Dance With the One That Brung Ya

"You gotta dance with the one that brung ya." - Someone else, originally; C.C. in Norman, OK on 1/5/2011.

Day 337.  I am stupendously fortunate in my choice of career.  I get to spend a lot of time with intelligent individuals who join me in asking difficult questions about themselves and their lives and then courageously look for answers.  Not a bad way to earn a living.  Though Buddhism permeates my clinical work in a thousand subtle ways, I occasionally encounter a client who also maintains a formal meditation practice and welcomes a more covert inclusion of Buddhist concepts into her therapy.  The intersection of Zen and psychotherapy is an invigorating place from which to contemplate human behavior.

 For the past several nights on my cushion, it has been extraordinarily quiet. An inexplicable silence has descended over my neighborhood and my home.  The house itself, which is several years past its half-century mark, seems to have muted the periodic creaks and groans emitting from its old oak floors and shifting mortar.  The Monkeys, who rarely take cues from anything other than their chattering peers, are similarly, eerily quiet. This unusual state of affairs is perhaps being fostered by my conscious decision to be meticulously mindful of the silence.  To watch it, feel it, join it.  Let go my hold, and drop into it.  Feet first, until the crown of my head disappears into the muffled thick of it.

My ego can only tolerate the blissful quietude for so long.  It is only a matter of time before a seemingly enormous green flag waves across the Primate faces, and merciless chattering ensues.  Lately, the melee has focused on one thing and only one thing:  When is the time up?  How much longer?  Why doesn't the timer sound?  Is it over?  Are we there yet?

At first, I found this occurrence astonishing and annoying.  How can an Advanced Sitter like me STILL be concerned about the amount of time on the cushion?  In 336 days, have I ever skipped zazen? (No).  Have I ever prematurely ended a sitting session? (No).  Have I ever stopped and actually dismounted my cushion and called it quits? (No).  Have I ever shortened the time I originally committed to - which, since August 3rd, has been 40 minutes? (No).  Do I plan to start now? (NO!).  So why the obsession and incessant mind clatter about cushion time?  Shouldn't this be have been unequivocally and irrevocably settled by now?

Apparently not.  So I dropped the question, along with the feelings of astonishment and annoyance, and instead sat with the status of things as Reality depicted them.  Invited that impatience and timer fixation right there onto the cushion with me.  Watched it from a distance:  no thought no feeling no perception no opinion no object of mind.  And then it came to me:  This IS your practice.  Not a hindrance to practice, not bad practice or good practice, not superior practice or inferior practice, not progressed practice or regressed practice or advanced practice or poor practice.  Just practice.  The practice of zazen. Which encompasses everything.  Absolutely.  Totally.  Completely.  Everything.

The stimulating session with a Buddhist client today  included a sparkly revisit to a couple of stark Buddhist truths: Everything is impermanent.  Even "mastering" the presence of the timer in practice.  Even the bizarre consideration of leg amputation that flickers during the seventh session of a day long sit.  Even the 20-year-old conflict with a mate who is reticent to put holes in the wall to hang a picture or mount a towel rack.  The second truth was this:  Practice is everywhere, not just obvious places like the cushion and looking at a glorious sunset.  I have the opportunity to practice when the toilet lid isn't down, when the cap isn't on the toothpaste, when the time the dogs are fed is an ongoing controversy.

 Everyone is practicing, whether they label it as Buddhism or not.  And, like it or not, practice requires you to dance with the one that brung ya.  Sometimes that is your mate.  Sometimes that is the tiny, irksome, repetitive, chronic irritations that Reality plonks in front of you.  Most times, it's that dang being that plunked you down on the cushion in the first place.  So I will dance on.  Dance on.  Dance on.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc