Monday, February 28, 2011

Zen Sourcebook

I've had this book called Zen Sourcebook around the house awhile. It's an anthology of writings by past zen masters from China, Japan and Korea. Bodhidharma is represented, along with such luminaries as Huang-po, Lin-chi, Layman P'ang, Dōgen and Bankei.

If you're going to be a book-taught loner Buddhist like I am, these writings from the past seem much more helpful than most of the contemporary stuff.

And when the stresses of everyday life get to be a bit much, it's comforting to put some Tibetan singing bowl music on the stereo and relax with wisdom that has withstood the test of time. I guess I could try studying zen with Marvin Gaye in the background, but I don't think I'd get the same result.

Zen Sourcebook seems like a very handy overview of traditional zen teaching, and a pleasant antidote to all the 'who fucked whom' controversy that currently has so many people's attention. I haven't mentioned anything else about that, because it's not my story, but the stuff is still churning along.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Oscars®

Not Watching®

HBS

I'm suffering through another spell of Howling Bowel Syndrome.

I'm almost certain this stems from backsliding on my commitment to caffeine-free beverages. I've stayed away from coffee and tea, but I've been knocking back a lot of diet colas, and I'm paying the price.

But damn, I'm sick of water all the time. I drink a lot of herbal teas at home, but when I'm out, they're often hard to find. The Red Cup has some, as does Beatnix, but ask for a raspberry rooibos at Jimmy's Egg and see what you get.

Can You Believe It?

Blogblah! suggests that I can solve my relationship problems by keeping Marvin Gaye songs on my iPhone – specifically, 'Sexual Healing' and 'Let's Get It On'.



Also he advises that I get rid of my 'Tibetan bowl crap.'

He would have me believe that women would more readily respond to Marvin Gaye than to the sacred tones of Tibetan bowls:



or this:



The second one starts out slow, but stay with it. It picks up a few minutes in.

BTW, I've mentioned it before, but there's a widget on the right side of this page that shows what's playing at my place as you're reading this. If there's a red 'play' button on a selection, you can click it to hear the music via last.fm. It plays right there without opening a new browser or forcing you to download anything.

Sometimes, It's Me

Many, many years ago, I was in a relationship with a woman who loved me and had a wonderful plan for my life. In fact, the plan she had for my life was a hell of a lot bigger than my own plan. She saw us in an elegant home in a historic neighborhood, surrounded by wealthy friends who talk about Martha Stewart the way some people talk about the Dalai Lama. She saw us with designer furniture, white carpeting, one of those gigantic commercial kitchen ranges you buy for your cook to use, and not a single cat to be seen scratching at all our antiques and custom upholstery.

I told her, 'my bohemian lifestyle is part of my appeal.'

'Up to a point, yes,' she replied. But we had reached that point, at least in her mind, and it was time for me to clean up, buy an appropriate car, quit wearing baggy t-shirts and old jeans on weekends, switch my voter registration, and make friends with the movers and shakers. (I was a reporter. I already knew all the movers and shakers. If I had wanted to be friends with them, I already would have been.)

I eventually left her by literally climbing out a window to escape.

I mention this because if you read back into previous months and years of ths blog, it sounds like I've spent my whole life mooning over unavailable Stevie Nicks types.

In fact, sometimes I'm the one who was unavailable.

What's 25 Years in the Scheme of Things?

I have generally believed that people ought to pursue romantic relationships with those close to their own age. The differences in cultural values and life experience were too great, in my opinion, for people more than about seven years apart in age to have a successful relationship.

Lately, I've been rethinking that. Take two hypothetical people: one is twenty, the other is forty-five. Almost everyone would agree one is too young for the other. But that's using twenty and forty-five as the basis for comparison.

Who says that has to be the basis? What if, instead of comparing them to each other, we compare them to the age of our whole universe, now estimated at 13.75 billion years? Now we have a different, cosmic perspective.

And the fact is, none of us is here for more than a blink of God's eye, anyway, so why split hairs over age differences?

With that in mind, I invited an acquaintance to lunch this week. She is, in fact, 25 years younger than me. We talked about meditation practice, our families, various spiritual interests. It was a very pleasant adult conversation, not flirty in any way.

In spite of the age difference, she seems like someone I could sit with for a couple of hours and say nothing at all. And that's important to me.

But I have a long history of magical thinking about this kind of thing. As I've said before, I've been infatuated many times, and made foolish many times. I have worked long and hard on it. My friends think I'm a hardcore cynic on this subject. But I am no longer, as my therapist once said, "gullible and naive."

While we were talking about our spiritual practices, I told her, "What I want is to see things clearly, free of my own biases, prejudices and preconceived notions."

I want to see this clearly as well, but I don't think I do.

I would rather be alone than be crazy, and that's the main reason I'm alone.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

No Meditation Tonight

Just not gonna do it. Just not.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Like Two Pints of Milk of Magnesia

Did my 25 minutes on the cushion tonight, but I can't say I enjoyed it.

I wonder why I can talk so much more freely about death than I can life. I know I became less afraid of death after being with my father when he died ten years ago.

And life... well, my life is like an off-brand adhesive bandage you've had on for a couple of days. It hasn't fallen completely apart yet, but it's peeling back around the edges, and the gauze in the middle is starting to unravel. It still works, but it's just kind of worn out and nasty looking.

There's a young woman who comes to the coffee shop who is totally high on life. She's young, she's beautiful, she sings, she has hyperanimated facial expressions, she's been Miss Warr Acres Congeniality or something. She's cheerful, friendly and optimistic. She means well, but she's like two pounds of divinity candy. She's an unrealized buddha, but she makes my teeth hurt.

I sing — badly, have no facial expressions except 'awake' and 'not awake', and I've been on TV. I'm like two pints of milk of magnesia. But I can mostly stand myself.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Meditation Practice

I guess it was last night that I gave up meditation at about 23 minutes. I was pissed off when I sat down. You'll notice, if you read this within a day of my having written it, that the top of this page is blank. The title banner, which lives on a separate server, is caught in domain registration limbo. That's what I was pissed off about. Then the dog started barking to come in. So I stopped meditation and let her in.

Actually, I never started meditation. I just sat there on the cushion fuming, listening for the prerecorded gongs of my timer to go off at five-minute intervals. Plus, my hemorrhoids were complaining.

I can almost guarantee you that nobody who has hemorrhoids believes in intelligent design. I told this to a friend, and she responded that she could see the beauty and music in all things. Maybe she should take a close look at my ass and see if there's a symphony for her there.

I hit the cushion tonight and realized I just didn't want to think about correct posture, following the breath, five-minute chimes, etc. So I just sat there and goofed off. I'd left the door open, and Rollo had come in and crashed on the zabuton. I scratched his ears for a few minutes, then I got up and went to bed. Which is where I am now.

Time to sleep.

Don't forget you're going to die.

Ciao.

Banana Caramels Until You Puke

One of the Buddhist teachings that has stuck with me over the years is Ajahn Chah's admonition that 'the glass is already broken.'

Ajahn Chah drank water from an ornate tumbler as he gave his dharma talks. Sometimes, a student would warn him to be careful and not break it. "The glass is already broken" was always his reply.

What he meant by that was that the glass, like every other material object, would eventually be broken or otherwise rendered useless, and there was no point in being attached to it.

The same thing is true of our bodies. They are glasses that are already broken. They will eventually stop functioning, and on the cosmic scale of time, they will stop functioning in mere moments. There's no point in being attached to life, because it's just a brief flicker, and frankly, not that big a deal.

I upset another friend last week with the 'waiting to die' discussion. "Yes. I'm waiting to die," I told her, "and so are you." She didn't like hearing that. She thinks she'll find a way to adjust her chakras or focus her kundalini energy or align her meridians or something and live forever. Maybe Oprah will bestow immortality on her. But in the meantime, she's still waiting to die, whether she wants to face it or not.

While you are waiting to die, what are you going to do that will matter? What will you do that will outlast you? Will you build a Great Pyramid? Everyone has heard of the Great Pyramid, but who knows who built it? Few people do. Hell of a lot of good it did for Khufu, aka Cheops. Nice pile of rocks, but his glass is still broken.

Some people think the way to deal with impending death is to grab all the shit they can in the meantime. They are like a child who, given thirty seconds to snatch up treats in a candy store, stuffs his pockets with everything he can reach, then eats until he makes himself sick. He would have been better off spending that thirty seconds meditating, or blogging about the inevitability of death, instead of gorging on banana caramels until he pukes.

Well, that's all I have for now. Have a nice day.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Sleep

Sometimes I want to sleep as a way to just get away from stuff. And you may ask, 'Get away from what? You're single, you have no family, you don't work. You hire people to do the most basic daily chores. You wander around all day and not much else. What are you getting away from?'

And the answer is, 'I don't know.' I just know that I feel not very at home in my world. I feel like an alien.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Last Week

I have a loosely-defined personal standard for how I interact with others. I certainly didn't meet it last week. I need some alone time.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Strangely Satisfying

It would not be at all Buddha-like to stand in the middle of the intersection of NW 23rd & Classen at rush hour and scream incomprehensible shrieking sounds at passing motorists.

And yet, I think I would find it strangely satisfying.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Clutter

I'm pondering today what constitutes clutter. Not just physical clutter, but mental clutter, emotional clutter and spiritual clutter. My mind looks a lot like my house.

Mental, emotional and spiritual clutter are all basically the same thing: stuff rolling around in your head that has no current value or purpose, but which you keep anyway. Maybe you have some attachment that keeps you hanging on to it, or maybe you just don't know how to get rid of it.

I wonder if freeing my mind of clutter would make it easier to keep my house free of it.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Power Usage

Got a first-ever email today from the power company purporting to show my weekly electricity usage and comparing it to average use and potential efficient use. Even though this house is full of LED and fluorescent bulbs, and even though there's no functioning refrigerator, my electricity usage is supposedly about 30% above average. I guess it's the computers and the always-on teapot.

Meditation

Zazen still at 25 minutes. I guess my goal should be 40, but that sill seems like an eternity.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

From the Dalai Lama

"Feelings of anger and hatred arise from a mind that is troubled by dissatisfaction and discontent. So you can prepare to deal with such occasions by constantly working to build inner contentment and by cultivating kindness and compassion. This brings about a certain calmness of mind that can help prevent anger from arising in the first place."

— The Dalai Lama

Right Speech

Here's an interesting article on right speech. By Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Let No Unwholesome Word...

I'm just going to think out loud here for a moment.

Even though I have a rather flat and uneffusive personality, I'm pretty quick with one-liners and snappy retorts. For most of my life, I couldn't let an opportunity pass. Eventually, when I was in my forties, I decided I didn't need to be clever all the time. I learned to keep some of my humor to myself. I would open my mouth to toss off a line, then catch myself and think, 'You know, you don't have to say that. Just let it go this once.'

As I write this, I'm wondering what would happen if I let it go all the time.

I was listening to a dharma talk today by some zen teacher — I forget who. He briefly mentioned Buddhism's focus on 'right speech' — part of the Eightfold Path. It is not far removed from Paul's exhortation to the Ephesians to 'let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth.'

Witty or snappy lines don't necessarily qualify as 'unwholesome' words. They're certainly not as counterproductive or destructive as malicious gossip or outright lies. But if a person is known predominantly for being a wisecracker, how hard is it for him to be taken seriously at other times?

I have friends/acquaintances whose humor is as quick as mine. But I don't always find them entertaining; sometimes they seem obnoxious. For the first time ever this week, I deleted another person's comment from my Facebook page because I thought it was over the top. I think I'm always hilarious, but it may be that others find my humor just as unfunny and tiresome.

Why do I think I need to make people laugh? Why can't I just sit and talk without trying to be funny?

What would happen if I let go of trying to be funny?

Sensory Overload

Have I mentioned this before? I have this thing where, whenever I get a sort of sensory overload, I start getting sleepy. Once in awhile, I even fall asleep. It seems odd to others because it happens in very loud, crowded social situations.

I was in my forties before I realized this was a subconscious defense against this overload.

It happened today at the coffee shop. There were a lot of people. It was loud, and rather busy. I felt myself getting sleepy, so I left. Within about fifteen minutes, I was back to normal.

And by 'normal', I mean normal for me, which is probably really low-key by your standards.

I really need a lot of time alone, and a lot of quiet.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

More on the 'dead stop'.

There is a zen proverb which says something like, "When you reach the top of the mountain, take another step." I think 'the top of the mountain' must be the same thing as the 'dead stop' I described yesterday. But I don't know how to take 'another step'.

The Point

"As soon as you open your mouth to speak," a zen proverb says, "already it is a mistake."

The proverb is talking about trying to describe enlightenment or awakening, but I think it can be applied more broadly than that.

I've devoted a lot of space the past few days to talking about issues about which I actually don't know very much. There are plenty of people out there with more knowledge of these events than I have, and more background and wisdom with which to discuss them. I didn't need to say anything.

In February of last year, I didn't post a single word on this blog for two and a half weeks, and it was because I didn't have anything to say. I still don't, but that hasn't stopped me from going on anyway.

When I first started trying to understand buddhist concepts of reality, I hit a place I described to myself as the 'dead stop'. It was the point beyond which nothing else is, and about which nothing can be said or described. Even if I said 'it just is', that would be too much.

All the things I've said and written since then are not evidence of having passed that point, but of having backed up from it. It's as if I subconsciously said to myself, 'Well, I can't deal with this. Let me retreat to some ground where I can go back to being myself.'

This is the challenge — to stay at that point that neither exists nor is non-existent, about which nothing can be said, about which no action can be taken.

Incidentally, This Doesn't Mean I Reject Zen

...or at least my understanding of it, however half-assed that may be.

I think that's part why I'm so annoyed by this. I found a belief system (my zen/tao party mix) that answered all or most of my existential questions, only to discover that a lot of people use it for the same old drama and uproar. And that it attracts a lot of people who just want someone to run their lives and do all their thinking for them.

Humans... I don't get 'em.

So You've Heard About This Chris Lee Guy, Right?

Responded to 'women seeking men' ad on Craigslist. Lied about his age and marital status. And his job. Said he was a lobbyist when actually, he's a US Congressman.

Sent woman a photo of himself, shirtless, hastily shot in a bathroom mirror. Said it was 'all he had.'

Was stunned that she figured out who he was. Probably more stunned that she notifed gossip web site gawker.com, and was able to provide pic.

This is what comes of making poor choices. This guy should have been a zen master.

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Networked Blogs Update

Apparently it's happening to other bloggers, too.

In Other News...

I don't know what I ate, but I've passed enough gas in the past 72 hours to inflate the Hindenburg. No wonder I'm grumpy.

What Happened to Networked Blogs?

I don't know. Right now, at least as I see it on my monitor, that box is empty. I'll look into it, eventually.

Lineage Delusion Redux

I want to go back to the Lineage Delusions commentary I posted previously.

As you know if you've followed this blog for any length of time, I don't belong to a sangha. In fact, I don't belong to anything. I am not a joiner. I am an aloof, remote, arrogant motherfucker.

And in four sentences, author Erik Fraser Storlie explains why for me:

"This is a Mad Hatter’s tea party, where hierarchical robes and titles, sadomasochistic austerities, and subterranean libertinism mix together in incestuous 'spiritual communities' filled with distrust and rivalries – all this in a scramble for the summit of some distant 'spiritual' mountain. This would be comic if it weren’t tragic.

"And it is tragic.

"It is tragic because countless Americans hunger for genuine meaning – meaning unavailable in the toxic mimics offered by game shows, professional sports, 'reality' TV, ugly politics, 'free-market' competition, and unimaginably wasteful wealth accumulation at the top."

This explains why I have resisted joining everything from a zen sangha to the Society of Professional Journalists. These things always look pretty good at first glance, and then when you get a closer look, it's about 5% worthwhile stuff and about 95% horseshit and internal politics and drama. Granted, they don't wear hierarchical robes in SPJ, but that's probably because nobody's thought of it.

(I wrote a lengthy aside here about my own experience with SPJ, then decided it didn't have anything to do with the point I was trying to make, so I cut it. But it's a good story. Maybe I'll make it a post of its own someday.)

Everyone who has studied zen to any degree knows the story of Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu. It may be apocryphal, but it still sets the stage for the arrival of zen in China.

Here's a version lifted from the web site monkeytree.org:

"The emperor practiced the outward behaviors of Buddhism; he wore Buddhist robes, abstained from eating meat, built many temples and supported hundreds of monks and nuns. The emperor was proud of his knowledge of Buddhism and his support of Buddhism in his kingdom. He asked Bodhidharma, 'Since I came to the throne, I have built many temples, published numerous scriptures and supported countless monks and nuns. How great is the merit in all these?'

"'No merit to speak of,' was the shocking reply of Bodhidharma. The emperor had often heard renowned masters say, 'Do good, and you will receive good; do bad and you will receive bad. The Law of Cause and Effect is unchangeable, effects follow causes as shadows follow figures.' But now, this foreign sage declared that all his efforts had earned no merit at all.

"The emperor failed to understand that one is not practicing Buddhism if one does good with the desire to gain merit for oneself. It will be more like promoting one's own welfare or hoping for admiration by the public. The emperor asked his next question, 'What then, is the essence of Buddhism?'

"Bodhidharma's immediate reply was, 'Vast emptiness and no essence at all!' This stunned the emperor. Other masters had explained that the essence was contained in doctrines such as The Four Noble Truths and The Law of Cause and Effect, but this foreign sage of Buddhism had just declared there was 'no essence at all'."

Bodhidharma had presented the emperor with a version of Buddhism that was so stripped down, so bereft of the pomp and circumstance that had accreted since the Buddha's death, that the emperor couldn't even recognize it.

Later, it is said, Bodhidharma spent nine years 'at the wall,' which is to say, in meditation. History does not say whether he entered the room with his left foot, bowed to his cushion, bowed to the wall, bowed to his partner, allemande left and dosado. My hunch is that he didn't.

Nowadays, it seems like zen isn't much better than being in the Assembly of God. Well, they don't roll around on the floor and speak in tongues in zen, so there's that. On the other hand, in the Assembly of God, they don't smack you with a stick because your head is tilted at just slightly the wrong angle.

But this is what happens. This is what humans do. They start out with a good thing, and they cannot resist loading it up with horseshit and drama. The thing gets going, whether it's zen or Christianity or the Platypus Lodge, and then it gets boring. So what we can do to spice this thing up some, broaden the appeal, improve the demographic? Aha! Just add horseshit!

Everyone has seen the phenomenon where a teacher becomes popular, and suddenly the teacher is bigger than the teaching. I think this happens because in any religion or belief system, about 70% of the people can't 'get' the teaching at all. So they focus instead on the personality, whether it's a tulku or a televangelist. And this, in turn, leads to the popularity of sexy, charismatic teachers and preachers who can spin a compelling line of BS for the rubes. And with the sexy, charismatic teachers come the outsized egos and narcissism.

Or they focus on the process, which is why you hear people describe their beliefs in terms of how many retreats they've done, or how many revivals they've attended, or whether they saw Billy Graham in person.

Somewhere down below all the lasers and arena-sized sound systems and online stores and ultramegasuperchurches and ski resorts-turned-upscale-zen-monasteries, there is still some original truth, but who gives a shit about that? What do the focus groups show, that's what we need to know.

(John Lennon was on the mark when he said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ. A lot of people are more popular than Jesus Christ. He may be the only religious leader who is actually a minor figure in the religion named for him. At the moment, Sarah Palin is a bigger player in Christianity than Jesus is.)

As is often the case with my lengthy posts, this one just went on and on until it ran out of steam. No conclusion, folks. I'm done for now.

More Delusion

I may have to reconsider the post I wrote entitled "Secrets of the Ancient Horndog Zen Masters Revealed".

Just about a year ago, the website Buddhist Geeks published a review of the then newly-revealed archive of the writings of zen master Robert Aitken. The archive revealed that Aitken, a major and revered figure in American zen, concealed the allegedly abusive behavior of zen monk, and later abbott, Eido Shimano, for forty-odd years.

The Aitken-Shimano Letters

The same article was published at The Zen Site.

The events and behavior described in this article go well beyond mere animal magnetism and/or personal charisma. Shimano is described at one point, for example, as volunteering to work in a psychiatric ward in order to find more women upon whom to prey. This is genuinely creepy stuff.

I'm going to ponder this some more. I still don't understand how he was able to find so many willing victims over the years. (I expect to be criticized for using the expression 'willing victims', but I don't know another way to describe them. It appears no one was threatened or intimidated. They voluntarily had sex with him, at least sometimes hoping it would improve their chances of 'enlightenment', and afterward regretted it. I still don't understand how this happened so many times.)

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Lineage Delusion

A fascinating article from the Sweeping Zen website. It questions the validity of the whole concept of ‘dharma transmission’.

Lineage Delusions: Eido Shimano Roshi, Dharma Transmission and American Zen

Almost every Buddhist teacher claims to have received his teaching in an unbroken person-to-person line that began with the Buddha himself. In zen, at least, this hits bumpy ground with the story of Hui Neng, the sixth leader of zen in China, through whom all subsequent zen dharma transmission passes. I won't go into all the details here, but the story of how he received transmission is considered by some scholars to be far-fetched, and possibly invented by his own students to conceal the reality that Hui Neng was a self-taught zen master who received dharma transmission from nobody.

Anyway, the article is a good read if you're interested in this stuff.

Secrets of the Ancient Horndog Zen Masters Revealed

I'm only half-joking when I say that every time I read about one of these zen masters getting in trouble for his sexual adventures, I find myself wondering where I sign up. I suspect a lot of other men think the same thing.

But here's the reality: donning the robes of a zen priest would not improve my love life one iota. All it would do is make me into a pretty dull and boring zen priest. I would still be me, just in a different set of clothes. Still negative, still cynical, still no aura of danger or bad boy cred. Still just as safe and dreary as a bowl of tepid oatmeal.

The thing that makes these sixty- and seventy-year-old zen geezers attractive to women is the same thing that makes them successful as teachers. It's not their accumulated wisdom or their enlightenment; it's intensity and personal magnetism. They'd be just as successful selling multi-level marketing schemes or running for political office. Having a title and a Japanese middle name have little or nothing to do with it.

Some of you know that due to a series of odd circumstances, I briefly acquired a frankly undeserved 'bad boy' reputation in my mid-forties, and the results were salutary. However, it was going against my basic nature, and it intellectually and emotionally drained me. I was always 'acting'. I eventually went back to being good ol' reliable boring mcarp.

At this stage in my life, it's sort of comforting to have a sense of my place in the scheme of things, even if it's not quite the place I would prefer to have. I'm too old and burnt out now to swim upstream against my basic nature.

But it would be nice to have that personal assistant.

Monday, February 07, 2011

More Human Contact

I got a ticket today for having an expired car tag. The tag expired in November, and I had put off getting the little sticker that keeps it current. This is another of those annual chores that seems like it happens every six weeks. A year just isn't what it used to be.

I don't mind the money, but I hate the paperwork. And the human contact. Unrealized buddhas one and all, but I don't want to sit in that dingy tag agency with them, waiting for my name to be called. But I dragged myself down there in the afternoon and got it done.

One of the great things about becoming a fully authentic zen master, other than apparently getting laid relentlessly, is that you often get some sort of humble monk assistant who takes care of all the shit work while you're neither being nor not being.

What I probably really need is a nanny.

More Winter

Snowpocalypse 2: Blizzard Boogaloo is forecast to arrive in town tomorrow around 6pm. This time, all the livestock will be inside.

Again

I see where another prominent US zen priest has decided to disrobe and resign from all his priestly duties because of an affair he had with one of his students.

Inside My Own Head

Buddhism teaches non-duality, i.e., not adhering to a view of the world as 'me' and 'other'. But as time goes by, I have more and more trouble adhering to this. My natural inclination is to view everything as, 'here I am safe and quiet inside my own head' vs. 'what the hell is the matter with you people?!'

It really is pretty cozy in here.

Sunday, February 06, 2011

Not Watching

I can't tell you the last time I watched a Super Bowl. Early seventies, probably. And I'm not watching now.

The 28-Day Meditation Challenge: Blew It On Day One

Every year, Tricycle Magazine holds its ‘28-Day Meditation Challenge’. I thought my practice had become consistent enough that I could undertake the challenge this year. Of course, I didn’t actually read the challenge. If I had, I would have noticed it required twenty minutes weekday mornings, another twenty weekday evenings (almost twice my regular session), and ninety minutes every Saturday and Sunday. I noticed this for the first time on Jan. 30th, only two days before the challenge’s Feb. 1 start date.

So, I blew it on day one. I had been so mentally overloaded by the snowstorm and Gastón's disappearance that I didn’t sit that day at all. Yesterday, I kept putting it off, and by the time I decided to do it, I was too sleepy and went straight to bed.

But even though I am not living up to the challenge, I am generally satisfied with the way my practice is going. I look forward to it most days. Mentally, it’s no effort to get on the zafu, although sometimes there’s a physical challenge.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my current practice wouldn’t pass muster with purists. I don’t do gassho or bow to my cushion. I move a lot, generally to straighten up when I find myself starting to slump forward. Lately, there’s also been some coughing, sneezing and sniffling. Oddly enough, this is a problem only during meditation. I'll go all day without coughing or sneezing, and suddenly have an attack of it when I’m sitting. I’m sure the coughing is because of breathing very dry winter air, but I can't explain the sneezing.

Sometimes I will move my right leg if I feel it going numb or starting to cramp. I read different opinions about the numbness. Some say it’s harmless, and should be ‘worked through’ as part of the practice, while others say it should be avoided. None of these are medical opinions, and until I find a medical opinion online, I’m going to err on the side of caution and avoid letting my legs go numb. It’s always my right leg, btw, never my left.

My current session time is 25 minutes. I have a meditation timer installed on my iPad that rings a tibetan bowl sound every five minutes. I suppose that for ‘real’ meditators, the timer keeps them from accidentally sitting all day long, and getting nothing else done. For me, though, it’s more of a ‘come on, just two more chimes’ thing. Mentally, I think I want to do more, but my body isn’t ready yet.

I do sort of light meditation throughout the day. What I mean by that is that I try to remember to be aware of my own breath and be mindful of surroundings and my own thoughts all the time. I am a natural introvert, prone to shutting down in crowded places, and that actually makes this process easier. If you see me in the coffee shop and I seem to have ‘zoned out’, that's what is happening. Obviously, it doesn't look like meditation, and strictly speaking, it isn't. But it is a process of disengaging from the ten thousand things going on around me and getting back to my own quiet personal center.

I suspect zen and taoism always had a special appeal for introverts. For those of us who find the daily business of life overwhelming and intolerable, zen and taoism both offer a sort of intellectual shelter, as well as a justification for our unsociable ways.

Saturday, February 05, 2011

Better weather

The sun is out today, and there's not a cloud in the sky. The official temp right now is 26°, but my car thermometer showed it as 34°. Snow is definitely melting. The hot water is running in the garage again. Looks like the faucet on the back of the garage might have burst. It has a relief valve, but the whole thing is coated with ice, and I can't tell if the valve worked or if it broke.

Best news, though: Gastón reappeared this morning, one week to the day after he disappeared. His feet were barely wet, and he was warm to the touch, as if he'd been lying in the sun somewhere. My guess is that he spent the whole storm in a neighbor's house and didn't come out until five minutes before I found him.

Thursday, February 03, 2011

Solitude Day 3

Not so much solitude today. Went to Jimmy's Egg for breakfast, then to the Red Cup just to visit a little while. Later, I went to VZD's for dinner.

Streets are still snowy and difficult. I'm trying to decide whether to try to make a run to the grocery store for more housebound munchies. The forecast calls for more snow tomorrow, but I'm tried of getting in and out of my Sorels.

Still no sign of G or any other neighborhood cats.

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Solitude Day 2

Made it to Wendy's this afternoon, but it was a major effort. Some of the main thoroughfares have been plowed and sanded, but others appear to have been untouched. I'm getting tweets and Facebook messages from city employees alternately telling me to stay off the streets and exhorting me to go to the NBA game downtown tonight. I will choose to stay off the streets. I have no interest in the NBA even when the weather's nice.

I tried to plow the minivan through a three-foot deep by four- or five-foot wide snow drift in the driveway. I almost accomplished it. I eventually gave up out of fear I would sideswipe my neighbor's car. (We share a double driveway.) The van hasn't been driven in perhaps six weeks; it almost wouldn't start. I let it idle while I drove to Wendy's in the beetle so the battery would recharge.

The cold water in the garage is running, but the hot water is not. I don't understand that. The lines are basically side by side. I know the thing about hot water freezing faster than cold water, but this an on-demand system, and the water in both pipes should have been the same temperature. The heat was off in the garage, unbeknownst to me. I turned it on, and I hope I'll have fully functioning water and no breaks once it warms up a little.

Still no sign of Gastón, nor any other neighborhood cat.

Cabin Fever

Like millions of other Americans, I am snowed in. I don't know how much snow we received here, but there are drifts two to three feet deep around my house, and I've seen reports here in town of drifts up to five feet deep.

This is a good opportunity to practice that solitude about which I speak so frequently, but after just one day, I'm getting cabin fever.

I tried getting out yesterday. I went to a breakfast place just about a mile from the house. It was closed – the first time I've ever seen it closed by winter weather.

I got stuck in the parking lot. Two guys were kind enough to help push me out. We have a large enclave of Moroccan immigrants here, and they appeared to be part of that group.

The VW beetle, I learned, is not very good in snow. It sits much closer to the ground than the minivan. I might not have gotten stuck if I had taken the van out instead of the beetle.

Coming home from the restaurant, I decided not to take the snow-packed street I had come on. Instead, I went out of my way north to take a main thoroughfare that I thought would be plowed and clear. It wasn't. The city used to plow what it calls 'designated snow routes,' but it appears they have stopped that practice and now just close the city when it snows.

So, I got stuck twice more. Once I had to stop when a person just walked off a curb in front of me. The second time, a police car made a U-turn from the oncoming lane and pulled diagonally across the street with lights flashing. As soon as I came to a full stop – and was bogged down – the officer drove off again.

I came close to abandoning the car at that point, but fortunately, someone in a big pickup came along and pushed me out of the snow.

So, I will stay in today. The dog refuses to go out at all, but is getting tired of being cooped up. She's barking in her crate right now, in fact. Rollo the cat is in. But Gastón wandered off Saturday and I haven't seen him since. He is much less prone to wandering off than Rollo is, which is why I didn't worry too much when he didn't come in Saturday night. My next door neighbor told me she saw him Sunday afternoon. I have to say I doubt he will survive this, unless someone has let him in a house. The temperature as I write this is 7 degrees, and it has been in the single digits for almost 24 hours. We don't have above-freezing temps in the forecast until Friday, and then for only a short while.

I've seen one trail of dog tracks in the snow since the storm hit. All the other strays and neighborhood pets appear to be hiding out. I wonder how many will survive this.

On the plus side, the house is warm, I have food and the electricity has stayed on. I still have Internet connectivity. I haven't been out to the garage to check the pipes, but the water in the house is flowing freely.

I had decided to do Tricycle Magazine's 28-Day Meditation Challenge, which began yesterday. But I was so frayed by the experience of getting back home I didn't sit. I guess I should have looked at that as an opportunity to meditate on the experience, but I didn't. I also have a touch of head cold, and meditation doesn't go too well when you're sniffling and coughing the whole time.

But I imagine I'll sit today. I've nothing else to do.

And the Horse It Rode In On

I was snowed in Tuesday, and I ended up spending time reminiscing about TV news with former coworkers on Facebook. This is something I try to avoid doing, but one of them had tagged me in a story he was telling about a live shot I had done, and I allowed myself to be drawn into the conversation.

It didn't take long for a lot of fifteen- to twenty-year-old anger and resentment to resurface. God damn, I hated that business.

I suppose when I achieve enlightenment, I'll look back on all that with compassion and equanimity. In the meantime, fuck TV news and the horse it rode in on.