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.