Rohatsu 2010, part 5 of 4: Great Guys

Great Guys

After the sesshin ended at about 6pm on Monday evening, after I chatted a bit with a few of the participants, most notably the guy who I had been sitting next to all day for the last five days, I went out with a local friend of mine.  We ate in the Mall of America, and walking though there was an exercise in managing sensory stimulation (the Hooters was particularly compelling) after sitting sesshin for five days, let me tell you.  After a lovely dinner and visit with my friend I came home and hit the hay.

I got up the next morning and went to the regular zazen session, and then I went back over to the house next door where I stayed and packed up.  One of the senior teachers and I had discussed getting together to talk on this morning back before the sesshin started, so we discussed following through with that plan.  Everyone was concerned with helping me get to the airport, but everyone was too busy to drive themselves.  They were all concerned that I'd be spending too much money on a taxi.

Ha!  I'm a New Yorker.  I am accustomed to giving money to cab drivers, believe me.  I wasn't worried about it.

Apparently, behind the scenes there was some discussion and investigation about how to get me to the airport without enriching a taxi company.  It was discovered that one of the other students, the gentleman who served as the work leader, was planning to pick someone up at the airport 30 minutes after I needed to be there.  He was asked, and he kindly offered to take me to the airport.

Beyond that, he was also available to join the Senior Teacher and I for what had now turned into breakfast.  Cool!  We went to a lovely cafe in the neighborhood and had a most unusual conversation!  We talked about zen!  What was unusual about it is that for the first time I can remember I was discussing zen with people, not explaining it to them.  That was incredibly awesome.

Usually when I talk to people about zen I am telling them what it is, or even more typically what it *isn't.*  It was very nice to just discuss what I had been reading/doing/thinking with some people who know what this is all about, had helpful things to say, and could turn me on to some things I didn't know about.  That was really, really fun.

Then, in the car ride back I was telling some stories and I found out that the senior teacher had actually *been* part of a famous all-night sesshin that Dainin Katagiri conducted, and that we had other rather notorious zen acquaintances in common.  That is, this teacher was very well-connected in the line of American teachers I've been studying in.  People I revered and knew only by reputation he was friends with, had studied with, and knew intimately.

Very cool.

Then, the student who was driving me to the airport and I dropped off the senior teacher, said our goodbyes, I picked up a few odds and ends from the zendo bookstore, and we headed off.  He wanted to stop at a record store first, which was fine with me.

On the way, unknown to him beforehand, he fulfilled a long-time ambition of mine.  He took me by the Minnesota Zen Center, the one founded and established by Dainin Katagiri, my teacher's teacher.  He also told me that Robert Pirsig had funded the endeavor, something I did not heretofore know.  I was dumbstruck by just sitting out in front of it.  I had wanted to make this visit for many, many years. He just whizzed by on the way to the record store. That was awesome.

The record store was awesome.  I walked over to the Japanese section and found two albums I had been looking for over a year.  Amazingly, after searching for them again and again in New York City, in Minneapolis I went over and walked right up to them.  That was a shock, but even better, they were used copies and were CHEAP!

We got to the airport in plenty of time.  We exchanged contact info and said our good byes.  Wow, that was a Great Morning among Great Guys!

I walked through security easily at the airport.  No lines, no pornoscan, no pat-down.  That was a first, too.  I had a nice lunch at a local business in the airport called French Meadow, it was really good, then I went to the gate.

At the gate I sat down in the midst of a group of eight African-American gentleman in their 30s and 40s, all traveling together, at first I thought they were either a band, or some kind of athletic team.  It didn't take long for me to learn that they were indulging themselves in a tradition of attending a professional football game together this last weekend.  They do it annually, going to a different stadium in a different city every year.  This year it was Minneapolis, to see the Giants play the Vikings.

As it turns out, they missed their game because of the snow storm I discussed in Great Snow.  The roof of the stadium had fallen in and the game was moved to Detroit.  They were endeavoring to witness Brett Favre's last game, but they ended up watching it on TV with everyone else.

They were in good humor though, and they welcomed me into their conversation while we waited on the plane. we had a spirited discussion about college basketball, a topic upon which I have some expert knowledge, and I really really enjoyed their company.  It occurred to me that just a few years ago I would have been very wary of such a group, probably not speaking to them, or even sitting amongst them.  Not out of fear, but because I would have felt that they didn't want me around.

Instead, it felt like being around old friends.  I wonder what influence my zen practice has on my ability to settle into spontaneously joyous activities like my breakfast, and this conversation at the airport.  I can't make a specific intellectual connection, but they certainly feel connected.

All in all, it was a Great trip to Minneapolis, and I got to end it among Great Guys.

Rohatsu 2010, part 4 of 4: Great Sincerity

When I was having the crisis of confidence described in Great Sorrow I didn't know what to do about it.  Lest you think I had parted from ordinary reality, the facts were that I knew I was voluntarily participating in an activity with a bunch of generous, reasonable, kind people and I was free to leave or quit at any time.  None of them would have shunned me, shamed me, or rejected me in any way for resigning from the activity.  They knew it was hard, and they probably all wanted to quit too.

I knew I would still be given warmth, food and shelter until I could leave on my own, and I also had a friend in town who would have ridden (driven, actually) to my rescue.  There was no actual threat anywhere, the drama was all about the safety and integrity of my self-concept, not my actual safety and integrity.

However, within the confines of that envelope of protection, I did not restrain myself to some standard of taciturn equanimity.  That wasn't what I came to do.  I came to find out about my life, and if what I found out was that I can't be the Soto zen student I want to be, that's what I wanted to know.  I would not come into full contact with that knowledge if I restrained my mind with the comfort that this crisis was just some game I was playing.

There were moments of mirth.  On Friday, December 10th, I distinctly remember sitting in the classroom during the afternoon coffee break thinking about the fact it had been a year since I had surgery.  I had been looking forward to my "surgiversary" for a long time.  Over the year I had fantasized about the celebration I would have on this day.

I imagined a big party, with a bunch of significant others around, perhaps including my surgeon.  There would review of my pictures over the year, stories of lessons learned, and lots of hugs and kisses from beautiful women, perhaps capped off by a night of fabulous sex with some willing babe.

Instead, here I was surrounded by a bunch of seemingly morose people, most of whom I had never met before, all dressed modestly in black or dark earth tones, drinking coffee, eyes downcast, silent, with pained expressions on their faces.  There were attractive women there, but I was convinced they didn't like me.

Worst. Party. Ever.

This started a giggle that I had trouble stifling for the next forty-five minutes.  When I told this story to my teacher the next day, he said "perhaps it was the best observance you could have had."  He meant it.  I had no idea what he meant until much later.

There are two senior teachers at Dharma Field.  One is a published author and it is he, and his works, that drew me to this sangha.  He's the one I singularly identify as "my teacher" in these essays.  The other is not published.  He is bereft of even a modicum of fame, even among zen nerds.  When I was getting familiar with this group I considered him sort of the bench-warmer Zen Master--the utility 3rd baseman kept on the roster in case A-Rod got hurt.

He was the teacher who was available for Dokusan when I was undergoing the worst part of my crisis of confidence.  I was in such distress I didn't care who I saw and could talk to.  I would have pulled the mailman walking by on the street in for Dokusan if that was my only choice.  I needed to talk to someone.

To be fair, I had gotten to know him since I first came to the sangha.  My experience of him is of a warm, humble and funny guy always quick with a smile and a spot of encouragement.  We shared a fondness for bad and off-color jokes, and over the years I had sent him the best ones I came across in the mail.  He had also lost a lot of weight since I saw him last, he now looked tall and stately.  He imbues the room with an understated sense of comfortable calm.  He's the kind of man everyone would want as a grandfather figure in their lives.  I'm fortunate to have him in mine.

I sat in front of him in Dokusan and the tears started to fall.  I told him about my struggles, the weird dreams I had been having, and my doubts that I could do this, and how much those doubts devastated me emotionally.  I told him I wanted to be a zen student more than anything else I had ever wanted and I didn't know what I was going to do if I couldn't make it work.

He looked at me with warmth and compassion and said "You are very sincere."

He went on to tell me the standard zen advice:  take care of this very moment, look at what is coming up, there's nothing to do other than be present with it.  That was all stuff I knew, it was the comment about my sincerity that turned my crisis into an opportunity.  He was right.  I have Great Sincerity.

The previous night I had broken into tears on the cushion during the final session of zazen for the day.  Fortunately (for me) the man sitting next to me was beset with a cold, so he had been sniffling and wiping his nose with a tissue for days.  I doubt anyone other than he noticed that I was now doing the same.

The tears streaming down my face didn't bother me.  They actually felt warm and comforting, but crying also makes my nose run and there was nothing serene or elegant about snot on my upper lip, so I had to wipe it off.  I had a napkin from the kitchen squirreled away in the pocket of my meditation jacket for this kind of thing, but we weren't even halfway through this sit before it was a slimy mess.

My back was really aching as I described in Great Soreness, this was the worst it got through the entire sesshin (though, be aware I didn't know this at the time), and my desire to quit was the greatest.  I realized I had been feeling sorry for myself and that sorrow now turned to anger.  I turned the pain and my resistance to practice into an entity, a wrathful entity, and I confronted it.

"Come on!"  I shouted internally.  "Kill me.  That's the only way I am going to stop this practice.  You have to kill me.  Carry through with your threat!  As long as I can draw another breath I am going to keep sitting here, so you have to kill me!  Do it.  Bring it on!"

I knew my life wasn't really threatened here, but the symbolism was the same if you consider practice as dear as life, and I do.

So, I stood up to this internal bully and confronted the threat.  This went on and on throughout this period of zazen.  I sat there, yelling at this wrathful entity, challenging it to make good on it's threat.  I was not going to back down.  My sincerity was expressing itself as anger.  At one point every muscle in my body was tense, my jaw was clenched, sweat was now rolling down my face along with the tears and snot.

Then, a surprise.  I heard the most beautiful sound in the world when you are sitting sesshin: the bell.  The sit was over.  Dreams with Miyuki were now just a few minutes away, and I could now go lay down, the one position left for me in which my back didn't hurt.

This sit was the only one the entire time during which I was surprised by the bell.  Usually I was convinced that the person keeping time was either inattentive or a sadist.  Being surprised by the bell was truly a surprise.

This was the nadir, or the zenith, depending on your view, of my sesshin.  If I'm asked to identify a reason I came, or what I got out of it, this is it.  I came to know my own sincerity.

I came to know some other things too.  I got to know Minnesota better (people are so nice!), some important members of my sangha better, and I resolved a question I had about whether I should still regard this place as my dharma home even though it is hundreds of miles from my actual home (I should, and I do).

But, beyond that, most important to me was that I came to know my own sincerity.  I am in possession of a quality that Dogen, a 13th Century zen teacher and father of my denomination of zen, repeated said is absolutely essential to practice--a will to find the Truth.

This is Great Sincerity.

Rohatsu 2010, part 3 of 4: Great Sorrow

I decided to go to this particular sesshin when I learned that my teacher's wife died from lung cancer in mid-September.  I knew her, she served as Tenzo (head cook, traditionally a very highly regarded position in zen) during previous sesshins I had attended. I didn't know her well, but I liked her.

This was far from the only reason I came to sesshin, but it was what pulled the trigger for me to go to this one specifically.  There was a memorial service at the zendo in mid-October that I could not attend owing to an on-going tragedy in my own life.  This sesshin just happened to commence on the day after the very first day I could get away from work without turning my own life even more upside-down (which was something that wouldn't have helped anyone).

I knew my teacher was surrounded by people who would care for him, that wasn't why I decided to come to sesshin.  Even though I am a hospice nurse, I wasn't acting on the notion that I needed to go be his bereavement counselor, or that there weren't many, many people as skilled as I who were also as devoted as I to his well-being that were available to him.  My motivations were far more subtle than that.

I simply wanted to offer my compassionate presence to my sangha as soon as it was possible for me to do so.  Simply, put, I just wanted to show up for my group.  The only thing I could offer (that others couldn't) was me.  Other people could show up and be a shoulder to lean on, an ear to bend, arms to hug, etc.  I'm sure there was plenty of that.  Only I could show up and be Richard DeWald.  It was all I had to give, so I wanted to give it.

I did not anticipate that my teacher would be grief-stricken almost 90 days after his wife's passing, and he wasn't visibly so at all.  That's actually not that unusual, grief is not a constant, ongoing process, it comes and goes.  Beyond that, he knows his mind, if anyone was going to be able to gracefully navigate the loss of a spouse, he would be able to do it.

You see, this is all not about him, not about the individually-identifiable separately-appearing entity that we know as my zen teacher.  Step back a bit.  This sangha is also an entity, and it had suffered a loss, and that grief was going to show up.  Grief needs compassionate presence.  People will run around thinking that it is some individual that is the sole locus of such a thing, but that's not the way Reality works.  Grief will manifest.  I had no idea how it would manifest, but I knew it would arise, and sesshin would be one such vehicle for it's manifestation.

I wanted to be there, not to *do* something about it, but just to be present.  This is hard to explain beyond that.

I have never seen and heard so much crying at a sesshin in my life.  Actually, I had never heard crying at all during a sesshin before, but I personally witnessed five people (out of twenty participants) crying during this sesshin, including myself.  Since I only know why I was crying, let's start with that discussion.

My tears were about my fears that I wouldn't be able to make it.  During the sesshin I experienced something completely new to me--the fear that I didn't have what it takes to be a zen practitioner, to sit a 5-day sesshin.  Maybe I didn't have what it takes to be a zen student, at least not the kind of zen student I want to be.  In the middle of day three my back was hurting so badly that my thoughts were completely dominated alternatively by a desire to quit and by the notion that I could not go on with this, not for two more days.  I just couldn't, no matter how badly I wanted it.  The ability was simply not within me.

I really thought I was a failure.  I really thought I didn't have it in me, and that made me profoundly sorrowful.

I realized there actually are very few things in life I want as much as I want to study zen.  "Studying zen" is not about reading books or taking tests, it is about showing up for your life as it really is.  I was having trouble with the pain, everything in me seemed to be pushing me, shoving me, towards giving up.  I was being mentally pummelled by the notion that I needed to give up, go over to my room, and lay down in bed and prepare to slink out as the Great Zen Failure of 2010 at Dharma Field.

My notion of who I was as a zen student was dying.  I thought I could just walk through sesshin, maybe facing a little tough stretch here and there, but my ability to complete my plans would never be called into question.  I was too strong for that, I was too committed for that.  I had come too far, for too long, done too much, to face a crisis of confidence.  That was for other people.

Suddenly, this notion who I am as a zen student was dead and lifeless at my feet.  I could doubt myself.  What until now seemed to be an endless reserve of confidence about this practice was no more.  I could no longer confidently go forward knowing I would continue to notch my way along to what I believed would be my future.  I might wash out.  I believed that the power to practice zen was one of the few precious things in life that was always going to be with me.  I might lose other things, people can take my belongings, they can even take my life, but they could not take away my desire to wake up to my life.  It was eternal.  This confidence in my simple ability to practice zen was something solid, fixed and permanent about who I am that no one or no thing could pry from my grasp.

Gone.  All of that was gone.  Words cannot express how sad that made me.  I had lost something very dear to me, and I didn't even know I could lose it until it was gone.

Dokusan is the zen term for the private interviews with the senior teachers that are offered during sesshin.  Sesshins are constructed so that the teachers are physically segregated from the students.  They come in and leave separately from the students.  They do not reside with the students, they do not take breaks with the students, there are almost no opportunities to just walk up and talk to a teacher during sesshin.  Your only access to them is in Dokusan.

It is easy to see the logic in this.  If this were not so, students would be huddled around them constantly, and those students willing to be rude and dismissive of other's needs would monopolize the time and space around them.  It's the same reason you can't turn right on red in Manhattan.  It would simply cause havoc.  There's too much going on.

Dokusan is the answer to this.  If you want to talk to a teacher you simply put your name on a list and wait your turn.  The interviews are offered during zazen periods in a private room.  At Dharma Field the actual procedure is that when you are within three people of the top of the list you sit zazen in a waiting room adjacent to the interview room, not in the zendo with the other students, and the teacher rings a high-pitched bell twice to announce that the next person on the list can come in.

At other zen centers one is often then asked to perform three full prostrated bows to the teacher (that is, ending up face down on the floor, arms outstretched at the teacher's feet).  I think the notion here is that this action is symbolic of total submission of your ego to the process.  Right.

At Dharma Field, a student simply opens the door, bows in gassho (hands positioned as in prayer, a bow of the head and upper body, this is an ordinary greeting in zen practice) and sits down across from the teacher.  A white noise machine is just outside the door that does make it impossible for anyone outside of the room to discern any of the conversation going on in the room, but if you are sitting zazen in the waiting area you can tell when someone is laughing or crying in there.  You can't tell what they are laughing and crying about, but you do know that laughing or crying is going on.

You hear both.  I heard both, but I heard a lot more crying during this session.  I wasn't the only one crying, that was for certain.

I also witnessed, by happenstance, another student receive some very significant family news during sesshin.  I want to respect this student's privacy, so I am not even going to reveal their gender, or anything specific about the event, just suffice it to say it was one of those family events that sets phones a-ringing and e-mails a-flying.  If it had been me to receive such news, I am not sure I would have remained in sesshin, particularly since my mind was really leaning towards getting the hell out of there anyway.  This student remained, and they will always have my admiration for that.  It wasn't selfish of them to do so, their presence wasn't needed somewhere, but no one would have begrudged this student the reason to leave.  There was reason to leave.

A bit later I was sitting in such a way that I could see, even though this student was trying to face away from the group, gazing out a window, that tears were streaming down this student's face and they were trying hard to stifle the noise of sobbing.  I wanted to go offer comfort, but that would have been rude.  Sesshin is about mutual respect for the vow of silence.  You do not ask another student to break their vow of silence in order to take care of something that can wait.

If this student needed comfort they could ask for it.  That is certainly allowed, but I could not give unsolicited comfort and respect their silence, so I simply sat there, breathed peacefully for them, and witnessed their sorrow.

Later, the student I had heard crying in Dokusan was sitting next to me and I could feel their sorrow.  It hurt.  They weren't frankly crying, but they were clearly grief-stricken, they looked as if they were sitting at a funeral of a very dear loved one.  Again, I simply sat there as witness.  I simply sat quietly with them, feeling their grief as if it was my own, mixed with my own, not trying to do anything about it, just being with it.

Beyond that, there were sad, down-trodden expressions everywhere, particularly on the faces of the students who only showed up for the last three days.  I had no idea why, but the first three days were by far the most difficult for me, so I imagined they were also struggling with physical discomfort, mental anguish and spiritual crises just as I had.  Everyone there, at one time or another, or for some people for the entire time, looked like they were suffering some overwhelmingly profound loss.

Then it came to me.  Here it is.  This is the Grief for which I came to this sesshin.  Whether or not it could be linked causally to the death of my teacher's wife was irrelevant.  My grief, these students' grief, my teacher's grief, his colleagues' grief, it was all here.  This is why I came.  I was here to offer myself to this, so I did.  I sat with this grief.  I was here, I could stay here, and that's what I was going to do.

This is how Reality actually works.  We think that one person suffers grief and this is something separate from other people who aren't suffering grief.  I'm sad, you're not.  If you look carefully enough to begin to see through the substantiality of individually-identifiable separately-appearing selves, you see there is no such locus.  There is only sorrow.  It doesn't belong to anyone.

This is Great Sorrow.

Rohatsu 2010, part 2 of 4: Great Soreness

There's a story that makes the rounds in the zen world in various forms, I'm sure it has happened several times, with several different people, so everyone has their own version of it, but it goes something generally like this:

A new meditator has an insight experience.  I've had them too, they're pretty impressive, like a spiritual orgasm or something.  It's what is commonly imagined that enlightenment may be, or nirvana, etc. etc. etc.  It can take a myriad of forms, and it is truly beyond description with words, which is one of the things so wonderful about it.  Quiet sitting has a way of reliably bringing these things on just like caressing certain body parts in certain ways will reliably bring on a sexual orgasm.

I had my first one as a young meditator, age 16, while being taught to meditate by one of the Catholic clergy at my Catholic high school.  He was using a candle as the object of concentration, and I had the experience of merging my awareness with the flame, for lack of a better way to put it.  I had another one during my first sesshin at San Francisco Zen Center, yet another while on a retreat in New Hampshire, and another one while riding the C Subway line in Manhattan (go figure).  Like an orgasm, you know one when you have one.  They are not subtle.

Anyway, I digress.  The young (or new) meditator has this experience and then rushes off to their zen teacher to tell them about it, using carrying along some fantasy that the zen teacher is going to say "Wow!  It usually takes years of dedicated practice to reach this level of deep understanding!  I've never had such an advanced student!"

If they have a good teacher, the teacher will instead treat the experience as if it is a minor annoyance best quickly forgotten.  Why?  Because in the context of waking up to what your life truly is, that is exactly what these experiences are--distractions.  They are wonderful, blissful, peaceful, comforting experiences, just as orgasms can be, but they have as much to do with zen practice as sexual orgasms have to do with getting your car washed.

My favorite version of this story involves a student telling (I think) Dainin Katagiri about one of these experiences.  The student describes this wonderful powerful experience in great detail and Katagiri nods and says "Hmmm.  How's your breathing?  How's your posture?"

If you could speak to me about how things are going during a sesshin, you're not going to hear me tell you about the wonderful insight I've gained into Dogen, or Huang Po, or how I now see that all beings are unique manifestations of Buddha already perfectly enlightened.  You're going to hear about my knees, my back, and about my suspicions that the person keeping time during zazen is sadistically messing with us by letting the sessions go longer than they are supposed to go.

Zazen, i.e., sitting motionless, is, at the very best, a mildly annoying experience.  It can be painful and difficult.  During this sesshin I primarily struggled during zazen with three painful and difficult problems.  First, my left leg would go to sleep.  This is somehow related to an interruption in regular blood flow caused by something to do with sitting motionless cross-legged.  This is not a huge problem because it goes away within a few seconds after I uncross my legs, and I've learned to do this subtly on the cushion with minimal disturbance to those around me (there is an Art to that).

The only problem with this is that zazen is essentially a yoga posture, like the downward dog or something, and if my legs are uncrossed I'm not sitting zazen.  So, for whatever period of time that I rock back and swing my foot in front of me to resolve the problem is time I'm not doing zazen.  Well, I'm sitting there to do zazen, so this time that I sit in a different posture in order to get the feeling back in my leg is "wasted" (for lack of a better term).  No matter how much I try to retain my mental posture, this isn't zazen.  It is not what I sat down to do.

My second problem, in order of the amount of distress it produced, was the pain involved with stretching out my quadriceps, the muscles on the front of my legs, because my knees are folded in, flexed almost as far as they can go.  It hurts, particularly early.  It's a sharp constant pain streaking down the muscles, and this merges with a very similar sensation in my knees also related to stretching tissues in that area.  It's not excruciating pain, but it is significant.  Many times at the end of a zazen period I would grab my thigh as I unfolded my leg and silently shout "Motherfucker!" to myself as I unfolded it.  Something about this private, silent, screamed vulgarity helped, I'm not sure why.

My third problem, and by far the most distressing, was a dull ache in the middle of my back in the mid-thoracic region, roughly a few inches below the area between my shoulder blades.  What was most annoying about it was not the intensity of the pain, I'd rate it about a four on a scale of one to ten, certainly tolerable.  The worst part was this notion that if I could just lean back on something it would completely go away.

Imagine leaning against a steam pipe that was not hot enough to burn your skin but far too hot to be comfortable.  All you need to do to rid yourself of this discomfort is stop leaning on the pipe, yet you are committed to leaning against this pipe for some reason that you don't really understand.  After a while this fact--that you're doing something to make yourself uncomfortable that you can immediately relieve--causes all sorts of mental distress.  This struggle with "why the hell do I do this to myself?" is actually worse than the pain.

I went for Dokusan, a private interview with the teacher, at my very first opportunity to discuss this problem.  He has been sitting zazen for 40 years, certainly he knows about this, and he did.  I described what was going on and he said "Is it a vertical pain or a horizontal pain?"

"Horizontal, a band across my back, below my shoulder blades, a dull ache." I said, leaning forward in anticipation of his wise counsel and immediate solution.

"Oh, if it is not vertical than this is something you're probably going to have to just put up with during the rest of this sesshin.  You do slump some and round your shoulders, it probably has something to do with that" he said, probably knowing that wasn't the answer I wanted.

Great.  It's like the old joke about going to the doctor and saying it hurts to do this and he tells you to stop doing that.  I knew this was about slumping, because exaggerating my slump made it go away.  Thanks, great Master of Zen, very helpful.  What I wanted him to tell me was some minor adjustment to make in my zazen posture that would magically resolve all this.  No dice.

So, I could exaggerate my slump, probably looking a bit like I was suddenly horribly depressed about something (not too far from the truth from time to time as I struggled with this, to be honest), but that's like swinging my foot in front of me to remedy my leg going to sleep.  Slumping is not zazen.  It is impossible to maintain the proper mental posture when you are not in the proper physical posture.  Slumped time on the cushion is also wasted time on the cushion.

After three days of this the pain began to persist even off the cushion.  My back hurt.  My muscles were aching.  I wanted a massage, preferably by a bikini-clad Japanese woman named something like Miyuki, but I would have accepted one from a bald guy named Fred who was clad in an dingy white t-shirt and grey sweat pants.  It hurt.

I thought I had an insight.  I'll just take some Ibuprofen!  I had none with me, but there was a first aid kit in the zendo so I raided it.  No Ibuprofen, but there was aspirin, so I took ten grains.  This resolved the pain off the cushion, my back didn't hurt all the time any more, but it did very little for my experience during zazen.

Sesshin practice is different than daily practice.  I sit zazen every day, at least twice, once in the morning and once in the evening.  I sit for twenty minutes, and I experience some minor version of every sensation I had during sesshin in my daily practice too, but only for a few minutes twice a day.  This is like the mild discomfort associated with working out, or climbing stairs, or shaving.  You forget about it.  It's no big deal, you put up with something for a minute or two and then you go on with your day.

In sesshin it goes on all freaking day, or that's what I'm thinking anyway.

Now, the truth is there is no "all day."  There is only this present moment.  Ever.  There is no other time.  The notion that a pain experienced for ten seconds is something worse than the same pain experienced for 6 hours (the amount of daily zazen done in these sesshins I attend) is just a story we tell ourselves.  A pain is a pain.  It either exists or it doesn't, right now.  We make pain "worse" with these thoughts that linear time exists in the way that we conceive of it, but that's really another discussion for a different essay.

However, you can create another kind of pain, the pain that persists off the cushion, from extended periods of time straining your muscles like this.  This is actually minor injury, a muscle strain, and I could eventually feel the swelling in this area of my back.  I was "injured."

At the end of day three and four I literally almost ran to bed so I could lay down flat.  It didn't hurt that way.  At the end of day three I was so exhausted by working with this soreness that I fell into a deep sleep almost immediately after getting into bed (and was visited by a bikini-clad Japanese woman named Miyuki while dreaming, but that's yet another story).  By day four I had some additional insight into my mental contributions to these physical problems so I wasn't so exhausted by them, but my back still hurt.  I could still feel the swelling.

I'll discuss more about this in the essay "Great Sincerity."  My struggle here was emblematic of what I will discuss there, but I do want to round-out this story about straightening-out my back.  I did fix the problem.  I did figure out what I was doing to make my back hurt.

When I sit, even as I sit right now typing this, I typically lean in my chair against the very same area of my back that was causing me all the trouble.  My lower back is generally not touching the chair below it, and I bend forward a bit in order to make my upper back vertical so I am not gazing up at the ceiling while trying to type.  It is a bad habit, I'm not recommending this posture, but it is what I do.

Extended periods of sitting this way, years really, has caused my muscles to orient in such a way to make this position comfortable for me (otherwise I would sit in some other position, duh).  This is not zazen posture.  When I orient to zazen posture, my muscles are not doing what they are used to doing, so they aren't strong in the ways and areas needed to sit comfortably with my thoracic spine perfectly straight, and they complain about it.

My zazen posture was subtly off.  I wasn't maintaining enough of a curve in my lumbar region.  When I made this adjustment (the internal experience is that of sticking out my butt in back and rounding out my belly in front) the pain faded.  Fortunately, I did finally figure it out and zazen stopped being painful.  Zazen finally fulfilled it's promise:  it was only mildly annoying.  

Unfortunately, I figured this out during the third-to-last sit on the last day.  That is, out of 60 zazen periods I sat over five days, numbers 58, 59 and 60 were only mildly annoying.  The rest were frankly painful, in varying degrees of intensity.  

Sits in the morning were easier, and the first of a set of three sits was easier than the second and third.  It was all very ordinary in this sense:  exactly what you would expect, exactly like the soreness from doing anything physical (which causes soreness, yes, even that) that you aren't used to doing every day (no, I'm not, and that's Miyuki's fault).  The more I did it the more sore I became.  It got better over breaks, but less better over the course of a day.

It even started to annoy me during kinhin, walking meditation.  At one point I was so tired of it that I moved to a chair to sit, but by the time even sitting in a chair didn't help.  That was very discouraging, but that's yet another story.

So, this is what sesshin is like during sesshin.  You aren't wandering between these experiences of being one with the universe, or running off to tell your teacher that you have figured out the sound of one hand clapping, or that you now know if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it whether there is a sound.  No, you're dealing with your body.  You're dealing with what shows up.  This is zen practice.  It's not very sexy (unless Miyuki is around), but this is the path to liberation.  I know that.

Quiet naturally, you might wonder if this is all worth it.  Yes, it is.  What's at stake here is nothing short of personal liberation for all sentient beings.  Caring for my back during zazen is no different than caring for the entire world.  If you want to understand that, well, there's a method, but you might get a little sore along the way.

Great Soreness.

Rohatsu 2010, part 1 of 4: Great Snow

Many of my friends think it is nutty enough to just voluntarily go to Minnesota in December.  They are completely confounded by the notion that I am going out there to make it possible to sit and stare at a blank wall most of the day.  However, in the most real and concrete sense, that is exactly what I did, and that's exactly why I did it.

When I arrived there was snow on the ground, maybe six inches worth, but it was no big deal, and everything was well-plowed and well-shoveled.  The cold and the whiteness does settle the mind a bit, which is helpful for zen practice, so I was happy to see it.  My anticipated activities were all indoors, so beyond physically getting to where I needed to be (which, due to a kind and generous friend was absolutely no problem) I really didn't think much about the snow.  It was there, not out of place in a Minnesota December, but it was the first snow I had seen this winter.  I was happy to see it.

During sesshin you really don't get much in the way of news from the world outside.  You aren't reading newspapers, listening to the radio or watching television.  Interaction with the outside world is not part of the plan, so it was a startling surprise in the middle of day 2 when the practice director for the sesshin announced that he had some news for us.  Really?  Who died?

"There's a storm coming, it looks like we're going to have a snow emergency, so we need to deal with the cars" he said in a calm voice also imbued with urgency.

I was both from out of town and without responsibility for a car, so I neither knew the implications of a snow emergency, whatever that was, nor did I much care.  However, i did notice that people around me, already settled into two days of zazen practice, slumped a bit on their cushions.  I immediately got the sense in the room that this was going to be something of a drama for them.

For me, since I was staying in the building next door, and it was plenty warm, and the zendo was plenty warm, I was rather looking forward to seeing some fresh snow, and it sounded like a lot of it was coming.  All I ever had to do was walk about 30 feet outdoors and I didn't imagine that this snow emergency was going to be a problem for me no matter what happened.

This was a five day sesshin, it was nearing the end of the second day, but my zen center allows people to only participate in the last three days if that's what they want, so we were about to double in size from roughly ten to twenty people that evening. The snow would arrive soon after the three-day participants.

One of the most universal experiences of sesshin is the desire to leave early.  Sesshin is difficult mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually.  Anyone who tells you that they like it without also mentioning that they also don't like it is not being honest, or has never been to one.  Sitting still can be comfortable, sitting motionless is not.  What is normally regarded as "sitting still" actually involves almost constant motion, one just doesn't notice it.

Sitting motionless is something else.  I'm sure this experience is different for everyone, but it is the same in some ways too.  For me, it involves my knees aching, my legs falling asleep, and a dull ache in the back.  I can sit motionless for about 5 minutes comfortably if I have oriented myself optimally physically.  It doesn't take long before I am thinking I really want to be doing something else.  That's only natural.

So, when my mind gets caught by the notion that I'm going to be feeling this way for days and days I naturally start negotiating with myself how I am going to quit.  Can I claim I am Ill?  Injured?  Have an emergency back home?  Decided that zen is bullshit?  How do I exit gracefully?  This rumination goes on for a while, particularly early in the sesshin.

The actual procedure would involve a discussion with the teacher (unless one just gets up and leaves without making any announcement, which also happens) and a good zen teacher is going to tell you that while you are free to leave, you should know that there's no where to go.  What he or she means is that you can't escape your own life, and that is really your fundamental problem, not your back/knees/boredom/whatever.

With the snow, there was literally another layer on this notion that one can't really go anywhere.  That is, for a while, one really couldn't go anywhere, literally, but I'm getting to that.

Friday night when we went to bed it wasn't snowing just yet.  I woke up at about two in the morning to use the bathroom and I looked outside.  There was a nice new layer of snow on the ground.  I thought "well, there's probably going to be some shoveling to do in the morning, but I don't see what all the hubbub is about."  I went back to sleep and set my alarm for 4:15, 30 minutes before everyone was supposed to arise.

At 4:15 I woke up to the sound of someone shoveling snow outside.  I got up, got dressed, and went to the zendo.  There was a good coat of snow on the ground, but it wasn't bad, maybe six inches.  The practice director was already shoveling in back of the zendo and I asked him if there was other shoveling that needed to be done.  He indicated that the front steps of the zendo needed attention so I walked around front, found a snow shovel and started to work.

It was quiet, the snow was absolutely pristine, and I simply shoveled a walking path from the front door of the zendo to the street.  While I was doing this, the scene around me was exquisitely beautiful, beyond words.  The only sound was my shovel and the faint crackle of heavy dry snow hitting my body.

I didn't know what the temperature was, which was probably a good thing, because I was told later it was about 20-30 degrees below zero at that time.  I was just wearing my meditation jacket, actually just wearing what I wore inside throughout the sesshin, but I didn't start to get uncomfortable until right as I finished.  It didn't take long, I was probably out there about ten minutes.

Just as I finished the work leader appeared at the door, all bundled up, obviously anticipating doing some shoveling himself.  "I just cleared a path out to the street.  It is still snowing, so there will be more snow practice" I said to him.

He nodded and said "that's probably good enough for right now" and we both went inside.  I felt as though I sensed a little disappointment in him that the work was done, which I understood.  I had really enjoyed it.  Not only was I living our teacher's common admonition to just attend to this present moment, but I got to see the snow in a way no one else would.  It was now shoveled, human intention had manifested, and that simple unbroken coating of white peacefulness was now interrupted by a human hand, never to return.  There was no more an un-shoveled scene out front of the zendo.  Only I had been privileged enough to see and live it before I ended it's existence.

But, my hands were cold.  It was time to go inside.  It was time for me to move on from my personal snow practice.

It wasn't much later in the day that the peacefulness I had so enjoyed outside also moved on.  As the sun came up, the wind kicked up with it.  The snow that was once carefully everywhere descending now was whipped sideways by a fierce wind.  Flakes that had once drifted lazily to the earth were now forming white streaks painted across the canvas of the views out the zendo windows.  During kinhin I would steal a glance outside every once in a while.  At one point I couldn't really make out what was across the street.  This was a full-on blizzard.

By the middle of the afternoon, when it was time for work practice, the snow emergency had been declared and it was time to both dig out the cars and dig out a place to move them on the other designated side of the street.  There was something like two feet of snow on the ground, drifts were more than four feet high.

Minneapolis is well-organized when it comes to snow-plowing.  There was a plan, the only printed material evident to students at the sesshin was the snow plowing plan.  On one day you parked on one side of the street so they could plow the other side.  The next day, the instructions were reversed.  This was impressive.  It worked well.

A team was organized to do the shoveling.  The work leader asked me if I had my boots.  I don't have snow boots.  I have never owned a pair.  I am from Texas, I am not sure you can even buy snow boots in Texas.  I now live in New York City, but honestly I would only use snow boots a few days of the year there, so I don't have any.  I told the work leader I would be happy to shovel anyway, I wanted to, but he said "I'll think about it," which I knew meant no.

Instead I was no part of the snow shoveling team beyond my first foray out early that morning.  I missed out on all the rest of the shoveling, working instead inside on cleaning the zendo.  That was fine, I like cleaning the zendo, and I realized my desire to shovel snow was more about an opportunity to gain something for myself rather than practice, so I returned to what there was to do and cleaned the zendo.

What occurred to me in the midst of all this was that we were sort of snowed-in.  We were actually in a rather urban setting, if someone wanted to leave they physically could, but it would be more difficult than on a sunny spring day.  For example, one couldn't really just pack bags and walk away unless one had prepared, as in having the gear, for being out walking during a blizzard.  I wondered if anyone felt trapped by the snow.  I imagined that if we had been in a more rural setting we certainly would have been snow-bound.

I realized that earlier in my practice, in my life, I would have constructed some notion that this was the work of God, or Buddha maybe, in order to "force" people to stay at sesshin, particularly those who just showed up for the last three days.  I wondered if any of them had constructed such a notion for themselves.  There was no way for me to find out.  This was silent practice, we only spoke to each other when logistically necessary.

I was happy now that I harbored no such delusions, but it was sort of fun to think about, and it was neat the way it worked out--the three-day participants showed up and the blizzard showed up right behind them.  It certainly had the appearance of some grand plan, and I actually no more knew that there wasn't a plan than I knew that there was one.  I just didn't believe there was.

On subsequent days there was still shoveling to do even though the skies cleared to a brilliant blue.  Now it was time to prepare the zendo grounds for this snow being around until the spring thaw.  Paths had to be cleared, drifts obscuring windows had to be moved, and the life-long Minnesotans who made up the bulk of the sesshin participants quietly went about the work.  They know what to do after the first major snowfall every year.  This quiet activity was also beautiful to witness.

The snow was shoveled as carefully and as beautifully as any ritual performed during sesshin.  I realized I was privileged to witness something special, something I had never known or seen as a Texan or even a New York City resident.  These people knew snow.  They knew what to do, they knew how it should be done.  Snow manifested in this moment and the students cared for it as one cares for their next breath while sitting zazen.  I was very moved.

The snow did sort of stop the world for a while, just as I had stopped my life, in order to be here now.   There was less traffic outside, less activity on the streets, things seem a little quieter everywhere.  I found out later that there had only been four snow storms in recorded weather history in Minneapolis that were worse than this one.  This was a doozy.  This was a Great Snow.