Back to Ground

The coin turns and the other face comes forward.

Started this entry on the Met line back to Harrow after an interesting sitting, but I left it overnight to simmer a bit. Much to ponder. I think I've learned something. Perhaps I already knew it, but the penny dropped last night. Manu and Sarita are not supposed to be teachers, and indeed they are not acting as mentors, but I do find their company very instructive. They are teachers simply by virtue of being living examples of what this practice looks like, and for that I am indeed grateful.

It's been an up and down week. After the second round of 'fireworks' last week, I think I let go of the surrender issue that was my early sticking point. What I found this week however, was the next sticking point, which (perhaps obviously) was expectation. Last week I was in the zone and everything was easy. Meditation was play and it was fun. However, over the weekend I took a break, (life stepped in) and come Monday I discovered there's a Monday Morning Effect in meditation as well. My skills were rusty. Worse, I discovered myself 'trying' for the first time. Arrgh! That's not good... stop it! etc...

So it's been fits and starts most of the week, though I was in the zone wednesday night for class with the crazy Kadampas. Tonight's sitting was hard though. Uncomfortable and constant adjustment. Just not clicking for the most part.

Except right at the beginning... Interesting bit that. When I started the first session, I was struck almost immediately with a strong resurrection of the emotional storm during that first week after Lazarus was born; one of the rawest times I can remember. Where this has been hiding for the last 14 months I have no idea, nor why it suddenly decided to surface last night, but there it was. Now perhaps the distance has helped to fade it, or perhaps it was the sitting, but I was able to, for the most part, just sit and observe this feeling. In a way, the stark openness and rawness of these emotions are quite beautiful, traumatic as they were to experience the first time around. In any event, it was an interesting experience to just sit with these feelings and not have to identify with them.

Manu says he is not interested in the nondual. Where he is at in his life, he just isn't interested in the absolute. He sits purely for the relative at the moment. hmmm.

This makes me wonder, what am I after? Why am I attracted to this practice? What am I trying to do this for? Is it the pure sensory experience? Probably not. That was perhaps the first hook that slipped it past my skeptic and suggested to me that there was something going on, but the weird sensory effects aren't that interesting.

Is it some sort of latent search for "spirituality?" (For lack of a better term.) I don't know. Perhaps. I've not really explored such issues much in the past, and indeed at certain points I've been somewhat antagonistic to the idea. Certainly there is (was?) some sort of shadow issue lurking given my rather asymmetric reaction to any sort of religious fundamentalism and to Christianity in particular. Perhaps the self doth protest too much? Is there, hidden in that shadow, a secret desire to surrender to such a belief? If so, then Zen is an interesting choice, seeing as it is a practice almost completely stripped of the trappings of religion. The surrender in Zen is not to a god, not to any particular metaphysical notion of reality (though these aspects can float about a bit in the background at times.) Really it's a surrender to the practice and a surrender of the need for notions. If you're looking for meaning, it seems to me that Zen is the last place you'll find it. To really sit zazen I think you need to leave that need for a reason at the door. The fact that Zen resonates with me leads me to suspect I'm not looking for The Meaning of Life.

I might be looking for a refuge from rationality. That idea does have some ring of truth to it. Why do I resonate so much more with Big Heart than with Big Mind? Perhaps I spend too much in mind already. There is certainly an aspect of my heart that yearns to break loose from the bonds of rationalism and pragmatism, and indulge in a sense of magic and wonder.

On the other hand, this is the aspect that most worries my skeptic, and that fear was the first sticking point that I had to navigate to even engage in the process in the first place. This is the still persistent, nagging kernel of doubt which digs at me. It's taken the better part of three years of reading the likes of Ken Wilber, and struggling with these ideas to get me to the point where I am now.

And I'm still not fully convinced. Far from it. Indeed, I waffle all over the map, but the arguments have been subtle and convincing enough that I can't dismiss them. The criticism that my 'rational' worldview is also based on metaphysical assumptions is troubling. Science doesn't do absolutes very well because, well frankly, you can't extrapolate. Any time you try to make a statement of ultimate truth, you are inherently extrapolating beyond the limits of your observations and nothing is really constrained. You can't just continue the curve off the edge of the page. If you do then you're so-called truth becomes a bridge that's only supported on one side. It will hold for a while, but it will never get you to the ultimate. The span is too large. (It's infinite after all).

So perhaps the Zen idea that ultimate truth is ungraspable is an appealing notion. It certainly ends lots of unpleasant arguments. Of course there is also the notion in Zen that one can actually be that ungraspable truth; in fact, one cannot NOT be that ungrapsable truth. Well... for the moment we will just file that under "food for the mind that seeks the way" and leave it at that. The nondual is an idea that teases my rational skeptic, but pleases my inner mage. Détente?

So, there is probably an element of seeking the nondual in my attraction to Zen. Still, if this was the only attraction I think my skeptic would be significantly more concerned. However, there is another reason which even my skeptic will pass whole-heartedly, and this is the reason that really came through last night. I'm finding that sitting is increasing my stability and emotional balance.

The Zen koan "be the immovable tree in a heavy wind" is speaking quite loudly to me now. This is an image that my heart leaps at like a desperate starved monkey. I've been an emotional tumbleweed for a long time. Perhaps a heavy tumbleweed at times, but a tumbleweed nontheless. Fifteen years ago I rooted myself to another tumbleweed, which has provided both some increased stability, but also some increased sensitivity to the wind. Now we are both tied to the lightest, most wayward of tumbleweeds. And for the last year and a half or so, the winds have been mighty gusty.

Sitting makes me heavy. It gives me a sense of balance and inertia. I'm still blown by the winds, but I feel like I'm rising less to the bait. It's as if, when I sit zazen, I'm literally rooting my ass to the ground. I'm beginning to feel a little bit more like a willow. Sarita read a short passage from a book by Taizan Maezumi Roshi last night which spoke of having faith in oneself. This is something I have difficulty with, but perhaps finding balance and ground will help.