Less Brain, More Bones

Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also
leaks through the holes
in the roof
of this ruined house. - Shibiku in the Zen Calendar (March 14, 2007).

People want so much. We want to be someone else. "I want to be stronger." "I want to be more directed." "I want to be superwoman." But it's not possible. You must accept your condition. But "accept" is active. Who you are is active. Passive acceptance - that's the immobile, inanimate Zen. It's not the zen I'm talking about. There's passion here. Spirit for the quest. This is important: the sincerity of our quest and how we go about it. It's a long path. Are you prepared? Do you want to walk on this path? Don't think about it too much. Just walk! C'mon, let's go! That's Zen. - Jakusho Kwong in the Zen Calendar (January 13, 2006).

Day 334. This is not (did I mention NOT?) the way I envisioned beginning a new year. I fell off the Cliffs of Despair and landed - splash! - into the River of Ruin. Just before being swept out to the Desponden-Sea, I somehow managed to clamor up the banks and collapse into the Melancholy Meadow. And here I bask. Trying to accept that this is where I am at this particular moment in time. Reminding myself of impermanence. Prying both hands off the Attachment Ledge to which they cling mightily. Despite my best efforts, my Preferred Version of Reality keeps sidling over to a desire to feel a wee bit happier.

Flash - Pop - Lighting bolt! (those are word cues signaling the epiphany that just exploded in my brain). I think I am anticipating and grieving the end of this year (uh, not the calendar year, the last-year-of-my-40's Year). So much for staying in the here-and-now. So much for mastering "no attainment." The specifics of my grief are not clear at this moment, but the word seemed to nail the feeling state I am in.

It is confusing, because at my most conscious level, I WANT to be through with this commitment. So why would I grieve its ending? Since a couple of weeks before Christmas, the blog and zazen have felt burdensome and tiresome and irksome and bothersome and any other "-somes" that might fit here. I begin thinking about writing and sitting sometime in the early evening, and feelings of dread and gloom descend over me. I feel stressed and exhausted and burnt out. I want to allocate the time to something else. As soon as I register that little sequence of emotion, a runaway freight train of guilt comes barreling down my neurological track. The caboose is a familiar feeling of obligation coupled with lasting sincerity about wanting to sit with pure intent and write a few last, exceptional blogs. My intent remains intact, but I feel tired. So tired.

Whew! What a catharsis to express those feelings. It is fascinating to watch the entirety of my analysis manifest in the blog. My enduring primary coping mechanism is, and always has been, to disappear into my cerebellum. To think, analyze, intellectualize, explain, and make sense of. In other words, to entomb my feelings (the stuff of which all good writing originates) beneath impenetrable layers of thought. I can go back through blogs (though I won't, literally, until the year is up) and watch it happen: this tendency to write several posts in a row where I am clearing "trying" to compose something stellar and substantive, and then - KAPOW! - emotion spills up and out and I "write down my bones" (as Natalie Goldberg taught me).

I think the last time I wrote from my bones was when I indulged a bit about the novel that continues to relentlessly circumnavigate my skull. I am ready to bust out of the confines of writing about zazen and Buddhism and cycling and psychology. Not that those are particularly constraining parameters in and of themselves; I believe it is entirely Me who is accountable for pulling too tight the reins (NOW I figure this out?! With only 31 blogs left to write?? Ah, well, better late than never . . . great, now I have been reduced to cliches.)

A fine time to be reminded of non-dualism. Buddhism itself does not require me to be exclusively serious and intellectual. Nor, for that matter, does cycling or psychology. Stress is one wicked and insidious beast. It shoved and crowded me into some rigid, sedate sector of my brain and damn near commandeered the final weeks of the blog. Thankfully, I am deciding (in this very moment) to shove back. To bust out. To sit and write from my bones. Less brain, more bones. Now there's a title for my next blog . . .

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc