The last couple of weeks of practice have passed like a slow train bumping along on a rickety old track: though the ride has been bumpy, with a few herks and jerks along the way, it has proceeded steadily enough, with slow insistence and strong momentum.
More and more I realize this practice is not about me or the mindstate I want to cultivate or have at any given moment. It is not about judging, controlling, or mastering the mind. It is about noticing. The subtle power of noticing is that you cannot be in unwitting complicity with what you notice. Once seen, thoughts lose their power to drive behavior, and slowly, over time, even lose their power to mold and limit perception. If you see a thought popping up, and notice its impact on subjective reality, it becomes clear that reality is not reality in our naive sense of it. "Reality" is more of a half-assed collage with some beautiful pieces but a lot of junk too, that "junk" being the inane self-centered thought reactivity going on in the background almost constantly.
It has been difficult to maintain discipline and focus these last two weeks, likely due to the dissolution of my normal routine as I have transitioned out of work. I have found myself more restless and uncomfortable on the cushion, and more than one night, my usual sitting period of 30 minutes has been pushed back to 25 or even 20 minutes. I missed sitting altogether on Days 41 (10/7) and 44 (10/10) of the Ango. However, for the most part, I'm finding it more difficult to allow myself to miss a day of zazen. The impact on the flow of my day is too notable to shrug off a day's zazen with the careless indifference I've felt about it in the past.
On Day 36 of the Ango, I "made up" one of the 1.5 hour "zazenkai" (I think it would be more accurate to refer to these "zazenkai" as "double sits" as they consist of two zazen periods, plus some chanting, bowing, and movement practice) I had previously missed. And as if the gods were playing a joke on me, and making a mockery of my momentarily devout feeling, five minutes after the first period began, a loud post-punk noise band started an outdoor set at a location I would later find out was only a couple of blocks away from my apartment. A more challenging sonic backdrop for zazen could hardly be imagined. However, it was a worthwhile experience to sit through. I could clearly notice and watch my mind reacting to the sounds, which it was quick to label as a "disturbance."
As I sat with No Pasaran! playing in the background, I was able to clearly watch the process unfold by which the mind labels something as "bad" or "other" and sets itself up against it (to be fair to the band, I like their style of music when I am not sitting zazen and do not think of it as "bad"). Perhaps it would be more accurate to say the mind tries to cleave itself from it. Once the mind has satisfactorily "peeled" itself "off" of the object it dislikes, it sets itself in opposition and readies itself for conflict. It was so clear how all of this was just a production of the mind. The sound itself lacks the qualities that the mind attributes to it, as a pacified mind (which I increasingly experienced over the course of the "double sit") experiences the sound as neutral. The music becomes part of a soundscape along with sirens and passing cars, people shouting to each other on the street, and is perceived similarly to the chorus of different natural sounds one encounters when sitting in the middle of the woods.
In addition to making up that "double sit," I sat the four hour monthly zazenkai live with Jundo and other Treeleafers on Day 37 (10/3) of the Ango. It was a wonderfully intimate experience of connection with the sangha, and with the extra zazen period of the day before, made for a weekend of strong practice. I missed the live "double sit" with the sangha on Day 43 (10/9) of the Ango but sat that "double sit" today. If I sit the rest of the "double sits" and zazenkai, I will need to only sit one additional "double sit" and one additional four hour zazenkai to make up for the ones I have previously missed.
Now that I am officially out of work, I am hoping to be able to dedicate more of my time in the second half of Ango to strong and focused practice, though I am learning how irrelevant judgments such as "strong" and "focused" are in this practice. The part of the mind that seeks the feeling of control is very wily, and, at least for me, this practice is more about seeing this part of the mind for what it is and letting go of it than playing into it.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Ango Days 27-34
I maintained daily sitting throughout the week, but once again, when the weekend came, despite my promise to myself that I would "get back on track" with the weekly zazenkai, I did not do it, leaving me with three missed zazenkai to "make up." I told myself I would do the zazenkai on Monday... then Tuesday... but I still have not done it.
This struck me powerfully on Monday morning, a rainy, dark day infused with melancholy. I could not escape the striking thought that with all of the enthusiasm and sincere intention with which I'd started the Ango, I had blown off my practice commitments on Sunday to play Tomb Raider: Anniversary. I thought, what kind of Zen Buddhist am I, to have such minimal commitment to the practice? I try my best to live rightly, and be true to my word, but my Ango commitments have been so easily jettisoned, postponed, or forgotten. Where has my enthusiasm gone? My passion? My sincerity?
My life has become so much less "spiritual" than it used to be, so much less pure, so much more given to vice and distraction than awareness and discipline. I have become more driven to serve my own desires than to practice kindness toward others. My perspective on people has gotten so warped since I moved to the New York metro area. People on the street, in their cars, or in the supermarket are competitors, people in my way, I must get mine before they get theirs, I must show them my displeasure if they impede my movement in even the slightest way. I have become a gentler driver than I was some months ago, but the trigger-instincts of aggression still lie just underneath the surface.
In my zazen practice there has been a feeling of day-to-day inertia and placid passivity. A period begins, a period ends, and there is nothing in between. Thoughts, emotions, coming and going, noticing, letting go, coming back to awareness of this mind resting in itself. Pleasant enough, but I have started to feel "stuck." My practice isn't "going anywhere." How am I ever going to wake up at this rate? How am I ever going to have a kensho? I lack the fire or will to even have much curiosity about what is going on in my mind, much less to break through to the awakened state! Maybe as a Zen student, I am useless: lazy and aggressive, undisciplined, incapable of kensho. So it went with my thoughts on Monday morning.
Fortuitously, I picked up the Fall 2010 issue of Buddhadharma and noticed it contained an article addressing the feeling of being "stuck" in practice. The article is titled "Feeling Stuck? Good!" by Ajahn Sucitto (pp. 43-47). The article has had a profound impact on my attitude and frame of mind. In it, Ajahn Sucitto writes,
"From time to time we come to a stuck place in our dhamma practice... After a while, the doing, fixing mind gets to the end of what it can accomplish and becomes the problem rather than the solution. Then we get stuck. And that sense of stuckness spins out into blaming our apparent self, our system of practice... we assess our character, our heart, our history, our past, our flaws, and our virtues. We fidget, become distracted, and jump to conclusions that will cement the stuckness into a situation...
We can note that the stuckness, having eluded our attempts to get rid of it or gloss over it, takes us to an 'edge.' We want to hold on to some identity, or to a conviction in our practice tradition, but we can't quite do it. We are taken to a place of uncertainty, a place where there is a feeling of not being anything solid but where there is still a hankering to be something. This is the edge.
It's not a comfortable place, but it is a piece of the journey. It is supposed to happen; the edge is the place where the self-vehicle gets overhauled. Because of that, the wheels have to come off. But there's a vital opening for anyone who gets to their edge and manages to feel their way past it. It's there that holding on to one's 'self' at the level of personality unravels.
Generally, to get off that edge of uncertainty we grasp on to all that's left: the uncertainty itself, and whatever it brings up. Often the mind moves away from the edge so quickly that we either shift into doing something, or otherwise displace the uncomfortable feeling... Restlessness builds up until we have to do something to make ourselves feel capable and comfortable again. All this activity intensifies the real obstacle, which is self-orientation...
Notice what takes you to the edge of feeling you're on solid ground. It may be part of your daily routine. Routine acts of service can be testing grounds, places where we no longer feel spontaneous, or on top, or seem to develop much. 'Surely all this humdrum stuff isn't going to take me to the bright gates of the Deathless!' So the wobble begins. Then again, taking responsibility may lead us to an edge of uncertainty about our own worth... This sense of being is so compulsive that if it can't lean on a positive sense of self, it adopts a negative one. Because of this, the stuckness is more difficult than any particular flaw, because the doubt that it stimulates corrodes our faith in the path and the practice.
At this place, all the teachings sound like platitudes we've heard a thousand times (and 'we still haven't become enlightened'), and although we should have gotten rid of our defilements by now, we haven't--and sometimes they even seem more authentic than our virtues. Our unconscious attachment to the teachings... presents its down side, and the romance looks like it's heading for divorce. It's all highly emotive, and emotion creates credibility, because whatever is emotive has vitality to it.
The stuck stuff captures and convinces by its power to stimulate the mind... [but] if we can see them for what they are... these energies won't stick. We realize that the stuck state is just a pattern of sankhara energies that we weren't fully aware of; and when that fullness of awareness is brought to bear, the self is taken out of it and it becomes unstuck. And it takes us to a [place that is] more intimate and comfortable than our personalities."
The article could not have more perfectly captured and illuminated the movements of my mind over the past week. I realized: "This practice has nothing to do with my personality." The virtue of sitting daily is not in the extent to which it fuels some desired-for change or state, but in the extent to which it throws the changeability and insubstantiality of the self and personality into relief. This practice isn't about me, or what it says about me. So maybe I'm not what I wish I was, but that is exactly the point. The definitions of the self, the thoughts of the self about itself, are completely irrelevant to this practice.
The self is strikingly subtle and deceptive. There it was, coiled at the heart of my practice, and I could not see it, camouflaged as it was by a leaf-litter of distracting thoughts and powerful emotions. And the sense of relief I feel now that it has been seen is immense. In a reverse of the Buddha's famous simile, I have seen that what lies coiled in the shadows is not a rope, but a snake; not a useful tool, but a poisonous foe. The self-measurements, the spiritual spoils my ego wants to obtain, are tricks and fantasies to keep me from looking at the thing itself.
The strange thing about the disciplines of Zen practice in general and Ango in particular is that they are easier to maintain when there is a sense of ease and calm, when the pressure to maintain them is lifted--when they become disentangled from the self that wants to define itself through them.
This struck me powerfully on Monday morning, a rainy, dark day infused with melancholy. I could not escape the striking thought that with all of the enthusiasm and sincere intention with which I'd started the Ango, I had blown off my practice commitments on Sunday to play Tomb Raider: Anniversary. I thought, what kind of Zen Buddhist am I, to have such minimal commitment to the practice? I try my best to live rightly, and be true to my word, but my Ango commitments have been so easily jettisoned, postponed, or forgotten. Where has my enthusiasm gone? My passion? My sincerity?
My life has become so much less "spiritual" than it used to be, so much less pure, so much more given to vice and distraction than awareness and discipline. I have become more driven to serve my own desires than to practice kindness toward others. My perspective on people has gotten so warped since I moved to the New York metro area. People on the street, in their cars, or in the supermarket are competitors, people in my way, I must get mine before they get theirs, I must show them my displeasure if they impede my movement in even the slightest way. I have become a gentler driver than I was some months ago, but the trigger-instincts of aggression still lie just underneath the surface.
In my zazen practice there has been a feeling of day-to-day inertia and placid passivity. A period begins, a period ends, and there is nothing in between. Thoughts, emotions, coming and going, noticing, letting go, coming back to awareness of this mind resting in itself. Pleasant enough, but I have started to feel "stuck." My practice isn't "going anywhere." How am I ever going to wake up at this rate? How am I ever going to have a kensho? I lack the fire or will to even have much curiosity about what is going on in my mind, much less to break through to the awakened state! Maybe as a Zen student, I am useless: lazy and aggressive, undisciplined, incapable of kensho. So it went with my thoughts on Monday morning.
Fortuitously, I picked up the Fall 2010 issue of Buddhadharma and noticed it contained an article addressing the feeling of being "stuck" in practice. The article is titled "Feeling Stuck? Good!" by Ajahn Sucitto (pp. 43-47). The article has had a profound impact on my attitude and frame of mind. In it, Ajahn Sucitto writes,
"From time to time we come to a stuck place in our dhamma practice... After a while, the doing, fixing mind gets to the end of what it can accomplish and becomes the problem rather than the solution. Then we get stuck. And that sense of stuckness spins out into blaming our apparent self, our system of practice... we assess our character, our heart, our history, our past, our flaws, and our virtues. We fidget, become distracted, and jump to conclusions that will cement the stuckness into a situation...
We can note that the stuckness, having eluded our attempts to get rid of it or gloss over it, takes us to an 'edge.' We want to hold on to some identity, or to a conviction in our practice tradition, but we can't quite do it. We are taken to a place of uncertainty, a place where there is a feeling of not being anything solid but where there is still a hankering to be something. This is the edge.
It's not a comfortable place, but it is a piece of the journey. It is supposed to happen; the edge is the place where the self-vehicle gets overhauled. Because of that, the wheels have to come off. But there's a vital opening for anyone who gets to their edge and manages to feel their way past it. It's there that holding on to one's 'self' at the level of personality unravels.
Generally, to get off that edge of uncertainty we grasp on to all that's left: the uncertainty itself, and whatever it brings up. Often the mind moves away from the edge so quickly that we either shift into doing something, or otherwise displace the uncomfortable feeling... Restlessness builds up until we have to do something to make ourselves feel capable and comfortable again. All this activity intensifies the real obstacle, which is self-orientation...
Notice what takes you to the edge of feeling you're on solid ground. It may be part of your daily routine. Routine acts of service can be testing grounds, places where we no longer feel spontaneous, or on top, or seem to develop much. 'Surely all this humdrum stuff isn't going to take me to the bright gates of the Deathless!' So the wobble begins. Then again, taking responsibility may lead us to an edge of uncertainty about our own worth... This sense of being is so compulsive that if it can't lean on a positive sense of self, it adopts a negative one. Because of this, the stuckness is more difficult than any particular flaw, because the doubt that it stimulates corrodes our faith in the path and the practice.
At this place, all the teachings sound like platitudes we've heard a thousand times (and 'we still haven't become enlightened'), and although we should have gotten rid of our defilements by now, we haven't--and sometimes they even seem more authentic than our virtues. Our unconscious attachment to the teachings... presents its down side, and the romance looks like it's heading for divorce. It's all highly emotive, and emotion creates credibility, because whatever is emotive has vitality to it.
The stuck stuff captures and convinces by its power to stimulate the mind... [but] if we can see them for what they are... these energies won't stick. We realize that the stuck state is just a pattern of sankhara energies that we weren't fully aware of; and when that fullness of awareness is brought to bear, the self is taken out of it and it becomes unstuck. And it takes us to a [place that is] more intimate and comfortable than our personalities."
The article could not have more perfectly captured and illuminated the movements of my mind over the past week. I realized: "This practice has nothing to do with my personality." The virtue of sitting daily is not in the extent to which it fuels some desired-for change or state, but in the extent to which it throws the changeability and insubstantiality of the self and personality into relief. This practice isn't about me, or what it says about me. So maybe I'm not what I wish I was, but that is exactly the point. The definitions of the self, the thoughts of the self about itself, are completely irrelevant to this practice.
The self is strikingly subtle and deceptive. There it was, coiled at the heart of my practice, and I could not see it, camouflaged as it was by a leaf-litter of distracting thoughts and powerful emotions. And the sense of relief I feel now that it has been seen is immense. In a reverse of the Buddha's famous simile, I have seen that what lies coiled in the shadows is not a rope, but a snake; not a useful tool, but a poisonous foe. The self-measurements, the spiritual spoils my ego wants to obtain, are tricks and fantasies to keep me from looking at the thing itself.
The strange thing about the disciplines of Zen practice in general and Ango in particular is that they are easier to maintain when there is a sense of ease and calm, when the pressure to maintain them is lifted--when they become disentangled from the self that wants to define itself through them.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Ango Days 19-26
The strongest part of my Ango practice continues to be my renewed commitment to zazen. This past week, I sat every day except Day 21 (Friday 17) and Day 25 (Tuesday 21). On Day 21, I fully intended to sit, but sleep overtook me. I came through my front door intensely hungry and made myself a meal of instant pierogies, salad greens, and sautéed vegetables. Perhaps it was eating a large meal after a period of intense hunger, or the amount of energy required to digest a fiber-heavy meal, but I immediately became sleepy. I lay down on the couch for "a minute" and woke up two hours later, ready to go to bed and sleep for the rest of the night. But the next day, the first thing I did was sit. I have continued to do morning rather than evening sits from that day onward. Yesterday, Day 25, was the first day of the Ango that I said to myself, "I am not going to sit today." There is a time around my period where the tenderness in my abdomen and jaggedness in my head makes me averse to sitting. But this morning, once again, I started my day with zazen.
Though I continue to miss an occasional day of sitting, I am always ready to resume sitting the next day, without any struggle. Zazen is once again becoming an integral part of my day. It has gotten easier, with less resistance and struggle from my mind against the practice. But with the reduced struggle, there is now a vague sense of anxiety and a feeling of being "stuck." I feel like my practice is "going nowhere" and like my mind is a stagnant pool. The old hunger for kensho is there and where some months ago I felt I was in the borderlands of waking up, now I feel walled off from the possibility. Sometimes I wonder if the practice of shikantaza is too passive, without the energy of holding a question, but at other times, what seems to be going on is a struggle with the part of me that wants to be in control and to feel like it is accomplishing something, the part that blocks awakening. So I continue to sit.
All other Ango commitments are on tottering steps these days, stumbling, but not abandoned. I have met with Jundo on Skype once for interview, and though Daibh and I have not done either of the formal Practice Partner exercises, we continue to support one another's practice. I have missed the last two Saturday intensive sits, which to me is the second most important commitment of the Ango next to daily zazen. I intend to "make them up" when I can, but for now, just focus on not missing any more of them.
I am trying, and struggling, with my commitment to kind speech and thought, and mindful work with the spirit of samu. I now have two and a half weeks left at my current job, and it is bringing up many conflicting feelings. I feel sadness and loss over the friends and comrades I will leave behind, the humor and drama and compassion in action I experience there. I also feel a huge sense of relief and an increasing flow of joy. I know I am at a major transition point in my life; a long journey has come to an end, and I am ready for it.
Yet somehow it is still difficult to maintain a joyful mind and avoid wrong thought and speech at work, much less approach each work day with the humility and discipline of samu. Resentments that have festered for the 1.5 years I have worked there are bubbling to the surface, as well as anger, fear, and concern for my fellow staff members due to the ongoing management problems there. I want to leave the job with a positive and grateful attitude; despite my frustrations, the experience has been more positive than negative. But perhaps it is hard to so easily let go of the frustrations that build when you have been required to submit in silence to people with more power over you even when you wanted to question or speak out. Whatever it is, my workday is characterized more by a desire to get through the day as quickly as possible and an almost conscious desire not to be mentally present to it.
It is the same with the massive weekend of house chores I completed on Sunday. There was a sense of aggression, anxiety, and urgency, to get it all done in time. It is hard to enjoy the simple act of cleaning when so much has to be done in so little time. I used to find house chores a very easy venue for mindfulness. I enjoy the simple physical motions of cleaning, and the process of watching dirty and messy areas become neat and ordered. I think the lack of mindfulness comes from a lack of energy and having to push oneself through a seemingly endless stream of "work."
I am so grateful that my mother and stepfather are allowing me to stay with them for the holidays with no need to pay rent or work, only to help out with food expenses, which I should be able to do with savings from my last paycheck, returned security deposit on my apartment, and small but significant dividend check from a family business. The drain of my work and daily commute, and the demands of caring for a home as a solitary breadwinner and homemaker, have left me feeling out of touch with myself for an extended period of time. What do I believe? What are my motivations in my practice and anything else? What do I really want in life? I do not know the answers to these questions, and am hopeful a 2-3 month "sabbatical" will allow me to rest and renew and come to a clear sense of direction.
I am also hopeful the sabbatical will allow me to commit myself more fully to this Ango. Because while I am doing the practices, if somewhat inconsistently, my mind and heart are not focused. My daily life has no sense of the sacred or the focus that was there in the first few days of the Ango. And this too goes back to my motivation in practice being unclear. I do not know what I want or why I am still practicing; I want to wake up, to experience kensho, but what is that? My ego wants something it does not understand, for reasons I cannot even clarify.
It is my plan when I am back home to replace the time and structure currently provided by my work with samu and other formal practice periods. One thing I would really like to do to help my mom and stepdad, and at the same time help my practice, is to every day spend a set amount of time focused on one particular domestic task. Perhaps one day I will dust surfaces, another day clean windows, another day clean bathrooms, another day clean floors. I will be able to enjoy these acts without the exhaustion and stress that come with working full time and having to do all the cleaning oneself in a designated and limited frame of time, after a work week has already depleted one's energies. I will also be able to help my mom and stepdad have more time to enjoy their weekends after their work weeks, by not having to spend so much of their time cleaning the house. I look forward being able to connect my actions to a community I feel part of, the microcommunity of an immediate family. I am hopeful now that I am moving back home where my family is that I will never again have to experience the isolation and alienation I have experienced up here.
Though I continue to miss an occasional day of sitting, I am always ready to resume sitting the next day, without any struggle. Zazen is once again becoming an integral part of my day. It has gotten easier, with less resistance and struggle from my mind against the practice. But with the reduced struggle, there is now a vague sense of anxiety and a feeling of being "stuck." I feel like my practice is "going nowhere" and like my mind is a stagnant pool. The old hunger for kensho is there and where some months ago I felt I was in the borderlands of waking up, now I feel walled off from the possibility. Sometimes I wonder if the practice of shikantaza is too passive, without the energy of holding a question, but at other times, what seems to be going on is a struggle with the part of me that wants to be in control and to feel like it is accomplishing something, the part that blocks awakening. So I continue to sit.
All other Ango commitments are on tottering steps these days, stumbling, but not abandoned. I have met with Jundo on Skype once for interview, and though Daibh and I have not done either of the formal Practice Partner exercises, we continue to support one another's practice. I have missed the last two Saturday intensive sits, which to me is the second most important commitment of the Ango next to daily zazen. I intend to "make them up" when I can, but for now, just focus on not missing any more of them.
I am trying, and struggling, with my commitment to kind speech and thought, and mindful work with the spirit of samu. I now have two and a half weeks left at my current job, and it is bringing up many conflicting feelings. I feel sadness and loss over the friends and comrades I will leave behind, the humor and drama and compassion in action I experience there. I also feel a huge sense of relief and an increasing flow of joy. I know I am at a major transition point in my life; a long journey has come to an end, and I am ready for it.
Yet somehow it is still difficult to maintain a joyful mind and avoid wrong thought and speech at work, much less approach each work day with the humility and discipline of samu. Resentments that have festered for the 1.5 years I have worked there are bubbling to the surface, as well as anger, fear, and concern for my fellow staff members due to the ongoing management problems there. I want to leave the job with a positive and grateful attitude; despite my frustrations, the experience has been more positive than negative. But perhaps it is hard to so easily let go of the frustrations that build when you have been required to submit in silence to people with more power over you even when you wanted to question or speak out. Whatever it is, my workday is characterized more by a desire to get through the day as quickly as possible and an almost conscious desire not to be mentally present to it.
It is the same with the massive weekend of house chores I completed on Sunday. There was a sense of aggression, anxiety, and urgency, to get it all done in time. It is hard to enjoy the simple act of cleaning when so much has to be done in so little time. I used to find house chores a very easy venue for mindfulness. I enjoy the simple physical motions of cleaning, and the process of watching dirty and messy areas become neat and ordered. I think the lack of mindfulness comes from a lack of energy and having to push oneself through a seemingly endless stream of "work."
I am so grateful that my mother and stepfather are allowing me to stay with them for the holidays with no need to pay rent or work, only to help out with food expenses, which I should be able to do with savings from my last paycheck, returned security deposit on my apartment, and small but significant dividend check from a family business. The drain of my work and daily commute, and the demands of caring for a home as a solitary breadwinner and homemaker, have left me feeling out of touch with myself for an extended period of time. What do I believe? What are my motivations in my practice and anything else? What do I really want in life? I do not know the answers to these questions, and am hopeful a 2-3 month "sabbatical" will allow me to rest and renew and come to a clear sense of direction.
I am also hopeful the sabbatical will allow me to commit myself more fully to this Ango. Because while I am doing the practices, if somewhat inconsistently, my mind and heart are not focused. My daily life has no sense of the sacred or the focus that was there in the first few days of the Ango. And this too goes back to my motivation in practice being unclear. I do not know what I want or why I am still practicing; I want to wake up, to experience kensho, but what is that? My ego wants something it does not understand, for reasons I cannot even clarify.
It is my plan when I am back home to replace the time and structure currently provided by my work with samu and other formal practice periods. One thing I would really like to do to help my mom and stepdad, and at the same time help my practice, is to every day spend a set amount of time focused on one particular domestic task. Perhaps one day I will dust surfaces, another day clean windows, another day clean bathrooms, another day clean floors. I will be able to enjoy these acts without the exhaustion and stress that come with working full time and having to do all the cleaning oneself in a designated and limited frame of time, after a work week has already depleted one's energies. I will also be able to help my mom and stepdad have more time to enjoy their weekends after their work weeks, by not having to spend so much of their time cleaning the house. I look forward being able to connect my actions to a community I feel part of, the microcommunity of an immediate family. I am hopeful now that I am moving back home where my family is that I will never again have to experience the isolation and alienation I have experienced up here.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Ango Days 12-18
The past week has yielded a sudden, inexplicable drop in my energy and motivation levels.
As last week wore on through to the weekend, my time for zazen kept getting pushed later and later into the night, resulting in shortened sitting periods of 25 minutes on Friday and Saturday and culminating Sunday in the first day of this Ango when I failed to sit zazen at all. I got back on track the next day, and today during my sit, noticed cracks opening up in the carapace of numbness that my body had hardened into. I felt myself softening and opening up, blooming into the moment. It was clear how much my subjective numbness has been a defensive reaction to an underlying tender sadness I cannot explain, as that sadness welled up, seemingly from every pore, throughout the sit. It is interesting how similar the feelings of tiredness and sadness are.
I am drawing ever closer to my final day at my job and my arrival back home in Virginia. This arrival will begin a 2-3 month "sabbatical" period in which my family has been gracious enough to offer to support me financially until I get a new job at the beginning of the coming year. I feel out of touch with myself and exhausted, and need time to reflect before returning to the workforce to be able to do so with any clarity and focus. A season of rest and reflection is an unimaginable boon.
With such a wonderful vista ahead of me--the prospect of recuperating and spending time with my dearest loved ones--I would expect myself to be energetic and motivated, optimistic and practically dancing for joy with each sunrise. And yet the opposite has been happening. Days 15 - 17 of the Ango constituted a long weekend in which I had three days free of any obligations. Not only did I not leave the apartment, I avoided human contact in just about every form. Nor did I set myself to any number of tasks that need doing, such as posting sale notices for my furniture on Craigslist or cleaning my apartment. Also, in a coup de grace of Ango mismanagement, not only did I not sit on Sunday, I also failed to do the weekly 90 minute zazenkai on any of the three free days I had. Nor have I yet to make up the four hour zazenkai I missed the previous weekend because I did not know it was a four hour zazenkai, having done the 90 minute version instead.
In the substance abuse program in which I work as a counselor, we refer clients who cannot maintain the discipline and effort required to navigate the stressors and triggers of their daily lives without reverting to substance abuse to a "higher level of care," such as a 28 day inpatient program. In that spirit, as a Zen practitioner committed to re-establishing a sober life of practice and aware living, I could not disagree with a "Zen counselor" who referred me to a monastic sitting where the group spirit and structure of the program would carry me through and sustain this practice, supporting me where my current motivation and energy levels cannot.
But all I can do now, faced with the realistic limitations of my situation, is to recommit myself every day to living life not as it is lived by default, but with awareness and intention. By "intention" I do not mean direction toward a particular goal, but rather an attitude of attentive care to every task. What I am finding in my uneasy relationship with the commitment of Ango is that the discipline I resist is not draining once done instead of thought about. Zazen is an oasis and home care tasks performed with attention become delights in themselves. It is amazing how quickly I forget this, and how pleasant the surprise when I yet again experience the deep release of zazen or the joy and love of a simple task engaged fully.
I have found in myself a fatigue and a melancholy that surprise me. But it seems so obvious now from the midst of it that it is hard to imagine ever expecting otherwise. Even when we leave some place for what looks like a much better one, there is a sadness in the leaving, in all of the goodbyes that must be said, the loved rituals and places of pilgrimage that will fade from life's rhythm, and the acceptance of failures and unrealized dreams.
The New York and North New Jersey metro has been hostile and alien since I set foot here, and leaving feels like an admission of failure. This city bested me, and the life I dreamed for myself here never blossomed. A first flush of color and fruit that burst into life quickly after my arrival dropped to the ground mere months later, leaving a withered tree that continues to struggle to come to leaf again. I am confident that my home soil will nourish and heal, and perhaps it is less that I am not enthusiastic about the seeming brightness of my near future, and more that it is so long overdue that the joy can only come when the relief is actually here.
It is easy for me to turn the commitment and discipline of Ango into another whip with which to scourge myself. And I am seeing clearly that this is not the Way. My exhausted mind and body need gentle tending. This Ango discipline, firm but flexible, supportive at the same time it is accommodating, is not like a grinding stone. Just like forgetting the instructions and coming back from distraction again and again when sitting, I forget repeatedly that the gentle efforts of Zen practice open life up and make it gentler, not harsher and more unforgiving. And each time I come back, and remember, it is like a revelation.
As last week wore on through to the weekend, my time for zazen kept getting pushed later and later into the night, resulting in shortened sitting periods of 25 minutes on Friday and Saturday and culminating Sunday in the first day of this Ango when I failed to sit zazen at all. I got back on track the next day, and today during my sit, noticed cracks opening up in the carapace of numbness that my body had hardened into. I felt myself softening and opening up, blooming into the moment. It was clear how much my subjective numbness has been a defensive reaction to an underlying tender sadness I cannot explain, as that sadness welled up, seemingly from every pore, throughout the sit. It is interesting how similar the feelings of tiredness and sadness are.
I am drawing ever closer to my final day at my job and my arrival back home in Virginia. This arrival will begin a 2-3 month "sabbatical" period in which my family has been gracious enough to offer to support me financially until I get a new job at the beginning of the coming year. I feel out of touch with myself and exhausted, and need time to reflect before returning to the workforce to be able to do so with any clarity and focus. A season of rest and reflection is an unimaginable boon.
With such a wonderful vista ahead of me--the prospect of recuperating and spending time with my dearest loved ones--I would expect myself to be energetic and motivated, optimistic and practically dancing for joy with each sunrise. And yet the opposite has been happening. Days 15 - 17 of the Ango constituted a long weekend in which I had three days free of any obligations. Not only did I not leave the apartment, I avoided human contact in just about every form. Nor did I set myself to any number of tasks that need doing, such as posting sale notices for my furniture on Craigslist or cleaning my apartment. Also, in a coup de grace of Ango mismanagement, not only did I not sit on Sunday, I also failed to do the weekly 90 minute zazenkai on any of the three free days I had. Nor have I yet to make up the four hour zazenkai I missed the previous weekend because I did not know it was a four hour zazenkai, having done the 90 minute version instead.
In the substance abuse program in which I work as a counselor, we refer clients who cannot maintain the discipline and effort required to navigate the stressors and triggers of their daily lives without reverting to substance abuse to a "higher level of care," such as a 28 day inpatient program. In that spirit, as a Zen practitioner committed to re-establishing a sober life of practice and aware living, I could not disagree with a "Zen counselor" who referred me to a monastic sitting where the group spirit and structure of the program would carry me through and sustain this practice, supporting me where my current motivation and energy levels cannot.
But all I can do now, faced with the realistic limitations of my situation, is to recommit myself every day to living life not as it is lived by default, but with awareness and intention. By "intention" I do not mean direction toward a particular goal, but rather an attitude of attentive care to every task. What I am finding in my uneasy relationship with the commitment of Ango is that the discipline I resist is not draining once done instead of thought about. Zazen is an oasis and home care tasks performed with attention become delights in themselves. It is amazing how quickly I forget this, and how pleasant the surprise when I yet again experience the deep release of zazen or the joy and love of a simple task engaged fully.
I have found in myself a fatigue and a melancholy that surprise me. But it seems so obvious now from the midst of it that it is hard to imagine ever expecting otherwise. Even when we leave some place for what looks like a much better one, there is a sadness in the leaving, in all of the goodbyes that must be said, the loved rituals and places of pilgrimage that will fade from life's rhythm, and the acceptance of failures and unrealized dreams.
The New York and North New Jersey metro has been hostile and alien since I set foot here, and leaving feels like an admission of failure. This city bested me, and the life I dreamed for myself here never blossomed. A first flush of color and fruit that burst into life quickly after my arrival dropped to the ground mere months later, leaving a withered tree that continues to struggle to come to leaf again. I am confident that my home soil will nourish and heal, and perhaps it is less that I am not enthusiastic about the seeming brightness of my near future, and more that it is so long overdue that the joy can only come when the relief is actually here.
It is easy for me to turn the commitment and discipline of Ango into another whip with which to scourge myself. And I am seeing clearly that this is not the Way. My exhausted mind and body need gentle tending. This Ango discipline, firm but flexible, supportive at the same time it is accommodating, is not like a grinding stone. Just like forgetting the instructions and coming back from distraction again and again when sitting, I forget repeatedly that the gentle efforts of Zen practice open life up and make it gentler, not harsher and more unforgiving. And each time I come back, and remember, it is like a revelation.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Ango Days 8 - 11
Today was the first day of the Ango that sitting felt natural, like a normal part of the day's flow instead of a strange feat of discipline. Time felt fluid, I had no clue how much time had passed, and even the thought seemed strange. For the first time since the beginning I did not compulsively check the time at any point while sitting to see how much time was left. There are thoughts that I was happy to let go of on the cushion instead of nurture and coddle as is my natural tendency.
I do not believe this means I have hit some sort of point in some sort of linear progression where sitting will be easy and resistance-free from here on out. But it is nice to experience and remember what it was like for this practice of intimacy with the Silence, as Dave (Praxis Dave, not Daibh Dave ;) puts it, to be a normal and welcomed part of the day.
So far I have not missed a day's sit yet and do not intend to. I do not know when I will add a morning sit, but know that is something I would like to try at some point in the Ango.
I did the normal 1.5 hour "zazenkai" this Saturday, not realizing this Saturday was the 4 hour zazenkai, as I am not at this point following along with the live stream or recording. I will have to do the four hour schedule some time in the next three weeks. There will be plenty of good opportunities for it as this time of transition is full of emotional hooks and distractions.
I've all but abandoned mindful eating and any other practices besides zazen and right speech. I want to come back to these, and maintain my full commitment.
I do not believe this means I have hit some sort of point in some sort of linear progression where sitting will be easy and resistance-free from here on out. But it is nice to experience and remember what it was like for this practice of intimacy with the Silence, as Dave (Praxis Dave, not Daibh Dave ;) puts it, to be a normal and welcomed part of the day.
So far I have not missed a day's sit yet and do not intend to. I do not know when I will add a morning sit, but know that is something I would like to try at some point in the Ango.
I did the normal 1.5 hour "zazenkai" this Saturday, not realizing this Saturday was the 4 hour zazenkai, as I am not at this point following along with the live stream or recording. I will have to do the four hour schedule some time in the next three weeks. There will be plenty of good opportunities for it as this time of transition is full of emotional hooks and distractions.
I've all but abandoned mindful eating and any other practices besides zazen and right speech. I want to come back to these, and maintain my full commitment.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Ango Days 5 - 7
I kept my commitment to sit every day for the past three days, and I am certain that it is only that commitment that got me to sit on the fifth and sixth days of Ango. I could tell that those were days I regularly would have forgone sitting. The sits themselves were difficult, with a racing and uneasy mind and uncomfortable body. I even cut those days back to what has been my usual sitting time during the last year, 25 minutes (I made a commitment for the Ango that I would increase my sitting time by 5 minutes). Today was much easier, though with a mind still awhirl.
I noticed today near the end of the sit the posture of expectation I bring to sitting, as I also bring to much of my daily activity. It feels like the posture of a baby bird, sitting there with its beak open, waiting. I've noticed the expectation I've had that after resuming daily sitting, my average mindstate would become smoother, and I've seen that expectation dashed. This week my mindfulness and state of mind at work progressively regressed, and mindfulness dwindled to a bare minimum. This was initially a source of frustration and aggression toward myself--how can I discipline myself more?--but today I saw the hungry attitude behind this thinking. This hungry attitude is more interesting, and more problematic, to me, than the quality of mindfulness it is hungry to establish.
"Hungry" is an apt term, as I've noticed too in this first week of Ango how much I resist mindful eating. My eating became less and less mindful over the course of the week. I think part of this may be not wanting to look at the precious and neurotic attitude I bring to the table. I take great pleasure in food and expect it to deliver that pleasure. Many of my favorite indulgences revolve around food, and are very ritualistic. I like to pair certain foods with one another, pair certain foods with certain beverages, and pair certain meals with certain activities. I like eating sushi and drinking Torrontes while watching a nature documentary. I like drinking a musky red wine and eating chocolate by candlelight. I like to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with my morning Sugar Free Red Bull, or sometimes pancakes. I have a hard time enjoying most meals without a Diet Coke, which I especially like with chips and salsa or with a Lean Cuisine pasta meal.
I realize that there is nothing necessarily wrong with finding pleasure with food in the idiosyncratic way that I do. But I find the attitude of expectation underneath this behavior problematic, and a source of an endless cycle of craving and disappointment. Every once in a while I have that perfect moment--with food or otherwise--but most of the time, I am chasing it and not attaining it. Do the perfect moments justify all the time spent chasing them? I truly do not know, though I know the "good Buddhist" answer would be no.
I have noticed too that I am often in a fighting posture. I catch myself many times on the cushion and off fighting with myself, trying to make whatever my mind and body is doing into something different. There is a constant background of self-criticism. This is something I am relieved to drop when I can, but I also have an underlying fear that to drop the fight is to sink into complacency, to surrender to entropy and sloth. But perhaps it is the tension of the constant fight posture that drains my energy and makes me sloppy with things.
I am not sure I will be able to do it, but I think I would benefit from establishing both a morning sit and an evening sit every day. I am instinctively a night sitter, which means the whole momentum of the day has set my mind achurn before sitting. It might be interesting and worthwhile to commit to sitting with morning mind also, though I may find out it is not any different.
I noticed today near the end of the sit the posture of expectation I bring to sitting, as I also bring to much of my daily activity. It feels like the posture of a baby bird, sitting there with its beak open, waiting. I've noticed the expectation I've had that after resuming daily sitting, my average mindstate would become smoother, and I've seen that expectation dashed. This week my mindfulness and state of mind at work progressively regressed, and mindfulness dwindled to a bare minimum. This was initially a source of frustration and aggression toward myself--how can I discipline myself more?--but today I saw the hungry attitude behind this thinking. This hungry attitude is more interesting, and more problematic, to me, than the quality of mindfulness it is hungry to establish.
"Hungry" is an apt term, as I've noticed too in this first week of Ango how much I resist mindful eating. My eating became less and less mindful over the course of the week. I think part of this may be not wanting to look at the precious and neurotic attitude I bring to the table. I take great pleasure in food and expect it to deliver that pleasure. Many of my favorite indulgences revolve around food, and are very ritualistic. I like to pair certain foods with one another, pair certain foods with certain beverages, and pair certain meals with certain activities. I like eating sushi and drinking Torrontes while watching a nature documentary. I like drinking a musky red wine and eating chocolate by candlelight. I like to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with my morning Sugar Free Red Bull, or sometimes pancakes. I have a hard time enjoying most meals without a Diet Coke, which I especially like with chips and salsa or with a Lean Cuisine pasta meal.
I realize that there is nothing necessarily wrong with finding pleasure with food in the idiosyncratic way that I do. But I find the attitude of expectation underneath this behavior problematic, and a source of an endless cycle of craving and disappointment. Every once in a while I have that perfect moment--with food or otherwise--but most of the time, I am chasing it and not attaining it. Do the perfect moments justify all the time spent chasing them? I truly do not know, though I know the "good Buddhist" answer would be no.
I have noticed too that I am often in a fighting posture. I catch myself many times on the cushion and off fighting with myself, trying to make whatever my mind and body is doing into something different. There is a constant background of self-criticism. This is something I am relieved to drop when I can, but I also have an underlying fear that to drop the fight is to sink into complacency, to surrender to entropy and sloth. But perhaps it is the tension of the constant fight posture that drains my energy and makes me sloppy with things.
I am not sure I will be able to do it, but I think I would benefit from establishing both a morning sit and an evening sit every day. I am instinctively a night sitter, which means the whole momentum of the day has set my mind achurn before sitting. It might be interesting and worthwhile to commit to sitting with morning mind also, though I may find out it is not any different.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Ango Days 3 - 4
Sat zazen for 30 minutes today and yesterday. I could tell that both were days that I would have skipped zazen if I had not made this commitment. My mind is incredibly busy and thick with thought after a day at work and awareness hardly cuts through it at all. It is almost unpleasant to sit with a mind so stirred up by a day of dealing with a commute full of aggressive drivers and a workday full of sensitive, finely tuned encounters with others. It buzzes like a fly frantically trying to get to the other side of a window.
But the truth is that I don't know exactly why my mind is more stirred up or why I resist sitting after most work days. One thing I have definitely noticed in the first few days of this Ango is how the majority of my day is experienced and perceived through a matrix of thought. The main conscious content of my experience is my ideas, most of which are pure conjecture. The fleeting moments where I can drop the conceptualizing are moments that carry a feeling of "duh," where I feel like an idiot who's been listening unquestioningly to a crazy person all day.
One of the practice commitments I made for this Ango is to take up and practice kind thought and speech. I notice how sick I have become of the negativity that clouds my thinking, especially about other people. I do not take up this Right Speech practice with any sort of sanctimoniousness, I am simply sick of getting caught up in my own and others' negativity. The needless negative gossip about others... it is amazing how much of the content of social experience is negative statements about other people.
The problem I have with it isn't the negativity per se but the fact that most of these negative thoughts, statements, and beliefs are completely incorrect fabrications of the mind. One is creating hostility toward others and contributing to the suffering of others for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Even a seemingly straightforward practice like Right Speech is amazing in its scope--I have to be constantly vigilant of how I think and what I say, as even with effort to be aware I am constantly "slipping," thinking and saying negative things and participating in gossip. It is all mind-numbing.
The practice with which I am having the most difficulty is mindful eating. I've not been keeping to a calorie count and much of my food is eaten while in a distracted state of mind. I bring a very greedy mind to my meals, I chase after the "perfect bite" of food with just the right mix of flavors. It seems that all my unfulfilled yearning for perfection and solace is brought to the table (pardon the pun) when I eat.
Today I told a few of my coworkers, the ones I love the most, about my plans to leave my job and return to Virginia in October. I was surprised by the force of their emotional reaction, it touched me and filled me with a mix of wildly different feelings. I realize how much these people have meant to me and how much I will miss them. I had a hard time accepting the love and affection I experienced today, it made me feel guilty and awkward. And yet I am also moved and deeply grateful to have been able to touch and be touched by such amazing people. I wish I could take them all to Virginia with me! I have been so lucky to have this job as my first out of grad school, it is amazing how much time and energy I have wasted in my head on negativity and nit-picking about the things about it that I don't like. All the while we bitch about it, life is passing us by in all its fleeting beauty.
But the truth is that I don't know exactly why my mind is more stirred up or why I resist sitting after most work days. One thing I have definitely noticed in the first few days of this Ango is how the majority of my day is experienced and perceived through a matrix of thought. The main conscious content of my experience is my ideas, most of which are pure conjecture. The fleeting moments where I can drop the conceptualizing are moments that carry a feeling of "duh," where I feel like an idiot who's been listening unquestioningly to a crazy person all day.
One of the practice commitments I made for this Ango is to take up and practice kind thought and speech. I notice how sick I have become of the negativity that clouds my thinking, especially about other people. I do not take up this Right Speech practice with any sort of sanctimoniousness, I am simply sick of getting caught up in my own and others' negativity. The needless negative gossip about others... it is amazing how much of the content of social experience is negative statements about other people.
The problem I have with it isn't the negativity per se but the fact that most of these negative thoughts, statements, and beliefs are completely incorrect fabrications of the mind. One is creating hostility toward others and contributing to the suffering of others for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Even a seemingly straightforward practice like Right Speech is amazing in its scope--I have to be constantly vigilant of how I think and what I say, as even with effort to be aware I am constantly "slipping," thinking and saying negative things and participating in gossip. It is all mind-numbing.
The practice with which I am having the most difficulty is mindful eating. I've not been keeping to a calorie count and much of my food is eaten while in a distracted state of mind. I bring a very greedy mind to my meals, I chase after the "perfect bite" of food with just the right mix of flavors. It seems that all my unfulfilled yearning for perfection and solace is brought to the table (pardon the pun) when I eat.
Today I told a few of my coworkers, the ones I love the most, about my plans to leave my job and return to Virginia in October. I was surprised by the force of their emotional reaction, it touched me and filled me with a mix of wildly different feelings. I realize how much these people have meant to me and how much I will miss them. I had a hard time accepting the love and affection I experienced today, it made me feel guilty and awkward. And yet I am also moved and deeply grateful to have been able to touch and be touched by such amazing people. I wish I could take them all to Virginia with me! I have been so lucky to have this job as my first out of grad school, it is amazing how much time and energy I have wasted in my head on negativity and nit-picking about the things about it that I don't like. All the while we bitch about it, life is passing us by in all its fleeting beauty.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
A day at the museum
I could not believe, after a full day of going through the American Museum of Natural History in the most efficient manner possible, I still have one more trip to the museum left to complete my project of taking notes on all halls relevant to the timeline and details of the evolution of life on Earth. This is my third visit since starting this project! But it is not really a complaint--my trips have renewed a deep spiritual feeling about our origins and place in the universe that has been absent for a while. I was reminded of how precious time spent in wilderness is and how moved I am by the plight of our environment. In my life, I want to be a steward of the land and protector of wild places.
I noticed several times today how selfish and bristly I've become since taking up life in this city. Frazzled with how much information there was left to document when the museum was due to close in less than an hour, I was terse to a woman working there who had stopped to offer help with information. She seemed so sincere and enthusiastic, at other times in my life I would have probably been friendly to such a being instead of irritable. I am very aggressive in my behavior regarding public transportation and being in any sort of line now, where I used to be mellow and noncompetitive. I don't like the feeling that comes with this way of being.
A recent chain of events in my life has left me feeling like my heart has been ripped out and fed to a shark. I am perplexed by my behavior and feel an immense sense of wrongness about some of the choices I have made and actions I have taken. And yet at the same time there is a sense of inevitability and correctness to the way things have played out. There is an incongruous oscillation between these two feelings and I realize I really don't have a clue about how things "should have happened." I need to let this sit a while.
I can say, though, in general I want to be less impulsive and aggressive. I can blame this shithole metropolis for my hardened exterior, but I know with effort, I can restrain impulse and aggression, so the reason I have become like this is somewhat irrelevant.
I am so grateful I have this form of Ango to offer an alternative to lazy habit and infectious aggression.
I noticed several times today how selfish and bristly I've become since taking up life in this city. Frazzled with how much information there was left to document when the museum was due to close in less than an hour, I was terse to a woman working there who had stopped to offer help with information. She seemed so sincere and enthusiastic, at other times in my life I would have probably been friendly to such a being instead of irritable. I am very aggressive in my behavior regarding public transportation and being in any sort of line now, where I used to be mellow and noncompetitive. I don't like the feeling that comes with this way of being.
A recent chain of events in my life has left me feeling like my heart has been ripped out and fed to a shark. I am perplexed by my behavior and feel an immense sense of wrongness about some of the choices I have made and actions I have taken. And yet at the same time there is a sense of inevitability and correctness to the way things have played out. There is an incongruous oscillation between these two feelings and I realize I really don't have a clue about how things "should have happened." I need to let this sit a while.
I can say, though, in general I want to be less impulsive and aggressive. I can blame this shithole metropolis for my hardened exterior, but I know with effort, I can restrain impulse and aggression, so the reason I have become like this is somewhat irrelevant.
I am so grateful I have this form of Ango to offer an alternative to lazy habit and infectious aggression.
Ango Day 2
Today I sat for 29 minutes. My mind was very active throughout the period, not really settling. This was likely due to a stimulus-rich day of going to the Museum, taking copious notes on various areas of evolutionary history, and dealing with the frustrations of mass transit and population density.
I did not want to sit at all and know that this is one of those days when if I had not made a commitment I would not have sat. But in that strange way of zazen, once my butt was on the cushion, there was no place else I wanted to be. Zazen is a refuge from the endless battle with myself.
My eating became progressively less mindful over the course of the day. My first meal of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a Sugar Free Red Bull was taken slowly, with an impromptu Buddhist grace stated beforehand. I noticed a resistance to this practice, a feeling of sanctimoniousness in relating one's act of eating to the nourishment or lack thereof of other beings. And yet, I sense a truth in the practice also.
My second meal was a slice of pizza and a soda at the Museum. I ate merely for fuel to keep my brain going after my blood sugar started to tank. I said or thought no reverent words before eating, and my mind wandered, but I intentionally did not pull out a book or my journal as has become my unfortunate habit these days when eating. It was amazing to see how much taking in that food altered my conscious experience.
My final meal was sushi and wine in front of a nature documentary. It was a favorite indulgence I could not pass up, despite the decidedly unmindful nature of eating in front of the television and going over my calorie count.
I did not want to sit at all and know that this is one of those days when if I had not made a commitment I would not have sat. But in that strange way of zazen, once my butt was on the cushion, there was no place else I wanted to be. Zazen is a refuge from the endless battle with myself.
My eating became progressively less mindful over the course of the day. My first meal of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a Sugar Free Red Bull was taken slowly, with an impromptu Buddhist grace stated beforehand. I noticed a resistance to this practice, a feeling of sanctimoniousness in relating one's act of eating to the nourishment or lack thereof of other beings. And yet, I sense a truth in the practice also.
My second meal was a slice of pizza and a soda at the Museum. I ate merely for fuel to keep my brain going after my blood sugar started to tank. I said or thought no reverent words before eating, and my mind wandered, but I intentionally did not pull out a book or my journal as has become my unfortunate habit these days when eating. It was amazing to see how much taking in that food altered my conscious experience.
My final meal was sushi and wine in front of a nature documentary. It was a favorite indulgence I could not pass up, despite the decidedly unmindful nature of eating in front of the television and going over my calorie count.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Resource Post 1
Treeleaf Ango 2010 Announcement
Thread For First Ango Zazenkai, August 28, 2010
Ango Sharing Thread
Ango Partner Thread
Ango Practice Partner Exercise 1
Treeleaf Shukke Tokudo Ordination
"Nurturing Seeds" Practice
Metta Practice
MRO Translation of Heart Sutra
Zen Peacemakers Translation of the Four Bodhisattva Vows
Treeleaf "Chant Book"
Treeleaf Pocket Zen Liturgy
My "Theme Talk" for Ango 2010, "Letting the Questions Bloom," by Taigu
Thread For First Ango Zazenkai, August 28, 2010
Ango Sharing Thread
Ango Partner Thread
Ango Practice Partner Exercise 1
Treeleaf Shukke Tokudo Ordination
"Nurturing Seeds" Practice
Metta Practice
MRO Translation of Heart Sutra
Zen Peacemakers Translation of the Four Bodhisattva Vows
Treeleaf "Chant Book"
Treeleaf Pocket Zen Liturgy
My "Theme Talk" for Ango 2010, "Letting the Questions Bloom," by Taigu
Ango Day 1
Today I kicked off Ango by participating in a modified version of the Treeleaf Saturday zazenkai.
I did nine full bows to Kannon using a folded IKEA blanket as a bowing mat, after which I sat on the cushion and chanted the MRO translation of the Heart Sutra. I sat for thirty minutes, and could feel the restless impulse to get up sooner, but let that impulse go and rested into the peacefulness of the mind that is not trying to get anywhere.
Instead of doing kinhin, which I confess I find tedious, I did two Sun Salutations. The version of Sun Salutations I do goes as follows: Tadasana, Namaste, backbend, "swan dive" forward into Uttanasana, lunge one leg back, turn sideways toward the forward leg into a hip opening pose I learned as "Beach Bum pose," Downward Dog, step one leg forward so the other leg is lunged back, do the hip opener on the other side, Uttanasana, "swan dive" upward into backbend, and end in Tadasana with hands in Namaste.
It was wonderful to break up sitting periods in this way, releasing the tension from my body and engaging in a practice where I found it much easier to be mindful than I do when doing kinhin.
I drank a glass of water and returned to the cushion, and sat for another thirty minutes. My mind rebelled and grew quieter in turn. I felt the thoughts clearing away like a curtain being parted. Afterward, I chanted the Verse of Atonement and the Zen Peacemakers translation of the Four Bodhisattva vows. I got up, did three final full prostrations to Kannon, and completed the zazenkai.
Afterwards, I mindfully ate a baked potato, saying a simple verse beforehand: "May all beings find nourishment." As part of my discipline of getting back on my diet, I recorded the calories as I recorded the calories of what I ate earlier.
I have connected with Daibh on the forum as my Ango practice partner.
I did nine full bows to Kannon using a folded IKEA blanket as a bowing mat, after which I sat on the cushion and chanted the MRO translation of the Heart Sutra. I sat for thirty minutes, and could feel the restless impulse to get up sooner, but let that impulse go and rested into the peacefulness of the mind that is not trying to get anywhere.
Instead of doing kinhin, which I confess I find tedious, I did two Sun Salutations. The version of Sun Salutations I do goes as follows: Tadasana, Namaste, backbend, "swan dive" forward into Uttanasana, lunge one leg back, turn sideways toward the forward leg into a hip opening pose I learned as "Beach Bum pose," Downward Dog, step one leg forward so the other leg is lunged back, do the hip opener on the other side, Uttanasana, "swan dive" upward into backbend, and end in Tadasana with hands in Namaste.
It was wonderful to break up sitting periods in this way, releasing the tension from my body and engaging in a practice where I found it much easier to be mindful than I do when doing kinhin.
I drank a glass of water and returned to the cushion, and sat for another thirty minutes. My mind rebelled and grew quieter in turn. I felt the thoughts clearing away like a curtain being parted. Afterward, I chanted the Verse of Atonement and the Zen Peacemakers translation of the Four Bodhisattva vows. I got up, did three final full prostrations to Kannon, and completed the zazenkai.
Afterwards, I mindfully ate a baked potato, saying a simple verse beforehand: "May all beings find nourishment." As part of my discipline of getting back on my diet, I recorded the calories as I recorded the calories of what I ate earlier.
I have connected with Daibh on the forum as my Ango practice partner.
Inauguration of Treeleaf Fall Ango 2010
I am starting this blog to document my involvement in the 100 day Treeleaf Ango lasting from August 28, 2010, to December 5, 2010. The announcement page for the Ango is located here.
I join this Ango after a long period of lax practice, with the hope that the Treeleaf group spirit and making a public vow to intensify my practice will not only help me restart a daily zazen practice, but will also infuse a life that has become muddled, lazy, and wanly hedonistic with mindfulness, energy, and discipline.
This Ango falls auspiciously at a time of significant transition in my life. I left home in Fall 1999 at the age of 16 to go to school several states away. This was the beginning of a long search for home--a place where I could feel comfortable in my own skin. Originally from Virginia, in the last 11 years I have lived in Massachusetts, California, New York, and New Jersey. I have delighted and suffered in turn in each place and do not regret any of my experiences or moves.
However, having learned a lot about myself during a brutal period of spiritual opening in the New York metro area, which was marked by rapid disillusionment, loss, and isolation, I have come to a point where I want to find rootedness and nurturing soil. I have realized that proximity to family, a slower pace of life, and a more rural lifestyle are more important to me than the nonetheless appreciated intellectual, artistic, and cultural refinement of urban life. My life never quite took root in this rocky soil.
I will finally leave this long exile in October, almost exactly in the middle of this Ango, and return to Virginia. And I do not believe I could start this period of transition any more auspiciously than by committing to this practice period. It has been all too easy to let transition, disappointment, and shake-ups in my life throw off my discipline. And I have seen that without discipline, life drifts and gets stagnated in a morass of habit; all that is beautiful decays into the slime.
The theme of this Ango for me personally is "blooming." Treeleaf teacher Taigu shared in one of his talks a view of practice as blooming, opening to experience as it is in the moment, "letting reality touch us." Taigu talks about the obsession with finding answers, and the difference that can be experienced when we let questions bloom in us.
I have for too long cultivated ideas of what reality must be, too long fixated on finding an answer. I miss the 999,999 things it could be looking for the 1 instance that matches my expectations. This is dead soil in which nothing blooms. I have forgotten how to let questions take root, how living with a question can open the eyes and sensitize the nerve endings, let more light and life in. Finding an answer is like the bloom closing.
This Ango, I embrace the closing of one chapter of my life and the opening of a new one as a time to let myself bloom. To bloom is to let in all things that come, all of the sunlight, the hummingbirds and bees and bats, no longer closing myself to everything in order to wait for that one blue butterfly I have heard about in legend, as beautiful as it may be. That butterfly may come, but so will strange moths by moonlight, and all are lit by the same distant sun.
I join this Ango after a long period of lax practice, with the hope that the Treeleaf group spirit and making a public vow to intensify my practice will not only help me restart a daily zazen practice, but will also infuse a life that has become muddled, lazy, and wanly hedonistic with mindfulness, energy, and discipline.
This Ango falls auspiciously at a time of significant transition in my life. I left home in Fall 1999 at the age of 16 to go to school several states away. This was the beginning of a long search for home--a place where I could feel comfortable in my own skin. Originally from Virginia, in the last 11 years I have lived in Massachusetts, California, New York, and New Jersey. I have delighted and suffered in turn in each place and do not regret any of my experiences or moves.
However, having learned a lot about myself during a brutal period of spiritual opening in the New York metro area, which was marked by rapid disillusionment, loss, and isolation, I have come to a point where I want to find rootedness and nurturing soil. I have realized that proximity to family, a slower pace of life, and a more rural lifestyle are more important to me than the nonetheless appreciated intellectual, artistic, and cultural refinement of urban life. My life never quite took root in this rocky soil.
I will finally leave this long exile in October, almost exactly in the middle of this Ango, and return to Virginia. And I do not believe I could start this period of transition any more auspiciously than by committing to this practice period. It has been all too easy to let transition, disappointment, and shake-ups in my life throw off my discipline. And I have seen that without discipline, life drifts and gets stagnated in a morass of habit; all that is beautiful decays into the slime.
The theme of this Ango for me personally is "blooming." Treeleaf teacher Taigu shared in one of his talks a view of practice as blooming, opening to experience as it is in the moment, "letting reality touch us." Taigu talks about the obsession with finding answers, and the difference that can be experienced when we let questions bloom in us.
I have for too long cultivated ideas of what reality must be, too long fixated on finding an answer. I miss the 999,999 things it could be looking for the 1 instance that matches my expectations. This is dead soil in which nothing blooms. I have forgotten how to let questions take root, how living with a question can open the eyes and sensitize the nerve endings, let more light and life in. Finding an answer is like the bloom closing.
This Ango, I embrace the closing of one chapter of my life and the opening of a new one as a time to let myself bloom. To bloom is to let in all things that come, all of the sunlight, the hummingbirds and bees and bats, no longer closing myself to everything in order to wait for that one blue butterfly I have heard about in legend, as beautiful as it may be. That butterfly may come, but so will strange moths by moonlight, and all are lit by the same distant sun.
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