A zendoful
of practitioners spent today sitting, facing a wall, doing nothing. There were the usual breaks to
walk and rest and eat. But no talking, no eye contact, and no electronics. What a silly waste of time, when we
could have been out saving the world.
Well, maybe
we were. Maybe we were saving the
world … from us.
Suzuki-roshi opined that when we sit zazen, we aren’t breaking any
precepts, perhaps for the only time all day. There were 280 minutes of zazen today, or 4 ½ hours of
brokenless precepts. That actually
sounds pretty good. It may not be
progress or accomplishment, but it sets the stage for moving and doing in
resonance with each other and with our inmost request. It’s amazing how much connection happens when we’re not
communicating, when we must attend carefully to movement and
breath, light and shadow, posture and form, to understand what’s going on.
Settling the
“inside” is a necessary prerequisite to settling the “outside.” Or to put it more bluntly, it’s never
noisy out there.
1 comment:
So beautifully put! Reading this from outside laying in bed waiting for Tuesday to begin. A wonderful breathe of shared clear breathe.thank you,
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