This morning, walking down to catch the BART train, I followed the line of a vapour trail from a high flying jet, as it streaked across the sky to the southeast. For some reason it made me think of the shuttle Columbia, and its trail of disintegration. Awful thought...thinking of just how do space men and space women die. If I must answer, and since I'm writing this I must, I would say that they die pretty much how all the rest of us die. Some by slow decline, others more suddenly. I guess the particular passage from Philippe Coupey's commentary on Dogen's “Fukanzazengi” I was reading this morning as I walked put me into a bit of contemplativeness on mortality. Thinking about the mortality of others is a great excuse to avoid confronting your own. Or maybe I was just having a Ballardian rhapsody.
[ 27 November] link? →→→contact me
Boo hoo! Tomorrow I have to work. I have to crank out some stuff that's soon to be due. Boo hoo! The holiday weekend was going along so swimmingly too! Mostly I have been up to nothing. S & I watched Fellini's “8½” on Thursday, inspired by our recent watching of the amazingly wonderful documentary (thank you Netflix!) by Martin Scorsese, “My Voyage to Italy”.
Last night, not quite remembering otherwise, I trekked past the hordes of gleeful holiday shoppers, over to Page Street, to find Zen Center closed. Just like the sign on the zendo door said. So I then made my way home earlier than expected and treated myself (and S too) to a rewatching of Kubrick's “2001”. And I didn't fall asleep, like the last time I watched it. I always wind feeling a little sorry for HAL. What can I say? I'm sorry Dave.
This past Sunday, the day after being at Zen Center and listening to Michael Wenger give a very touching dharma talk, “Vulnerability is The Mind of Enlightenment”, I spent the day there for a beginner's sit. It was a good day. It was a good day to be silent. To be with others. To sit on my rear. To bow, drink tea and eat a cookie. One insight from the day: I found that holding on to the notion of just being a beginner is getting in the way of being a beginner. Go figure.
[ 25 November] link? →→→contact me
Saturday morning I made it over to hear the newly elected abbott for San Francisco Zen Center give the dharma talk. Myogen Steve Stücky's talk was sweetly serious. First he engaged with a group of children who were in attendance for the first part of the talk. There was even a sing-a-long, Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree. Then he spoke on the meaning(s) of the Bodhisattva's vow. Zen Center makes audio of the dharma talks available. Rather than try to describe it, where I will no doubt do a disservice, you can listen to it (once they put it up on their site).
On Sunday, I sat for the half-day sesshin at Berkeley Zen Center. I haven't sat formally in several years. I almost didn't go, struggling with my usual bout of anxiety when breaking routine. But, I found myself there after all. Sitting. Breathing. Tossing wild thought salads in my head, then going back to counting my breaths. I have recently been reading Robert Aitken's “Taking the Path of Zen”, and found his comments helpful, like counting breaths for example. I consumed tea and cookie (just one!) during the small, silent, break. Afterwards, the tea left a warm, pleasant, sensation from mouth to belly.
Later on, I went to see the documentary “Jonestown”. I was glad that I had sat all morning and felt more grounded while seeing it than I might otherwise have. I first moved to the Bay Area in the early seventies and remember very well the People's Temple paper being dropped off on the doorstep of the house where I lived in Berkeley. It is a powerful story, all the more powerful because it is largely told via interviews with people who had been involved with the Temple, some of whom had escaped from Jonestown in its final moments, all of whom who lost family or friends to that dark tempest that passed through Guyana that fateful day.
Meantime, while I have been sitting on rear and going to films about disturbing events, someone very special to me has been appreciating some changes he has seen in his life over the past year.
[ 6 November] link? →→→contact me
At the end of my Wednesday session with my favourite therapist, I told her that I would see her this Sunday for the half-day sit at Berkeley Zen Center. That was pretty definite of me. Perhaps I should have been vaguer and said might instead of would. So no more excuses, at least not this weekend. Have to be there Sunday morning before the bell rings at eight. No lazing in bed with the grand-daughter's cat, sipping coffee and reading the Sunday New York Times. Time to stop procrastinating. Time to take the plunge.