Give Your Cow a Large Pasture

I have worked at the same job for the past nine years, and my boss has watched me along my Zen journey, from the initial steps, eventually to choosing Tony Patchell as my teacher, up through lay ordination this past August, and now through this period of loss as our sanghas deal with the death of Darlene.

She is a Presbyterian. Our other officemate is Catholic. One day, in the midst of a casual discussion about dealing with an interpersonal issue, my boss surprised me by saying, "You know, you are the most spiritual person I know." I was dumbfounded. All my life, I had felt I was completely lacking in the spirituality department. When I asked what she meant, she said she didn't know anyone else who incorporated a spiritual practice into their daily life as much as I did. This is what she had determined from hearing me speak about sesshins, sewing practice, meditating, and dharma discussions, all as they came up in the normal course of conversation in our very small office.

That was about six months ago. In early January, my boss was going through a lot of personal family stress. She came to me and said, "I think I need to start meditating. Can you tell me how?"

I explained in very basic terms the fundamentals of zazen, such as posture, breathing, and hand position. I also removed possible hurdles immediately: I told her she could sit in a chair and I said ten minutes at a time was fine to start off. She asked, "Am I supposed to make my mind blank?" I laughed and said, "Oh, no! You'll never make it blank. Just try not to get attached to anything that comes up. When a thought arises, look at it, and let it go."

The next week at Russian River Zendo, someone brought up that problem of "busy mind" during zazen. Fellow practitioner Dick Bates had a wonderful analogy to demonstrate how crucial "busy mind" is. He said in biology, most mutations are useless, not helpful or beneficial in any way to the creature they occur in. But, if all mutations were to cease, the organism would be deprived of those rare times when a profound, wonderful change occurs. Dick said in the same way, most of the stuff floating through our minds is pure rubbish. But nestled inside of those racing thoughts are the kernels of creativity. If we could, as we sometimes wish, completely control our thoughts, nothing new would ever be born again.

So, to new practitioners like my boss, the best advice is that of Suzuki-roshi, when he said to view your mind as a cow. Then give your cow a large pasture, and watch it.

(By the way - actually being inside of a very active spiritual community, I most humbly decline the title of "most spiritual" - but it was a pleasant moment hearing someone else could see that part of me I had been seeking for so long.)

Everything Changes

In a discussion this evening on the Three Marks of Existence, Tony Patchell focused on impermanence, the flux of life.

The Three Marks are (1) impermanence or inconstancy, (2) dukkha or suffering, and (3) non-self. A fourth mark is also frequently added, that of nirvana, or perfect composure, to round out the set.

Tony began with that most famous of quotes from Suzuki-roshi, when asked to summarize Zen: "Everything changes." A full acceptance of that fact, of the absolute fact of transciency, goes hand in hand with the concept of selflessness - because what are you, if you change every moment?

Tony said that we as Zen students must first hear those words from a teacher, or read them in Buddhist writings. Then we must contemplate them, and analyze them, studying them until we can bring them to our own understanding. But even that is not enough. The final step is to meditate, to turn to zazen. Because it is only through zazen that we fully comprehend in our bodies what it means to be impermanent, to be always changing.

Impermanency - it is both incredibly terrifying and comforting at the same time. Terrifying for the obvious reasons. All the "good" things will go. When I think about losing those I love (my wife, my friends, my family members, my animals), it makes my heart clamp up. I'm a little less frightened when it comes to objects. I believe that I could recover relatively unscathed from the loss of my car, or my home, or other such items. But even there, I have vulnerable spots. I get frantic thinking about house fires, not only because I worry about all of my dogs and cats, but because I panic at the thought of all of my writings and computer files going up in flames. It's my words that I'm attached to. Hah! Talk about impermanent!

So how, then, is the thought of impermanency comforting? When I am in a dark place, I know that it will not last. When my legs hurt while I sit zazen, I know that the pain is not endless. When I am frightened, or unsure of myself, or embarrassed, or lonely....everything changes. When I am exhausted, and hopeless, and burned out, pessimistic, angry, frustrated...these feelings pass. What an immense relief to know this is true.

Right now, I am wholly here. Now. And now again. Bam. Right here.

Pay attention. This is it.

Sitting Alone with Ourselves

The act of sitting alone with ourselves on the cushion is on the one hand so ordinary, so simple. It is quiet, no fireworks, little ceremony. A human being sitting still on a cushion in a hushed room, that is all.

And yet. At the same time, it is the most extraordinary thing in the world. It is precisely what so many of us spend much of our lives trying to avoid. We fill up our days with busyness and noise and social interaction, with drama and intrigue, aspirations and dreams. We are constantly moving and striving, reaching ahead or desperately trying to hold onto what is slipping away.

Beryl Markham, a female aviator who grew up in Africa in the early 1900s, lived a life of adventure and boldness. Her childhood was spent learning to hunt wild boar and other creatures of the African jungles with the Masai people. She also raised horses with her father, eventually becoming the first licensed female horse trainer in Africa to support herself at age 16 when her father lost the family estate after several years of severe drought. Soon after that, she learned to fly an airplane, and became a freelance pilot, in the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1936, she made a solo flight from England to Nova Scotia, the first woman to make the westward Atlantic crossing solo and the first person to make it from England to America nonstop.

In her memoir, West with the Night, Markham talks about the real challenge of that 20 hour flight. Surprisingly, it is not the fear of death, or the technical aspects of flying. It is the huge expanse of time that she had to sit alone with herself.

She said:

You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself. You learn to watch other people, but you never watch yourself because you strive against loneliness. If you read a book, or shuffle a deck of cards, or care for a dog, you are avoiding yourself. The abhorrence of loneliness is as natural as wanting to live at all. If it were otherwise, men would never have bothered to make an alphabet, nor to have fashioned words out of what were only animal sounds, nor to have crossed continents -- each man to see what the other looked like.

Being alone in an aeroplane for even so short a time as a night and a day, irrevocably alone, with nothing to observe but your instruments and your own hands in semi-darkness, nothing to contemplate but the size of your small courage, nothing to wonder about but the beliefs, the faces, and the hopes rooted in your mind -- such an experience can be as startling as the first awareness of a stranger walking by your side at night. You are the stranger.

The Atlantic crossing, really, was not simply a feat of a woman and a plane, a show of technical mastery and bravery. It was also, in a way, a grueling tangaryo, a 20-hour straight period of zazen, sitting upright in a very small plane, balanced atop fuel tanks, with much of the flight taking place in the dead of night, with almost no visibility. It was truly a meeting of oneself, the stranger.

And so, when we sit, we too are undertaking a hero's journey. Crossing to the other side, whether it is to the other side of the Atlantic in a small plane, or to the other side of our own fears in our own rooms, requires a hero's courage and steadfastness.

Rendering the ordinary extraordinary - and ourselves face to face with the stranger. No small task.

Letting in the Sun

Since sometime in late December, I have been struggling fairly continuously with a bleak and utterly dismal depression. It had nothing of the poetic to it. No grand internal explorations or even that oft quoted dark night of the soul. It was pure dullness, a lack of spark. It was simply a dreariness, an inability to find pleasure or yearning or even ache.

It was like the blanket of ash coating Iceland following the volcanic eruption. Perhaps, at its source, there was spectacle, lightning, fire. But for the farmers, those left with the fallout, there was only the dreary work of shoveling soot, tromping through foot-deep muck, trying to save livestock, calming the wild-eyed horses. And an eerie, unending silence, as if somehow the entire world had lost its ability to sound.

Moving about in my cloak of invisible ash, I have gone to work, taken care of my dogs, done the household chores most in need of doing. I have shown up when I needed to show up, for the most part, except on those days when the proverbial ash grew so heavy, that I could not even leave the house. But I cut out all of the extraneous things, the things I love (or used to love) that required too much energy - the book group I've been part of for seven years, the piano lessons, even my writing group. I conserved. I saved my strength.

I had been here before. The heaviness had come and gone in the past, and so, somewhere inside of me, I trusted that it would end again. And yet still, that trust wavered. The months grew so long.

On Friday, I walked out onto the deck and looked across the yard at our newly planted garden. It was the same garden that had been there the week before, with slightly larger young plants, true, but the same. No, not the same. It was resplendent with possibilities.

I breathed. I looked out across the valley. It was as if someone had scrubbed the very air with newness and light. Someone let the sun back in.

I went to sit zazen with my Healdsburg sangha for the first time in three weeks tonight. The light followed me into the room. It went in and out of my body with each breath. And then on, to the bodies of my sangha members sitting with me, supporting me. I was bathed in sunlight.

No judgment. Enjoy what is here now. Be ready for what may come. Trust. Sit.

Would I Need a '49ers Jersey, Too?

We had an all-day sit at Russian River Zendo today. As is usual with such events, there were so many layers.

On the positive side: It was gorgeous, sunny and crisp, especially pleasant for our two outside walking meditations. There was a nice cohesiveness to the group, a coming together, a forming of sangha that felt very nourishing. Everyone put themselves wholeheartedly into their service roles, whether serving tea or preparing the noon time meal.

On the less-than-perfect side: I have had trouble sitting lately, and my hips have grown very tight. As the day progressed, I was in more and more pain. I had to shift and move and reposition frequently, each time more self consciously. I struggled with wondering whether or not I was doing the right thing to continue to sit on the cushion, instead of moving to a chair. Was I simply being stubborn? Was I trying to prove something to myself? Was the level of agony in my hips so severe that I was about as far removed as possible from any kind of mindful meditation?

I was acting as doan for the day, which made it both better and worse for me. Better, because I was able to look at the time and calculate when I could reposition so that I'd be able to walk when I rang the bell for kinhin. Worse, because I always feel that in such a role I should be setting some kind of example of steadfastness, and today I felt anything but that.

Somehow, though, I managed to get through the day in good humor. The pain, thankfully, only affected my hips, not my mood.

When I returned home, I called my grandmother, Gladys, for one of our regular check-in phone calls. I told her about my day, explaining that I had been at an all-day meditation retreat. I said I my hips had been hurting because I was sitting on the floor. She said, "You need to get some padded pants." I tried to explain to her that it wasn't exactly like that, it was more the position I was in that was uncomfortable. She listened, asking more questions. "So how long did you sit?" I said, "From 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m." She said, "All day?" I said, "Well, we have breaks. We have lunch, and tea, and take short walks." She was quiet for a moment.

Then she said, "You know what you need. You need a pair of those football pants. With the pads built in." I laughed and said, "I'm not sure that would look quite right." She paused. "Well, you could wear them under your skirt."

That visual just about did me in. Thank goodness for grandmothers.

We did continue our discussion, and came up with one other solution. Gladys is a seamstress, and she said she'd be happy to help me sew some support pillows. Not quite as fun as football pants, but equally full of grandmotherly love.

The Bull Transcended

(A continuation of the Zen story, "Ten Bulls.")

7. The Bull Transcended

Astride the bull, I reach home.
I am serene. The bull too can rest.
The dawn has come. In blissful repose,
Within my thatched dwelling I have abandoned the whip and rope.

Comment: All is one law, not two. We only make the bull a temporary subject. It is as the relation of rabbit and trap, of fish and net. It is as gold and dross, or the moon emerging from a cloud. One path of clear light travels on throughout endless time.
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We chanted the Shin Shin Ming tonight at sangha, The Mind of Absolute Trust. It is the oldest poem from Chinese Zen, that serves as a manifesto of sorts for the Zen path. Reading the comments today (all is one law, not two; of fish and net, one path) reminded me of this chant, because it is filled with seeming paradoxes, putting two disparate things next to each other and then stating that they are one and the same.

Examples from the chant include:
One instant is ten thousand years.
The tiny is as large as the vast...the vast is as small as the tiny.
There is no self, no non-self.
The best you can say is not two. In this not-two, nothing is separate and nothing in the world is excluded.

It seems to me that this is what has happened at this point in our story of the ten bulls. Up to now, there were two separate entities, the self and the bull. In seeing, catching, taming, riding the bull, there was always a sense of attainment, mastery, bending to one's will, even using a whip and rope. Now, we have entered a new phase. The bull and the self are both resting. There is no need for the rope and whip. There is a merging, a changing of two into one, and in that paradox, which is called here "home," there is time to rest.

When my zazen periods gift me with moments of grace, it is like this. Unbidden, I find myself at home on the cushion. I rest in a way that is active and alert while at the same time completely quiet and calm. And when I fall abruptly back into the world of differentiation, rather than berate myself for having an imperfect practice, I am attempting to train myself to smile. Good humor is nearly as restful as good zazen.

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The text and drawings are excerpted from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings. The story is by Kakuan, transcribed by Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps, and illustrated by Tomikichiro Tokuriki. (Comments in italics are part of the text.) Copyright Charles Tuttle and Co.

Taming the Bull

(A continuation of the Zen story, "Ten Bulls")

5. Taming the Bull

The whip and rope are necessary,
Else he might stray off down some dusty road.
Being well trained, he becomes naturally gentle.
Then, unfettered, he obeys his master.

Comment: When one thought arises, another thought follows. When the first thought springs from enlightenment, all subsequent thoughts are true. Through delusion, one makes everything untrue. Delusion is not caused by objectivity; it is the result of subjectivity. Hold the nose-ring tight and do not allow even a doubt.
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I'm not sure how successfully I am training the bull. I would venture to guess that the most sure-fire way to do so is to sit regularly, on good days and bad, when it is easy and when it is hard. I still struggle with this. Because things have been difficult lately, I have wandered away from daily practice. And when I do sit, it frequently feels rather pointless and frustrating.

One positive note, though: my recent questioning and self-doubt have not led me to the bigger doubt of wondering whether or not Zen is my path. That remains sure and true. I have committed to this, in a way that I seldom am able to commit. I have retained the most important aspects of my practice, as much as I have been able. Last Sunday, I finished sewing my rakusu, after four months of weekly sessions with my fellow sangha members who will be going through jukai. Since much of that four-month period I have been plagued with depression, it truly felt like an accomplishment, a sign of discipline, to have shown up week after week to sew.

I also have managed to continue with this blog, which has become part of my practice. Even though last month I wrote much less than the previous months - still, I wrote. I sat down in front of the computer and tried to find small truths that would help me get through each day.

On Saturday, I served as kokyo/doan (chant leader/time keeper) at Russian River Zendo for the two sitting periods and service that are held there weekly. I did not want to go; I had had an exhausting and physically challenging week. And my body was sore and uncooperative, making the periods of zazen difficult. But I did it; I showed up. Perhaps that is one way of "holding the nose-ring tight and not allowing even one doubt." Because what this Zen story says proved correct; one thought arising from enlightenment led to other true thoughts. Showing up for my commitment helped me to reconnect to the sangha, and to push through my resistance towards sitting, and to find in-the-moment joy even in the midst of my difficulties.

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The text and drawings are excerpted from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings. The story is by Kakuan, transcribed by Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps, and illustrated by Tomikichiro Tokuriki. (Comments in italics are part of the text.) Copyright Charles Tuttle and Co.

A New Year, New Decade

When I was in highschool, watching the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" for the first time, that date seemed so far off in the future. I was sure we'd all be travelling around in Jetson-family-like hovercrafts, and taking one small pill every day to supply all of our dietary needs.

It never even occurred to me then that in 2010, I would still feel young.

New Year's is a good time to reflect on the past, what has worked, what has not worked, and plan for the future. I tend to get a little carried away with self-improvement plans, though, and set unrealistic goals. So this year, I'm thinking maybe I'll space things out a bit, tackle things one at a time.

First on the list: I'm embarrassed to say this, because it's such a cliche. But I've got to get a handle on my food intake, weight and fitness. This is a huge stumbling block for me, one that I have wrestled with for many, many years. I'm trying to figure out how to frame it so I can really make a positive change that sticks. Something about healthy choices: food as fuel, exercise as daily maintenance. And throw in there some Zen awareness about each mouthful, so that I know I eat in the full presence of every bite, hoping that will eliminate all of the unnecessary calories.

Second: Continue on the path I am on towards jukai, and expand my knowledge of the Zen community. I feel firmly placed within my sangha, so this should not be hard. I would like to return to Tassajara again this year, and also, if possible, make time for some short stays or even day visits to City Center and Green Gulch, since I have never been to those places. I hope to expand my reading on Zen in particular and Buddhism in general, so that I can begin to get a grasp of the wonderfully rich heritage of this tradition. I also want to re-commit to daily sitting at home, since I've been somewhat lax about that lately.

Third: As a writer, I have made good progress in the past year. After attending a writing retreat in August, I was much more productive than I have been in ages. I have finally started writing short fiction (in addition to poetry and essays), something I had wanted to try for years, and I am enjoying it immensely. I have two strong writing partners who I can share my work with, and look forward to continuing to build those relationships. A focus this coming year will be on moving towards a more regular writing practice, and being brave enough to submit to journals and magazines.

Fourth: Read more! Of everything!

And that's probably enough to work on, at least for now. There are a couple other big ticket items (like quitting smoking) that I hope to get to soon, but I want to try to get a handle on these first. At least get the momentum going, anyway. I'll have to quit smoking eventually, if I even dream of being able to be the kokyo for the Full Moon Ceremony. No way I'll have the lung capacity otherwise!

Anybody out there have some goals for the year? Care to share? We could form an online support group!

Awakenings

During this past week's Rohatsu Sesshin (Buddha's enlightenment meditation period), I spent many of my "thinking" moments planning how I would write about everything I was experiencing. Now that I am home, and back in the everyday routine, I find the opposite is true - I am resisting sitting down to the keyboard, wanting to hold onto visuals and sensory perceptions without reducing them to words on the page.

The five days held an entire lifetime of emotion, sensation, pain, suffering, energy and joy, all flowing from one to the other. The routine was simple: we sat, we did kinhin (walking meditation), we ate, we chanted services, listened to dharma talks, and slept. Most of the day was spent in either zazen or kinhin. Zazen typically lasted 30 minutes, and the three long days had 14 separate sessions of zazen. That's a lot of time to be alone with yourself.

The first thing I noticed was heightened sensory awareness. The room we used as our zendo had flat industrial carpet, but over the center of the room, there were two large area rugs. As we did kinhin, I felt the plush, deep pile of the rug near my zabuton, followed by the thinner, more threadbare texture of the second rug, then the firm carpet. Each cycle around the room sent these sensations in through my feet and throughout my body.

The day was marked by the sounds of bells and clappers: the small bell to signal transition periods, the large deep toned bell used in service, the still bigger, bold bell calling us to sit first thing in the morning and after each meal, the clappers marking the beginnings and endings of meals and tea.

Added to these sounds were those of the elements. It was a wintery week, with mist, drizzle, and sometimes wild downpours and gusting winds. Sitting in the zendo and hearing the rain pummel the roof, and the wind buffet the windows, there was a connection to nature that felt profound and joyful. There was even one kinhin period outside where we got caught in a sudden torrent of water, drenching our clothes and faces. So the rain was not just a sound, but also a body sensation: cold, wet, clean.

And of course, there were all the gurgles and breaths and coughs of fellow practitioners in the zendo. Bodies spoke to each other; one person's stomach would rumble, and then the stomachs near by would call out a response. Even the sound of swallowing was perceptible, ricocheting around the room from one seated figure to the next.

The long sit periods held challenges for each of us, as we coaxed our uncooperative and gradually tiring bodies into yet one more session of zazen after each strike of the bell. What kept me going was the incredible example being set all around me, watching and feeling those in my sangha sit and sit and sit in stillness.

I found myself, of course, running after my thoughts during these quiet moments. I covered a lot of ground for someone sitting still on a zabuton. When I realized that I had once again gotten lost in my mind, I would silently chant a short passage from the Fukanzazengi: Think of not-thinking. How do you think of not-thinking? Non-thinking. This in itself is the essential art of zazen.

During dharma talks, Darlene Cohen told us, as the days wore on, that we would begin feeling a building energy from all of this zazen. She called this energy piti, which is a Pali word meaning rapture, bliss or delight, the pleasurable quality in the mind generated during meditation. She urged us not to squander this piti by succumbing to the desire to talk to our bunkmates, but instead to plow it back into our practice, putting the giddiness and joy right back at the center of our sitting.

I did experience piti - unbidden, a growing, irrepressible joy built up over the five days. I also felt a very deep and strong connection, to my sangha, to myself, to the ancestors and to Buddhist tradition. I experienced a profound awakening, or more accurately, a series of awakenings, each one building upon the last.

French philosopher Blaise Pascal said, "All human miseries come from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone." That is the challenge we set for ourselves - come face to face with all of our imperfections, the wayward behavior of our wandering minds, the rollercoaster ride of our emotions - and through it all, sit, just sit, and sit some more, in a quiet room alone.

My life was changed. Perhaps that was true for each of us. Perhaps that change will ripple throughout the world.

On Altars

Creating an altar for yourself is a beautiful part of the Buddhist practice. You can, of course, decide one day that you'd like an altar, and go out to purchase everything necessary. But what is far more satisfying is to let the altar evolve, so that each item on it has special meaning and relevance to you.

My altar is a collection of items on top of a square low table, one that I picked up at a garage sale. The minute I saw it, I knew it was exactly what I wanted. It was the right height, and big enough that it could hold a wide collection of important artifacts.

At its center is a 16 inch tall wooden Buddha. I first saw one similar to it at a Indonesian dance performance in Santa Rosa. When I inquired, I was told they were sold at Gado Gado, an import store. There are numerous Buddha figures there, including the large wooden ones, with different mudras, or hand postures. The one I chose uses the mudra of reasoning.

Over the Buddha's arm hangs a mala, or string of wooden prayer beads, that I purchased at a temple in Kyoto when I lived there 16 years ago. I have a second mala sitting in a stone dish - this mala is from my wedding to Sabrina last summer, where we exchanged malas as well as wedding bands as we recited our vows. I also have candle holders that were used in our wedding.

There are several small flower vases that I use to hold buds. One is from my sister Ali. Another is from a Japanese friend. I also have a bamboo plant in a vase, near the back of the altar.

A second, smaller Buddha figure is a token from a trip to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The Tibetan singing bowl was an anniversary gift from Sabrina. The incense bowl I found online at Shoyeido, the Japanese incense store.

And one of my favorite items is a small, hand-made purple tea cup, roughly shaped with imperfect edges. I bought it at a small roadside teahouse in Korea in 1993. It epitomizes the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, beauty in the imperfect. It now holds my used matches.

When I sit down in front of my altar to light candles and incense, I am pulling together the energy of my wife, my sister, my friends. I am joining the places of Japan and Indonesia and Cambodia and Tibet. I am uniting aesthetics with spirituality, art with practice.

When I sit down, I feel like I have just come home.

Plenty of Stress, Little Cash

I found out that I made a "top 15" list - but before you get too jealous, let me tell you the whole story.

CNNmoney.com came out with an article called Stressful Jobs that Pay Badly, and my job, news reporter, was right up there in the top fifteen. Other lucky winners included probation officers, social workers, marriage and family therapists, substance abuse counselors, ministers, and high school teachers.

I happened to find out about this dubious honor earlier this week, arguably one of the most stressful that I have had to date at the newspaper office. Last week, I wrote a story about a survey two high school students conducted, asking junior high schoolers how they felt about cafeteria food. As you can probably guess, the food got a big thumbs down - when was the last time you met a kid who raved about school lunches? But, I was impressed with the project. The two students had ciruclated a petition, gathered 250 signatures, written up a survey, distributed it, tabulated the results, prepared a Power Point presentation, and given a report to the school board on their findings. I thought of the whole thing as a rather light piece about student initiative, giving a well-earned voice to local kids.

Late in the game, my editor read over the finished piece and said since the results were so negative, I should probably call the head of the school's food service, and offer her a chance to weigh in. I disagreed, thinking that the piece stood on its own. But, at her request, I made the phone call on deadline night. The food service director said she knew of the survey, was familiar with its results, and she chose not to comment. We went ahead and ran the story, and I went home with a clear conscience.

The day the paper came out, the food service director's husband came into the office furious with all of us, cancelling their subscription, saying we had ruined sixteen years of hard work that his wife had done in the community. I learned of the reaction over the weekend. When I got into the office on Tuesday, as much as I dreaded it, I went to the school to find the woman and apologize, for it certainly had not been my intent to harm her.

The apology was an unmitigated disaster. She did not want to talk to me, and although she listened to my explanation of how the story came about, she was completely unmoved. She said the damage was irreparable, and there was absolutely nothing I could do. Towards the end, tears came to my eyes, and mumbling a final "I'm sorry," I left.

By the time I got back to the office, the stress of the entire week came crashing down - my dog was still in surgery when all of this happened, and I was waiting for a call from the vet. While attempting to make a cup of coffee, I was suddenly overcome with sobs, and cried for a good fifteen minutes, for everything - my dog, the newspaper article, the botched apology, all of it.

The irony, of course, is that the school lunch story was one of five news stories I had written the previous week. On my way to work, stopping at the local grocery store, the director of Calistoga Beverage Company sought me out to thank me for the nice job I had done on the story about the bottling plant's impending closure. And when I got to my desk, there was a plate of home-made brownies waiting for me with a thank you card on top, from the couple who had received a U.S. flag flown in Afghanistan from their son, another piece that I had done, that one in honor of Veterans Day.

When covering contentious issues that come up before the Planning Commission, I am routinely criticized by people on both extreme sides of the issue who say I was unfairly favorable to their opponents. Obviously, I can't be giving biased weight to both the "pros" and the "cons" at the same time, but that's what travels down the grapevine. It simply comes with the job: when people are angry, when they feel their security or position is threatened in some way, it is easy to vent that frustration on the news reporter who is quoting the "bad guys."

And, of course, there's the measly paycheck.

So stress management is definitely one of the reasons I sit. But, as much as I would like it to be a direct-link fix, zazen provides a much more nebulous solution than that.

In Turning Suffering Inside Out, Darlene Cohen says, We see our stress as a problem to be overcome and eliminated, like hemorrhoids. We want to reduce stress, plain and simple, not merge with it, not study it, not hold it in meditative equipoise. We think that whatever we're going to learn to conquer our stress, it should be definite, graspable. It's difficult for us to live in the realm of not knowing, just giving everything in front of us our whole attention and suspending our worry about what comes next until it arrives. We need to cultivate a lot of faith to live that way. But this attitude may be the most intimate and satisfying connection we could ever have with our lives. Not to know exactly what's going to happen but to do, to feel, anyway.

No matter how much time I spend sitting zazen, there will still be disgruntled readers. The only thing I can hope to change is how I respond to that anger. And even when I do my best, come forward with the most direct, open heart that I have, my goodwill gestures may be spurned. And then I will try to experience that hurt completely and fully, before taking another breath and moving forward, heart open once again.

Commitments

One of the commitments I made when I started blogging was to write daily, as a practice in self discipline. I've been doing pretty well, until this week, when my schedule overwhelmed me and I ended up missing a couple of days.

For those of you out there who noticed, and wrote notes - thank you! All is well. Just routine craziness on this end. My sister Ali was visiting from New York, and we met with her to take my 99-year-old grandmother (Gladys) out for dinner last night. The Indian food and belly dancer were a big hit. Today entailed a trip to San Francisco to hook up with more family members, to attend the wedding of my cousin Don and his fiance Makesha. I just got home from the festivities a few moments ago. My partner, Sabrina, stayed in the city, to head out on a cruise with her good buddy tomorrow morning, so I'll be flying solo for the next 15 days, trying to keep the meneragie fed and under control, and all the other balls up in the air, which can be a challenge. So, in summary, I've been on the "high" setting for the last week.

Up to this point, I have made sure I sit down to the blog even on nights when I'm not home until after midnight, trying to keep up that discipline. That's the big "D" word for me, something I've always struggled with, setting and maintaining regular practices. So just as an exercise, I have been attempting to blog as if it were a vow, a daily intention, hoping that this commitment will build confidence in my capacity for steadfastness, and eventually spill over into other areas of my life.

It's one of the things I wrestle with about my zazen, as well. I usually sit four or five times a week, but it's kind of random. I don't have a set time or set days. I know that most people sit first thing in the morning, early. That's a stumbling block for me, because I'm simply not a morning person; I never have been. Since I first began following the Zen path, I have jokingly said that the main thing between me and enlightenment is 6 a.m.

It seems like I should "follow the rules" and meditate in the morning. But the reality is, that just hasn't worked out very well for me. I love sitting at the end of the day, when it is dark outside, with a lit candle illuminating my wooden Buddha. It's a wonderful way to finish up, and head to bed. But unfortunately, waiting until the end of the day sometimes means I get caught up in other things and forget, or simply become too tired, and go to sleep instead.

When do you sit zazen? At a specific time every day? Or is it flexible, varied? Is anybody out there a night person who has learned to practice in the morning? How did you manage it?

In June, I went to Tassajara for the first time, for a workshop with Darlene Cohen on dana paramita, "the perfection of giving." I got up at 5 a.m. five mornings in a row - the first time in my life that I have ever seen that many sunrises. It was actually pretty magical - but I drank an awful lot of coffee that week, even more than usual. And I haven't quite figured out how to bring that same "Tassajara incentive" into my home sitting practice. Maybe I'll just experiement with a few morning sits, see how it goes. Who knows? I may become a convert yet.

Maitri: Unconditional Love for Oneself

I am still learning, each time I sit, about the incomprehensibly varied ways that zazen instructs me. This simple act, just sitting and breathing, somehow encompasses everything: my perceptions of myself, my relationship to my body, my connection to the other beings in the room, my weaknesses which can become strengths, my strengths which can become weaknesses.

A period of extended sitting, like last weekend's sesshin, is somewhat like the intensive summer courses of Japanese that I took in graduate school, where I would learn two semester's worth of material in just a couple of months. There is a rush, an excitement to it all. But there is an accompanying panic, an anxiety. I was so immersed in the language, that I grasped new concepts quickly and easily, absorbing a great deal. But I was so over stimulated that I collapsed into my bed at night with exhaustion, physically spent. In the same way that the unrelenting pace pushed me to rapid language breakthroughs, a sesshin can destroy the barriers that I manage to skirt in a normal daily zazen period. But it can also feel, at times, impossible to survive another minute.

Reading through some of my earlier blog entries the other day, I was amused to find that my most frequently recurring theme was "imperfection." Being flawed, it appears, is the thing I struggle with most. I constantly strive towards some ideal of behavior, performance, and even thought, as if these paragons of my imagination were actually attainable. Even though I intellectually understand that I am human, and so by very definition fallible, I continue to act each day as if this is something I can correct, if I only try hard enough.

In The Places That Scare You, Pema Chodron discusses the concept of maitri, which she defines as unconditional love for oneself. In her introduction to this topic, she says:

...meditation is not just about feeling good. To think that is why we meditate is to set ourselves up for failure. We'll assume we are doing it wrong almost every time we sit down: even the most settled meditator experiences psychological and physical pain. Meditation takes us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity. This complete acceptance of ourselves as we are is called maitri, a simple direct relationship with the way we are.

She then goes on to examine the first quality of maitri that is cultivated by meditation: steadfastness. She says that no matter what comes up, although "plenty of meditators consider it, we don't go screaming out of the room."

And this was the passage that reminded me so much of my sesshin experience:

So whenever we wander off, we gently encourage ourselves to 'stay' and settle down. Are we experiencing restlessness? Stay! Discursive mind? Stay! Are fear and loathing out of control? Stay! Aching knees and throbbing back? Stay! What's for lunch? Stay! What am I doing here? Stay! I can't stand this another minute! Stay! That is how to cultivate steadfastness.

So, somehow, sitting in the zendo for those long periods of zazen, aching knees and all, wandering thoughts and all, self doubt and all - that was precisely what I was supposed to be doing. It's all part of the plan. I can rest easy now. Every little imperfection is just a pebble along the path to the development of steadfastness, and that, ultimately, will lead to maitri, an unconditional love for myself. Let's see how long I can hold onto that thought.

(Note to self: Stay!)

Ah, Peppermint! Reflections on Sesshin

I survived my first sesshin. It's amazing how many things can happen over the course of three days when, on the surface, all you're doing is sitting and not speaking.

First, there was the physical challenge. One remarkable change for me was that I was free of back pain for the first time in an extended sit. Darlene recently did a posture adjustment for me that transformed the way that I sit. She has told me before, but this time, a couple of weeks ago, the lesson sunk in. I tend to sit with my shoulders curved in, my chest collapsed towards my spine. For the past week, I have been aware of this, constantly going backwards and forwards, in and out of usual alignment and erect posture. I managed to incorporate that "shoulders back and down" state into my sitting this weekend - and lo and behold! No mid- or lower-back pain! Hooray!

My knees are another story. I noticed late in the day on Saturday that my knees were giving me trouble. I finally added some support cushions, and had instant relief. They seemed fine today, until this afternoon, when my left knee began having excruciating shooting pain. Apparently, I waited too long before responding to the discomfort, and I am now paying the price with throbbing, aching, over-spent knees. Another lesson, one that will have to be incorporated before the Rohatsu Sesshin in December - otherwise it will be a very long five-day sit.

Then there was the silence. I spend a great deal of my life home alone, since my partner and I have differing schedules. Silence is something that I am comfortable with; in fact, I get overstimulated and exhausted very easily with too much people contact. I anticipated that this part of the sesshin would be easy for me. Interestingly, though, being silent around twenty other people is even more tiring that socializing. Language serves as a distractor. Without it, I was intensely aware of every movement and mannerism of those around me. We sat in the zendo, side by side, hearing each other's breath. We ate our meals in silence, eyes averted, acutely in tune with each clack of the fork on the plate, each trip for seconds. Most of us slept in dormitories, so even changing clothes, getting ready for bed, and sleeping were communal activites. I found myself longing for time alone.

But at the same time, the silence creates space to notice and appreciate those things that are usually camouflaged. The bow of the person across from you after a sit period becomes an intimate and nurturing acknowledgement. The bell signaling the next activity rings out into the stillness with a rich beauty. The changing light in the zendo throughout the day, the intermittent breezes that cause the trees to rustle outside, even the fly that wanders into the room and buzzes stupidly, full force, into the closed window, become bodily awarenesses, sensations that fill you up.

There are so many other aspects of this sesshin to write about, that I will revisit it over the next few days. For now, I leave you with this:

On Friday afternoon, we sat for three periods in a row separated by kinhin (walking meditation). Then we had tea, the formalized ceremony with servers bringing cups, a cookie on a small napkin, and hot tea to each person, with lots of bowing and ritual all around. We begin drinking the tea and nibbling on the cookie all at the same time, at the sound of the clappers of the kokyo (chant leader).

My initial zazen periods were refreshing and full. When the tea service started, I was alert, present. Picking up my cup, and taking that first sip - ah, the peppermint! The taste flooded my mouth, the heat warmed my throat and then my whole body. I smiled and closed my eyes, savoring it all - the moment, the cookie, the quiet, the exquisite freshness of hot peppermint tea on my tongue. This, then, is zazen.

Off the Grid

I'm going to be off the grid for the next two days, participating in my first multiple-day sit or sesshin. Things kick off at Black Mountain Center at noon tomorrow, with half a day of meditation on Friday, a full day on Saturday, again Sunday morning, and then a concluding shuso ceremony back at Russian River Zendo for Cynthia Kear.

Thus far, I have participated in four one-day sits. They are extremely challenging for me. I have a very hard time leaving the form world of clocks and to-do lists, and moving into the emptiness realm, where my only job is to respond to the bell, sitting, walking kinhin, or leaving the zendo for a meal. I have a tendency to try to memorize the schedule ahead of time, and count the number of zazen periods. Then I tick them off in my mind as I successfully complete each one.

But a one-day sit at Russian River Zendo is only from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with about seven or so periods of zazen. That's pretty easy to keep track of. This weekend, our long day will be from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., with, if I have counted correctly, 14 periods of zazen. There's no way I'll be able to keep track.

I have heard that this is why multiple-day sits are so powerful - one is forced to give up, let go, and simply sit. I am trying not to fret about how physically difficult it will be. I am also trying not to stew about how I am going to occupy myself mentally. In fact, my coping strategy up to this moment has been to not think about the sesshin at all, figuring that the only thing I'd do anyway is worry, so why bother?

I spoke to my mother on the phone tonight, and mentioned that I was going to the sesshin tomorrow. She is completely unfamiliar with Zen, and has never meditated. She asked me if it was a silent retreat. When I said yes, she said, "Well, can you read a book or something?" When I said no, that you're sitting looking at a wall, she said, "Oh, I could never do that!"

I had to laugh about the initial question. I can just imagine that scenario. I'll bring a good novel, and sit on my cushion all day flipping pages. While I'm at it, I might as well pack my iPod, so I can have some tunes!

Another challenge for me in the next three days is that Black Mountain Center doesn't allow smoking on the grounds, at all - and the grounds are huge, so I don't think there's any hope of walking out to the end of the driveway. I smoke a pack a day, which works out to roughly one cigarette every hour. Three days without a smoke is definitely going to stir up some usually-camouflaged emotion....I have purchased Nicorette lozenges as a discrete emergency measure.

So, wish me luck! On the sitting, the counting, and the nonsmoking marathon. Should be one interesting weekend!

Letting Go of Thoughts

In our study group discussion on Saturday, reviewing the next passage from Kosho Uchiyama's Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice, we were focusing on the idea of letting go of thoughts while practicing zazen.

Uchiyama differentiates between ideas or thoughts merely occurring and chasing after thoughts and thinking. He says that of course, since we are not rocks, we will have thoughts while we are sitting meditation. But the thoughts should just arise and then be let go. What is to be avoided is having a thought, grabbing on, and then running with it.

Everyone in the study group had had clear experiences of that grasping behavior, when, for instance, you figure out your budget while sitting zazen, or plan your entire day's schedule while on the cushion, supposedly meditating. Uchiyama says, If a thought occurs during zazen and we proceed to chase after it, then we are thinking and not doing zazen.

Now, that feels a little harsh. You mean that 35 minutes on the zafu doesn't even count, if your mind is racing around? Quite a few of us in the group felt pretty discouraged upon first hearing that proclamation.

Uchiyama says that the posture of zazen, the way we sit, quiets the excitability of the mind, and helps us let go of the grasping when thoughts do arise. But each of us knows that the posture alone does not accomplish that pure shikantaza (just sitting) state. Sometimes when I sit, I find myself writing an entire short story, regardless of the fact that my body is still. So that's not zazen?

Thankfully, Uchiyama continues with this helpful note: So the essential point when doing zazen is to aim, full of life, at the posture of zazen with our flesh and bones while at the same time leaving everything up to the posture and letting go of thoughts. By aiming at the zazen posture and simultaneously opening the hand of thought, both body and mind do zazen in the proper spirit.

Ah, there's the saving grace. It's about aiming at the correct posture and aiming at releasing thoughts. It reminds me of the Buddhist precepts. They are not commandments, not Thou shalt nots. They are vows, directives, intentions. We understand that we will repeatedly violate all of them, some on a daily basis: harboring ill will, speaking badly of others, putting ourselves before others. The vow is about continuing to make that right effort, aiming towards upholding the precepts, even though we know we will break them.

And so it is with zazen. It is humanly impossible to not chase after a single thought during a full zazen period. The thoughts come up, and it is our mind's nature to chase. The goal is to gently catch ourselves in the act, again and again, and once more turn our attention back to the body, back to the breath, back to the coming and going of thoughts with no attachment. I guess that's why this is a life practice. There are no graduates.

What If a Gunman Comes into the Zendo - Can We Move?

There's an episode of CSI that has unduly influenced my "monkey mind" while sitting zazen. (I don't watch much television. After reading this, you'll know why.) In the episode, four monks at a monastery are shot and killed while sitting meditation. The shooter came in while they were sitting and shot each one point blank in the forehead, execution style. But what is startling is that each one of them stayed in the meditative posture, while the killing spree went on, as if waiting their turn. No one stood up, ran, struggled....they just sat there.

Now, they were not Zen monks. They were not sitting zazen. For all I know, they were practicing some kind of trance meditation. But it created an image in my head, a "goal" of not moving, that overwhelmed completely even the instincts of fear and response in a crisis.

So now, occasionally when I am sitting zazen at the Healdsburg Yoga Studio, and I hear people approach on the sidewalk outside, lingering at the front door...I go into morbid fantasies. What if one of them came in with a gun, and threatened us? Would we all just sit there? Would we all continue to face the wall, unmoving, because the period of zazen was not officially ended? If a gunman rushes into the room - do we need to wait for someone to ring the bell before we can respond?

I struggle with a similar "is it OK to move" question when sitting at home, only based in more mundane realities. I live in a house with five cats, three dogs and a parrot. Even when I am "home alone," as it were, I am anything but solitary. So when I sit down to meditate, there is a very real chance that something (someone) will interrupt me. I don't want to jump up at the slightest sound, or I'd never get through a sit period. On the other hand, I don't want to not respond if something truly attention-worthy occurs.

So my sitting goes something like this: I sit down on the cushion. I am silent and relaxed for about 10 minutes. Then I hear a crash. I remain seated, and keep my ears alert. If there is silence after the crash, I think, "Well, maybe Kenji the kitten jumped on the shower curtain again and brought the rod down. Or maybe Dozer misjudged when leaping down from the kitchen counter, and knocked my book bag onto the floor." I can keep sitting; there will be time later to put the house back in order.

However, if I hear a squawling, or a moan, maybe somebody got hurt. If I hear a flap of wings, then maybe Barney the parrot has decided to make an ungainly flight off the top of his cage and is now wandering around the living room floor, eating the new baseboard or getting dangerously close to the sleeping Bailey (cat) on the dog bed. Or if I hear a whole lot of crunching, maybe Teo the ridgeback has managed once again to spin the cat box around, and is creating a catastrophic mess in the bedroom. Time to get up and move, restoring everyone to safety.

I brought up this "can I move?" question at our study group today, and discovered that everyone who shares their home with animals grapples with these issues. What if the dog is barking? Is it better to ignore that and keep meditating, or to take the little guy into your lap and stroke him? What if the cat is kneading your leg, with a generous use of claws? Do you stoically resist either moving yourself or extracting talons from your thigh, or do you gently reposition your feline friend before returning to zazen?

Tony and others in the group reassured me that sitting zazen, in "no thinking" mind, does not mean that we are unable to respond to a crisis, small or life-threatening. In fact, the opposite is true: that posture of alert "no thought" puts us in an ideal position to move quickly and effortlessly toward right solution.

Whew. One ridiculously misplaced crisis fantasy put to rest - only one million other distracting thoughts left to deal with!

Clean Sheets and Trash Cans

Last week, sangha member Debi Papazian said, "Sometimes zazen is like taking a hot bath and climbing into clean sheets. Other times it feels like rolling down a hill inside of a metal trash can."

I had a "climbing into clean sheets" zazen period this morning. It was raining gently outside. My dog Ripley was lying on the floor next to me. The Japanese incense that I burn on my altar, sandalwood, smelled particularly fragrant. I bowed, rang the bell, sat, rang the bell, chanted the Bodhisattva vows, and bowed again. I felt completely and absolutely present, rested but awake.

But I've had the "trash can" experiences recently, too. One evening a few weeks ago, I came into my office to sit, feeling no more or less ready than I usually do. I sit for 30 minutes; I have a yoga timer that I set on the corner of my altar, facing away from myself. I settled myself on the cushion, lit the incense, and turned on the clock.

Within minutes, I had a tormeting itch on my face. I tried to relax out of it, let it go. But I had to give in and scratch. It was driving me crazy. Then my legs started cramping. I waited, but had to move. It felt like I had already been sitting for hours. I broke my hardfast rule not to look at the clock - oh, god, I still had 23 minutes left!

My legs cramped again. I moved. Then I just got squirrely, restless, my whole body twitching and needing to reposition. I looked at the clock again. Only five minutes had passed. Arghhh! I decided I could wiggle as much as I wanted, but I was not going to get up off of that cushion until 30 minutes had passed. It was a tortuous period. And of course, my mind was not at rest, either. It was going like crazy, with all kinds of messed up thinking.

I wanted to kiss that alarm clock when it finally went off.

What does that tell you about Zen practice? It's a helluva lot like life. Some days everything goes your way, and some days nothing cooperates. But no matter how badly you want to get up off of that cushion, you still have to sit through it.

The Physical Challenges of Sitting

Since the beginning of my sitting practice, what has been most challenging for me is the physical aspect of zazen. Most of the time, I am mentally able to sit fairly easily. I enjoy the quiet, and feel refreshed after a sit period.

But I struggle with my body. My feet go numb, and tingly. I worry that the sit period will end, and I will be unable to stand to do kinhin, the walking meditation. So I am forced to move, once, sometimes twice, to allow the blood to recirculate in my limbs.

I resist it. It seems that I should not have to move, not have to interrupt my zazen to respond to this physical demand of my body. I have tried numerous tactics: tightening and loosening my buttocks, flexing and curling my toes. But still, my legs fall asleep. Still, I must succumb to this uncooperative body of mine.

At all-day sits, the physical challenges become even more noticeable. There is the persistent problem with my feet falling asleep, now accompanied by a steadily growing pain in my back as the day progresses. For at least one of the afternoon sit periods, I am in agony, unable to get comfortable.

I beat myself up about it. I think it is a reflection on my practice. I think it is an indicator that I am not a "good" Zen student. It makes the noise in my head get louder and more obtrusive.

But still, I persist. I continue to attend the all-day sits. I no longer have "scheduling conflicts" when my Tuesday night sangha plans a double sit instead of a dharma talk. I show up.

And I have found that, as is so often the case, my recalcitrant body, stubbornly resisting my efforts to control it, has become a gentle teacher. I cannot master this situation through will alone. I am forced to come face to face with my limitations, my imperfections. The only way to silence that critic in my head is to be gentle with myself, to quietly sit as long as I can, and then give myself permission to move.

I am slowly coming to realize that "good" zazen is simply zazen: however it manifests itself, it shows me who I am, where I am. Begrudgingly, I am even coming to the realization that I am thankful it does not come easily for me. I am so attached to seeing myself as a "good student," that were I to have perfect, uninterrupted zazen, I would be feeding that delusion, that striving and attaining. Instead, I am given this reminder: I have limits; I am a beginner.

So, imperfections and all, tingly feet and all, critical mind and all: I sit.