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.
