyond Beyond. And beyond THAT.
Time fell away. Not my experience of it in the moment; rather, Time as a concept literally ceased to exist. In my deep state of, uh, whatever it was, I almost chuckled at the absurdity of something as fallacious and naive as measurements of time. From where I sat (literally), there was no such thing as discernible time. The dimension had become this immeasurable continuum of nothingness and meaninglessness. I could not distinguish the moment I was in from every single moment that had preceded it (beginningless time) to every single moment that would follow (endless future) -- and it completely didn't matter. A faint elation, accompanied by wary relief, accompanied my escape from the illusion of time. Very weird stuff.
This is the point in the blog where I hesitate to speculate or analyze further. I feel a strange guardedness, sort of like: What happens on the cushion STAYS on the cushion. Which is ridiculous. I don't feel an inclination to jubilantly shout, "At last!! Enlightenment!!" which is good, because my teacher Frank always admonished against such a response should we ever, in fact, arrive at Nirvana.
I do feel inclined to say that I may have knocked at the door of Reality, shook my thought-wings free, and opened. Opened right up. Opened wide. The gynormous vastness of Original Mind is super cool. Way cooler than the little cramped space of my tiny human brain that I usually occupy. I can say this for certain: In the Vastness there is Joy. Infinite Joy. Abundance. Infinite abundance. Solutions to every problem encountered since the dawn of time and well past infinity. And it is all right there waiting for us. At the door of Reality. We just have to step over the threshold.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
At Ease in My Own Life
Approach it and there is no beginning; follow it and there is no end. You can't know it, but you can be it, at ease in your own life. - Lao-Tzu in the Zen Calendar (September 18, 2002).
Moment after moment, completely devote yourself to listening to your inner voice. - Shunryu Suzuki in the Zen Calendar (March 15, 2002).
All serious daring starts from within. - Eudora Welty in the Zen Calendar (January 16, 2002).
Day 344. Three weeks remain. Twenty-one blogs. The difference between what I thought these final blogs would be - a year ago, when I hadn't yet mastered mindfulness and had massive illusions about what I would have attained by now - and what they actually are, stuns and amazes me. There are remnants of my former self: at the far reaches of my imagination I still sense twitches of yearning to write some words that set my computer (and yours!) on fire. Overall, however, I return to what Zen has taught me: Just this! You are nearing the end of the 365 consecutive sits and blogs you set out to execute. It is what it is. Anticlimactic? Not at all, which leaves me grappling with a wee bit of ego regarding this blazing evidence of how beautifully I have grasped the essence of Zen. Which in turn reminds me that I will be sitting for the duration of many, many lives in order to truly grasp the essence of Zen . . . .
For instance,today I fully intended to write (brag?) about the changes in my ideas of attanintment that have occurred through zazen. Alas and alack! A client brought in, demonstrated, and allowed me to touch her new IPad. It didn't spontaneously combust when I touched it, which must be an incontrovertible sign that I should own one. In this moment, my entire being is consumed with wanton desire to attain one. Argh! Regression! IPad envy. Apparently, this little electronic marvel could economically replace the fossil I lovingly call the Dinosaur (may she rest in peace). A ticket to dropping my home cable connection (in all honesty, I recently shared some words with Cox Communication that were . . . let's just say . . . a modicum distance from loving kindness). The medium through which blogs will spew from my fingertips with reckless abandon. I want one! Must have one! Plan to attain one as soon as I have the means!
It occurs to me that there is a relevant distinction between thoughts of "attaining" and thoughts of "acquiring." Regarding the IPad, I fear they both apply. I am desperate to aquire one so that I may attain some goals and outcomes I have become embarrassingly attached to. This probably sounds like a rationalization (because it is one), but I think my general motive is not entirely inconsistent with Zen. This year has ignited some serious daring from within. My next endeavor (which, by the way, is consuming a great deal of mental energy, providing the Monkeys with unprecedented grist for the chattering mill, and making it all but impossible to remain focused on the present) involves using up every single one of the 300 envelopes my son gave me for Christmas. I plan on using them to deliver the plethora of query letters I will write regarding three writing projects I am being dared from within to undertake . I want to be a writer. It puts me at ease in my life.
When I find myself in the depths of passionate enigma, I know I am at the top of my Zen game. Here I sit, nearing the end of my dedicated Zen year, teasing myself about mastery over concepts such as non-attachment, no attainment, and remaining in the here-and-now. And here I sit, utterly distracted by plans for the future that are focused on attachment to a response to my query letter (at least one!) and attaining some writing goals. Bizarrely, I don't feel confused or incongruent at all. I don't know it, but I am learning to be it: At ease in my own life!
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Moment after moment, completely devote yourself to listening to your inner voice. - Shunryu Suzuki in the Zen Calendar (March 15, 2002).
All serious daring starts from within. - Eudora Welty in the Zen Calendar (January 16, 2002).
Day 344. Three weeks remain. Twenty-one blogs. The difference between what I thought these final blogs would be - a year ago, when I hadn't yet mastered mindfulness and had massive illusions about what I would have attained by now - and what they actually are, stuns and amazes me. There are remnants of my former self: at the far reaches of my imagination I still sense twitches of yearning to write some words that set my computer (and yours!) on fire. Overall, however, I return to what Zen has taught me: Just this! You are nearing the end of the 365 consecutive sits and blogs you set out to execute. It is what it is. Anticlimactic? Not at all, which leaves me grappling with a wee bit of ego regarding this blazing evidence of how beautifully I have grasped the essence of Zen. Which in turn reminds me that I will be sitting for the duration of many, many lives in order to truly grasp the essence of Zen . . . .
For instance,today I fully intended to write (brag?) about the changes in my ideas of attanintment that have occurred through zazen. Alas and alack! A client brought in, demonstrated, and allowed me to touch her new IPad. It didn't spontaneously combust when I touched it, which must be an incontrovertible sign that I should own one. In this moment, my entire being is consumed with wanton desire to attain one. Argh! Regression! IPad envy. Apparently, this little electronic marvel could economically replace the fossil I lovingly call the Dinosaur (may she rest in peace). A ticket to dropping my home cable connection (in all honesty, I recently shared some words with Cox Communication that were . . . let's just say . . . a modicum distance from loving kindness). The medium through which blogs will spew from my fingertips with reckless abandon. I want one! Must have one! Plan to attain one as soon as I have the means!
It occurs to me that there is a relevant distinction between thoughts of "attaining" and thoughts of "acquiring." Regarding the IPad, I fear they both apply. I am desperate to aquire one so that I may attain some goals and outcomes I have become embarrassingly attached to. This probably sounds like a rationalization (because it is one), but I think my general motive is not entirely inconsistent with Zen. This year has ignited some serious daring from within. My next endeavor (which, by the way, is consuming a great deal of mental energy, providing the Monkeys with unprecedented grist for the chattering mill, and making it all but impossible to remain focused on the present) involves using up every single one of the 300 envelopes my son gave me for Christmas. I plan on using them to deliver the plethora of query letters I will write regarding three writing projects I am being dared from within to undertake . I want to be a writer. It puts me at ease in my life.
When I find myself in the depths of passionate enigma, I know I am at the top of my Zen game. Here I sit, nearing the end of my dedicated Zen year, teasing myself about mastery over concepts such as non-attachment, no attainment, and remaining in the here-and-now. And here I sit, utterly distracted by plans for the future that are focused on attachment to a response to my query letter (at least one!) and attaining some writing goals. Bizarrely, I don't feel confused or incongruent at all. I don't know it, but I am learning to be it: At ease in my own life!
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
We Will Pick Up the Needles
"Where Zen ends, asskicking begins. And THAT is your last lesson, grasshopper." - Hyde to Jackie on today's rerun of "That 70's Show."
"Bugger, Bugger, BUGGER!! Shit, F***, Bugger, Bugger, Shit, F***, Bugger!" Colin Firth as King George the VI in "The King's Speech." Also, my opinion of cold weather.
Day 343. The low tonight is forecast to be 7 degrees F. For some people, the "F" stand for Fahrenheit; for me it stands for Really F***-ing Cold when it follows the numeral 7. Anyone who has ever had contact with me during the months of January and February can attest to the fact that I cease to function when the temperature dips much below 20. It appears to be a biological phenomena. Sort of like bears hibernating and koi floating catatonic-like at the bottom of the pond in winter. Certain beings are not meant to move when it gets cold. They are meant to enter a deep and sustained state of repose. I am one of them.
Blogging has been incomprehensibly difficult over the past several days. Reasons are varied; not the least of which includes the dinosaur may have actually snorted her last snort. My brother has yet to perform an autopsy. The only hopeful prognostic indicator is, so far, no Blue Screen of Death. Arousing myself from the bottom of the pond and braving the cold drive to the office to access a working computer may have been the singular most difficult act of keeping this commitment all year. I want to persevere, remaining in this dark and onerous setting until I transfer all of my handwritten blogs to the screen, but Reality is leaning towards, uh, Unlikely. Too cold. Too tired. Too thrilled to sit zazen on the ice-cold wood floors of my half-century old home. Yippee.
Speaking of wood floors (I adore a good segue), I recently spent a solid hour sweeping up the Christmas tree needles from mine. The ritual triggered a ton of memories from my childhood. Not necessarily pleasant memories, but memories nonetheless. Highly diagnostic vestiges of our family dynamics. Reliable yardsticks from which to measure just how far we have come.
My father voted for an artificial Christmas tree beginning around 1964 (perhaps before, but that would precede my earliest recollections). Mom would have none of it. She insisted on a real tree until 1999, give or take a year. I have undertaken the task of perpetuating the Real Tree Legacy. The custom quintessentially represents the agony and the ecstasy. Except that, with each passing year, I have more difficulty recalling what, exactly, comprises the ecstasy piece.
The agony is straightforward. My father did not believe in using a vaccum to clean up the needles dropped by our Christmas Splendor. I never knew his exact rationale; however, from the time I was four, I internalized a terror that vaccuuming Christmas tree needles would result in a catastrophic event rivaling Hiroshima. It was not to be done. We picked them up by hand.
"We" meaning my mom and I. After dad grumpily, grudgingly dragged the brittle, dry tree corpse to the curb on New Year's Day, (the second of precisely two contributions he made to Christmas decorating; the first being putting the damn thing in the stand), mom and I would commence with Needle Removal. First, we would use a whisk broom and dustpan to collect the thick top layer of shed needles (this, in spite of the fact that I crawled under the tree every other night for three weeks to water it). Next, on our hands and knees, we crouched in the cramped corner of the living room, extracting Scotch Pine remains from the gold shag carpet (speaking of the '70's show) one sticky needle at a time. The prickly buggers were everywhere. Strewn from the corner, across the living room floor, through the linoleum covered entry hall, across the front porch, down the steps, and trailing to the curb like rice flung at a departing bridal couple.
I don't know why my brothers were excluded from this ritual, nor why picking up needles was considered "women's work." I do know that the origins of my obsessive-compulsive disorder may be traced to this particular task. No needle was left unplucked. Interesting, since nary a year went by when I didn't discover and extract at least a dozen brown, fragile needles from the Ghosts of Christmas Trees Past. Perhaps, like glass shards deeply inbedded in an accident victim, undetected needles rose to the surface long after it was believed they had all been removed. Inevitably, they surfaced sometime in May by painfully piercing my tender bare feet. Bugger. Bugger, Bugger, BUGGER!
So there I was tonight, over a week late at performing the ritual, sweeping up Scotch Pine needles from my own home. Approaching the task, perhaps for the first time, with Zen Mind. Feeling astonished at how gratifying it can be to sweep up needles from a wood floor, especially when compared to extricating them from deep shag carpeting. Snickering at memories of the jokes my mom and I shared (all at my dad's expense) while we performed the annual needle sweep. Curious about how obedient we were back then, and briefly forlorn at the obvious evidence of my dad's tyranny in the early years of my life. I felt exceedingly present as I noted the dark green needles against my lovely oak floors, swept rather than hand picked, and poignantly registered the longevity of my obsessive imperative to dispose of EVERY SINGLE needle trace. Laughed aloud at the sudden realization that, to this day, I do not use a vacuum cleaner to suck up the needles. The machines have probably improved since 1965, but I shall take no chances. Hiroshima was a very bad deal.
I don't think Zen has to end for asskicking to begin. I kicked ass at needle removal tonight, and did so from right smack in the middle of Zen Mind. Picked up those suckers from the heart of my True Nature. Watched thoughts and memories and associations flicker in my consciousness, and float right on out. Registered in intricate detail the physical act of cleaning up the tree remnants as well as the multiple layers of emotion the act summoned. And tonight, instead of accompanying the task with exclamations of: "Bugger! Shit, F***, Bugger!" - all I wanted to say was, "Thank you." Thank you for the lives of 50 trees sacrificed to bravely display a vivid and colorful family history of ornaments. Thank you for the privilege of living the past 18 years of my life in a home I adore. Thank you for a practice that converted a boring chore into a meaningful experience. And thank you, Mom, for precious memories of picking up needles. By hand. Together. Catastrophe averted.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
"Bugger, Bugger, BUGGER!! Shit, F***, Bugger, Bugger, Shit, F***, Bugger!" Colin Firth as King George the VI in "The King's Speech." Also, my opinion of cold weather.
Day 343. The low tonight is forecast to be 7 degrees F. For some people, the "F" stand for Fahrenheit; for me it stands for Really F***-ing Cold when it follows the numeral 7. Anyone who has ever had contact with me during the months of January and February can attest to the fact that I cease to function when the temperature dips much below 20. It appears to be a biological phenomena. Sort of like bears hibernating and koi floating catatonic-like at the bottom of the pond in winter. Certain beings are not meant to move when it gets cold. They are meant to enter a deep and sustained state of repose. I am one of them.
Blogging has been incomprehensibly difficult over the past several days. Reasons are varied; not the least of which includes the dinosaur may have actually snorted her last snort. My brother has yet to perform an autopsy. The only hopeful prognostic indicator is, so far, no Blue Screen of Death. Arousing myself from the bottom of the pond and braving the cold drive to the office to access a working computer may have been the singular most difficult act of keeping this commitment all year. I want to persevere, remaining in this dark and onerous setting until I transfer all of my handwritten blogs to the screen, but Reality is leaning towards, uh, Unlikely. Too cold. Too tired. Too thrilled to sit zazen on the ice-cold wood floors of my half-century old home. Yippee.
Speaking of wood floors (I adore a good segue), I recently spent a solid hour sweeping up the Christmas tree needles from mine. The ritual triggered a ton of memories from my childhood. Not necessarily pleasant memories, but memories nonetheless. Highly diagnostic vestiges of our family dynamics. Reliable yardsticks from which to measure just how far we have come.
My father voted for an artificial Christmas tree beginning around 1964 (perhaps before, but that would precede my earliest recollections). Mom would have none of it. She insisted on a real tree until 1999, give or take a year. I have undertaken the task of perpetuating the Real Tree Legacy. The custom quintessentially represents the agony and the ecstasy. Except that, with each passing year, I have more difficulty recalling what, exactly, comprises the ecstasy piece.
The agony is straightforward. My father did not believe in using a vaccum to clean up the needles dropped by our Christmas Splendor. I never knew his exact rationale; however, from the time I was four, I internalized a terror that vaccuuming Christmas tree needles would result in a catastrophic event rivaling Hiroshima. It was not to be done. We picked them up by hand.
"We" meaning my mom and I. After dad grumpily, grudgingly dragged the brittle, dry tree corpse to the curb on New Year's Day, (the second of precisely two contributions he made to Christmas decorating; the first being putting the damn thing in the stand), mom and I would commence with Needle Removal. First, we would use a whisk broom and dustpan to collect the thick top layer of shed needles (this, in spite of the fact that I crawled under the tree every other night for three weeks to water it). Next, on our hands and knees, we crouched in the cramped corner of the living room, extracting Scotch Pine remains from the gold shag carpet (speaking of the '70's show) one sticky needle at a time. The prickly buggers were everywhere. Strewn from the corner, across the living room floor, through the linoleum covered entry hall, across the front porch, down the steps, and trailing to the curb like rice flung at a departing bridal couple.
I don't know why my brothers were excluded from this ritual, nor why picking up needles was considered "women's work." I do know that the origins of my obsessive-compulsive disorder may be traced to this particular task. No needle was left unplucked. Interesting, since nary a year went by when I didn't discover and extract at least a dozen brown, fragile needles from the Ghosts of Christmas Trees Past. Perhaps, like glass shards deeply inbedded in an accident victim, undetected needles rose to the surface long after it was believed they had all been removed. Inevitably, they surfaced sometime in May by painfully piercing my tender bare feet. Bugger. Bugger, Bugger, BUGGER!
So there I was tonight, over a week late at performing the ritual, sweeping up Scotch Pine needles from my own home. Approaching the task, perhaps for the first time, with Zen Mind. Feeling astonished at how gratifying it can be to sweep up needles from a wood floor, especially when compared to extricating them from deep shag carpeting. Snickering at memories of the jokes my mom and I shared (all at my dad's expense) while we performed the annual needle sweep. Curious about how obedient we were back then, and briefly forlorn at the obvious evidence of my dad's tyranny in the early years of my life. I felt exceedingly present as I noted the dark green needles against my lovely oak floors, swept rather than hand picked, and poignantly registered the longevity of my obsessive imperative to dispose of EVERY SINGLE needle trace. Laughed aloud at the sudden realization that, to this day, I do not use a vacuum cleaner to suck up the needles. The machines have probably improved since 1965, but I shall take no chances. Hiroshima was a very bad deal.
I don't think Zen has to end for asskicking to begin. I kicked ass at needle removal tonight, and did so from right smack in the middle of Zen Mind. Picked up those suckers from the heart of my True Nature. Watched thoughts and memories and associations flicker in my consciousness, and float right on out. Registered in intricate detail the physical act of cleaning up the tree remnants as well as the multiple layers of emotion the act summoned. And tonight, instead of accompanying the task with exclamations of: "Bugger! Shit, F***, Bugger!" - all I wanted to say was, "Thank you." Thank you for the lives of 50 trees sacrificed to bravely display a vivid and colorful family history of ornaments. Thank you for the privilege of living the past 18 years of my life in a home I adore. Thank you for a practice that converted a boring chore into a meaningful experience. And thank you, Mom, for precious memories of picking up needles. By hand. Together. Catastrophe averted.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
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