practice

The gatha of impermanence or Evening Gatha begins:

The day has ended
What have I done…

Depending on my day, the inflection on that second line can vary from reflective to panic-stricken.  Lately, it’s been more the latter as I struggle with the right and left hand of a preceptual issue: not telling lies and mindful speech.

Last week, I noticed I left out buddha57 from the stream of 108buddhas.

I practiced writing that out as straightforwardly as I could.  No apologetics.  No explanatory cutsie precursive remarks.  No BS.  I’ve been noticing how the placement of words in a string can really prevent me from taking responsibility for what I’ve done (or not done).

Take this sentence for example: In my rush to get everything set up before I left for the Upaya Chaplaincy program, buddha57 was left out of the stream of 108buddhas.

Excuse followed by elevation followed by a neutralization of responsibility.  I may be wrong but the sentence evokes compassion for the image of a mistake made in a pressured life trying to cultivate something worthy and churning out these pieces of art and prose.  Nothing wrong with the compassion; but I feel it’s obtained through a manipulation.  It sucks you into subtly falling into my angst as I slide my oversight over to the background.

Now, even reading that first sentence, you might have felt something about buddha57 being left out.  Perhaps you would have felt indifference; who really cares if buddha57 is missing, just put it in somewhere!  Perhaps you would have felt annoyed; after all this is supposed to be a practice of Attention!  Attention!  Attention!  Perhaps you would have felt compassion for my obsessive nature; only the Catholic Church could have invented a sin called Scrupulosity!

Both sentences invite an interaction; the first by opening to and the second by closing out possibilities.  If my intention is to tell you I messed up the first is true to that intention, the other not.  If my intention is to ask for forgiveness (yes, even us zennies need forgiveness at times), the first requires trust; the second controls your feelings so that you are more likely to forgive the oversight.  If my intention is to elicit sympathy in the face of the oversight, the first might be seen as defensive and closed, the second more available for understanding.

An honest writer is sensitive to the intention of each word.  She knows the difference between stimulating reflective thought and eliciting loyalty for her perspective.  A courageous writer trusts what might emerge from the interaction of the written word and the true nature of the reader.  She knows her intention when she selects a specific word, when she brings it into the presence of its companions, when she watches them tumble together and when she leaves them alone to orchestrate the smooth flow of an idea.

The form and structure of the precepts can be taught just as the craft of writing can be taught.  But honest writing cannot be taught any more than living into the spirit of the precepts can be taught.  Which brings me to the other thing I have done which has caused me some loss of sleep.  More on that tomorrow.

Thank you for practising,

Genju

Pride has taught me how to fall gracefully.  This summer we surrendered to our ineptitude and bought a compost drum.  It’s a neat creature, a black, coiled dragon that guards the back entrance from the laundry room to the north gardens.  It has a little lid that flips back and the first thing we put into it were the crazy-wild marjoram that now infest all the beds.  And because it’s right by the door there are no longer any excuses about taking out the day’s cooking scraps.  Every couple of days, we give the drum a twirl and listen to the ka-thunk, ka-thunk that suggests maybe we shouldn’t have put all that mud in with the marjoram.

Sometimes I need a little extra help and it’s no great sin to get the right equipment while I’m in the learning stage.  Of course, my ego resents this black dragon-drum.  The competency police have been out in full force reading me the riot act about taking the easy way into transformation.  The Poor-me Pixies have been hanging around too with their night-time serenades about giving up and never really amounting to anything.

To all of them I have this to say:

COMPOST!

Well.. almost.  But hey, it’s a heck of a lot closer than I’ve ever been to real live compost!

Now I’m wondering if there’s a zazen technique that involves getting spun and tumbled every couple of days to speed up the process…

Thank you for composting,

Genju

There are lots of books that tell you how to compost.  They’re filled with lovely pictures of wood boxes, metal screens, tubs, and containers filled with worms (vermiculture).  The text is romantic and seductive, promising that for a few dollars you too can have something rich and dark which will fulfill your wildest horticultural fantasies.

Something gets lost in the translation from book to earth around here. The best we’ve managed are piles of smelly, slimy rotting vegetables.  However, the skunks and raccoons seem to think we’re doing just fine.

Transforming our vegetarian gourmet delights into fertile earth is as much of a mystery to me as the creative process, in art and in the life of practice.  I follow the directions, build the magical three containers, put in the table scraps of my days into the first one, dig deep with Manjushri’s pitchfork (yes, it’s a pitchfork, not a sword in my part of the world), and wait.  And wait.  And wait, until I am distracted or so frustrated I just go buy a bag of earth someone else had made out of their own scraps.

(I have to make a comment here about today’s 108buddha.  I really dislike the colour.  But what are you going to do; it’s what showed up for today.  Such is the makings of compost.  Like, not like – degeneration doesn’t discriminate.)

So I continued to fill those containers.  Then I learned something.  One of those Fine Print Teachings: don’t add fresh scraps to cooking compost.  It’s like continuing to add ingredients to a cake while it’s baking.  That’s why there are three boxes: fresh scraps which then get turned over into the cooking box which then get turned over into the simmer-until-done box.

Oh, she said.

Practice is like that.  “Are you using zazen or letting it use you?”

Oh, she says.

Thank you for practising,

Genju

This life of practice is challenging.  The almost three weeks we spent away from home and garden had serious consequences.  As you can see the lettuce has “shot” – I’ve never seen lettuce flowers; they’re very cute.  The tomatoes succumbed to the heavy rains and intense heat; we’ll be lucky to get a dozen or so from the boxes.  We got one meal of green beans and yellow squash.  The bean plants and two baseball bat-sized squash are destined for the compost pile.

The other types of squash however are running rampant.

I’d planted spaghetti and crookneck squash which didn’t seem to have taken before we left.  And here they are shoving around the roses.

I love an orderly life – I love an orderly garden which to me is external proof of an equally orderly internal environment.  Apparently, my desires are not on the agenda this go around.  Or perhaps, it’s a clear message that my internal life needs a Master Gardener.

Practice sends me the same message.  I tend to get very organized and obsessive about making it pretty.  And then, some part of life takes me away and what was once pretty becomes wild and unruly.  Or it becomes a psychological bully that insists everyone’s way has to give way to my Way.  That’s the time when two really important practices come into play – both in gardening and the guck stuff.

Let go.  Order is subtle.  Things tend to follow a path that isn’t immediately evident.

Compost.  Everything gets 10, 000 chances.

When I first starting sitting, order had to be forced out of chaos – in the room, in the mind, in the body.  I haven’t quite let go of my need for order.  I’m just not as ruthless about it, I hope.  At the same time, the discipline grows out of skilfully illuminating each so that the other comes into relief.

I mentioned to Carole at ZenDotStudio that I’ve never been successful at composting.  That’s true in a gardening way; it’s also true in a practice way.  Managing impatience for change and a desire for permanence is tricky.  And when they sit on that cushion with me, it gets crowded and precarious.  So I’m learning how to prune away what isn’t necessary in this moment, what has yielded its fruit, what has shot to flower.  These go in a pile for the worms and bacteria to transform.  They are more powerful and skillful at that than I.

Thank you for practising,

Genju