Too busy To Sit?

A Bird In the Bush

Original Mixed Media collage on matte board

8" x 8" matte, image size 3.75" x 4.5"

$25 including shipping in North America

I am feeling rather speedy tonight as the result of all the things I have done today and have to do for two upcoming art shows.  So many little things and then life always intervenes with its own little agendas that interrupt.  An early morning Etsy order, a call from a realtor checking back.  It's interesting how some days just have that kind of energy.  And for me it's always about keeping my eye on the proverbial ball.  It's so easy to create and go over lists in your mind.  But they just make me tired.  I love lists (in their place), but sometimes  they can take on a life of their own and chase you around the house and wear you out before you're even out of bed.  (Who let that list out of it's cage this morning??)

But if I just do the next thing that needs to be done, instead of going "Eeek I have so much to do,"  I am much better off.  For one, I have more energy and my head doesn't feel like it's about to spin off into orbit and become space trash.  All those tasks will all get done -- or not.   And it will all be okay.  No houses will burn down.  No lives will be lost.  In the grand scheme of things, what I have to do is like a speck of dust in the universe.  No big deal.  Now if I can just remember this....

I feel like I'd like to do another sit today and that had been my intention in the morning but here I am late at night.  I think a sit at this time of day could be a head bobbing event (you've seen those little bobble headed hockey players & such).  But the idea of being so busy that I feel the need to sit again reminds me of a Zen story.   A new student asks how long to sit.  The master says start with half an hour.  The student replies that he is far to busy for that and then Zen master tells him to sit for an hour then.  And that's it, isn't it, the busier we are, the more stressed we are, the more time we need to spend slowing down.  It's the antidote, it's the solution to the problem, not another aspect of the problem, it's not just one more thing to do.  It's a whole shift, an opportunity to see things differently.  And "the busies", they're  like a warning signal we can read, but mostly we think we are too busy to bother.

Day 100 - A Ferry Ride With The Buddha

Well  this is it the 100th day of Dharma. How did that happen?  That might be my cue to talk about impermanence but I don't think I will.  A hundred days can pass and we hardly remember what happened between then and now, such is the fleeting nature of life. I love this quote attributed to the Buddha, "This life of separateness may be compared to a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning."  So how important are all those little things that go on in between then and now.  I'm thinking about the things we fret about; mostly gone without a trace.  That's instructive for how to live our lives, don't you think?

But that's not really what I want to talk about right now.  My bedtime reading has been the Dhammapada for the last little while (I'm still on the intro!).  Last night I was reading about "Turning the Wheel of the Dharma" and it felt like it had some significance in terms of my 100 Days of Dharma.  That's what we're doing here aren't we, turning the wheel of the Dharma, thinking about our lives in terms of the Dharma, considering the teachings of the Buddha and then adjusting our daily course according to what we find and what it seems good to do.

After his enlightenment when the Buddha was questioned about who he was he answered "I am awake" (budh, from the sanskrit root, to wake up).  When he started teaching he said:  "I have found the deathless, the unconditioned: I have seen life as it is."  And really isn't that what we're aiming for, the truth, the end of suffering when we practice.  To see our lives like the movies or dramas they are and watch them, unattached, with joy and amusement and sometimes with a great big hanky.  That is the aim I think, to be passionately involved in life and at the same time know that it's all okay.  Haven't we simply been inspired by figures like the Buddha to believe that it is possible to attain this state.  They say that he was pictured as a ferryman asking the question, "Anyone for the other shore?"  Man I'm interested in one of those tickets! 

And what's the fare?  Well it's not cheap.  And the seats?  Best in the house.  The meditation cushion.  Such an important thing to remember, that the key to practice, to attainment is sitting, the foundation of all our work with the Dharma.  How did the Buddha attain Nirvana, not from talking or reading, or wandering, or thinking but through disciplined  sitting.  He sat through all the assaults of Mara, through desire and doubt.  Without the sitting we won't make much progress and even with the sitting it is a lifetime process.  So I am thinking about the important things today and sitting is one of them.  And I think part of why I decided to write 100 Days of Dharma is for the discipline, which is the same as getting to the cushion, doing what needs to be done, over and over and over.  Building that muscle to do it whether we feel like it or not, whether we are tired, or depressed, or grumpy, or sick, or ecstatically joyful, or filled with unrest.

And why do we study the Dharma?  Why do I sit?  Well I think we always start with the wish to free ourselves from suffering.  And as time goes on, whether consciously or unconsciously we are adding to the compassion in the world, we are sending off little threads of wisdom and compassion without even knowing it, kind of like little human prayer flags.  We contribute to the world in a positive way.  Just by looking at what we do and making choices, active informed choices about how to live our lives.  And perhaps as time goes on our presence becomes a little calmer, more grounded and just our energy contributes in a positive way to the world.  This is what we are doing I think, one person at a time, one day at a time, one breath at a time.

So while 100 Days of Dharma have passed, I will continue to write about life and the Dharma as things come up that seem important to me.  It has been interesting to see that I was never really stumped for a topic, that something always presented itself, though I often wondered if it would.  Maybe I'd run dry like an old well and just cough and choke and sputter out some letters of the alphabet and embarrass myself in public (maybe I have and I am too dense to notice!)  So it has been a real privilege to share a 100 Days of Dharma with you and I expect we will continue to visit as we all have purchased a lifetime ticket to the other shore.  May your journey be a good one, filled with joy and sorrow and passion and gusto.

Bows to you all.

Just Sitting

It would be very Zen to carefully replace each tube of paint and return each scrap of paper to where it belongs, lovingly and carefully as I worked.  But as you can see from this studio shot, that isn't my method.  I cook like this too.  Before you know it things are everywhere in a creative flurry.  And then when they reach some tipping point of chaos and disorder and  I can't bear it any longer or think straight, I pause to tidy.  Then I feel like a spritely little breeze has blown new energy into the place and  the process starts all over again.  As you can see Bunny, the cat, is exercising her supervisory prowess and disapproves immensely.

You might think I was going to write about the process of art but really I'm just out of art photos so this studio shot is standing in for a painting.  On the art front I am posting some paintings to the Boundless Gallery site this weekend so they should be available for viewing by Monday or so.  It was very gratifying yesterday when a buyer received the 3 paintings she had purchased and expressed her sheer delight to me.  That is the fun of selling directly, getting the feed back that reminds you of your initial intention.

I have been thinking about meditation today.  The Zen meditation that I am familiar with and have practiced for the last 4 years consists of sitting facing the wall with eyes slightly downcast, but open.  You are not thinking and not trying not to think.  You are just sitting.  Your aim is to be open and present.  You hear sounds, you observe your thoughts.  This is sometimes referred to as Shikantaza.  

Lately, after taking a set of qi gong classes I have been trying the method of meditation suggested in that class.  It is one that applies a concentrative focus on the hara or lower dan tien on the out breath.  It is used to build concentration, focus and ultimately chi.  I have actually found it really helpful to work with building focus and concentration, something that didn't really happen for me in the Soto Zen form.  But I have also noticed how the mind gets in there when there is a task to do, as in focusing on something specific (like the hara and chi building).  The mind wants to make this it's little project and once you do this you are on a slippery slope of watching and measuring and wanting things to go a certain way.  And then suddenly it's all gone awry.

This morning after we'd finished sitting my partner read me a little excerpt that expressed this perfectly, from a book he's been reading called "Meditation week by week" by David Fontana.  The quote was, "Whenever you intend that meditation should do something or reveal something, the conscious mind assumes it can do the work for you.  Meditation works best, if as soon as you sit on your cushion, all thoughts of goals and attainments are relinquished.  You sit in meditation simply because that is what you are doing."  He reminds us that we need self discipline to help us remain focused.  He talks about the pitfall of  "feeling elated" about anything that happens and I can always remember when I first started meditating and at some point in the meditation I'd feel "ah, it's finally getting going here, or this is going well", and poof it would be gone.  There is definitely a "no peeking" rule in meditation.  Once your mind gets in and starts stirring, everything falls out the hole in the bottom of the pot.

So in sitting meditation it is just the same as our practice out in the world.  It doesn't serve us to get attached to results, to have expectations, to think there is something to gain from our meditation.  We are just sitting there like little Buddhas.  As my friend the monk would say, "Buddha bows to buddha".