Meditation update

I continue with the meditation practice. Not hitting it seven nights a week, but four or five. I'm still trying to just be comfortable. Lotus and half-lotus are beyond me, as I've mentioned, and I probably won't live long enough to ever be that flexible again.

Hell, I'm doing it all wrong, anyway. Here's Brad Warner's instructions on how to do zazen correctly.

Here's some more instructions from the Albuquerque Zen Center.

Nothing is ever easy, is it?

I started out thinking I would just sit, focus on the breath, observe thoughts, etc. I didn't know there was all this put-your-left-foot-in turn-all-about do-the-hokey-pokey stuff involved, too.

I like the way Liza Rose gracefully rises from the zafu. I could probably do that, too, thirty or forty years ago. Here's how I do it now: at the end of twenty minutes, I fall over on my left side. Then I just lie there for about ten seconds. After that, I slowly stretch my legs back out. That takes six or seven seconds. My legs don't go numb, or even hurt that much, anymore; they just don't want to move. I could no more stand straight up after twenty minutes of meditation than I could flap my arms and fly.

Of course, the whole purported purpose of the lotus position is to keep you from falling over. If I couldn't fall over, I would have sat there trapped for days after the first session and eventually died of dehydration. I would probably have been considered a great master for doing that.

Last night, I tried doing the seiza position taught in martial arts schools. This is what my friend Ms. W&E does. It was even worse. Both my feet went numb after about fifteen minutes. Plus, when I sit in seiza, I'm up so high I don't have a lap. So there's no place to rest my hands in a mudra.

If you look at the woman on the first zazen link and the woman sitting seiza in the third link, you will notice that they are both rather willowy. Probably ethereal, too, but without the floaty clothes, it's hard to tell.

I think you probably just have to be willowy to do this stuff. Me doing it is like performing brain surgery with a butter knife out of the kitchen drawer.