CLICK HERE FOR THOUSANDS OF FREE BLOGGER TEMPLATES »

Sunday, March 2, 2008

If Zazen were Campelle's soup

Most of you know me well enough to know I'm big on just sitting back and observing. This was a really good time to do that. Weekend trip to Atlanta for The Sesshin. With All of the smart and profound-like people I love so much, my fellow Buddhists. Zazen from Concentrate hahahaha.

I couldn't help but notice how repetitive everything is. During Darhma Talk and Tea everyone was saying the same thing over and over just in prettier words and different forms. It was saved by the randomly thrown-in humor courtesy of Brad and most often Mike Ellis. I'm not saying none of it was true or that any of it was meaningless. I just wonder if any of them realized that they may have sounded pensive but were in actuality just sub-consciously parroting what had just been said to them.

Had I been in Brad's or Mike's spot, I think I would have been perturbed that their repetition was causing me to be repetitive in return. Personally I hate repeating myself.

I think a Sesshin must be one of the easiest things to plan. You're not supposed to do anything but talk(rarely), eat, sleep, and sit. There's something very intriguing in that simplicity. And I make zazen sound easy to do. Hahahahahaha

It's so not.

Somewhere in there the tension in my shoulders caused something to happen to my windpipe and it felt like someone was choking me. I could breathe, but the pain that would accompany such a dilemma is what I'm talking about. My Ass hurts, my knees, my hips, and my back....But you get used to it, and it's all worth it. In this concentrated meditation you have this uninterrupted time to put everything into focus, dwell on it, and let it go. Which is something you don't get when going through daily life. Always being plagued by what's in front of us at the time.

One lesson that seemed to confront me in many forms this weekend is that nothing can be non-existent without existing in the first place. I.E.Without the existence of noise, there would be no silence. It's thanks to Zazen that I understand that age old question, "if a tree fell in a forest and no one was there to hear it fall, did it make any noise?" Regardless of how banal it is.

Anyway. There was a special guest. One Mr. Brad Warner Pictured in my slideshow on my Myspace Page, actually. An interesting character to observe I can tell you. One of those people I can look at for the first time and know something is bothering them and it's obvious only because they're trying not to be obvious. He gives himself little credit and doesn't fight to be heard. One example I can give is at the goodbye lunch. In a conversation he'd be about to say something and another would interrupt him. That defeated/acceptance expression steals over his face and in a split second he shrugs it off and turns to the other group, where he is immediately accepted into whatever plethora they're separately discussing. I can picture, however, that little person in his head that's screaming "WTF?? Rude much?" The looks and expressions that flutter over his face and behind his eyes when he thinks no one is looking...that mind must be a time bomb. Could be good or bad. We'll see.

I don't want to sound creepy or stalker-ish. Honestly. But i really wish I could have had more time to study him. After this though, I may just go and read his books again. I know that, for me at least, there are thoughts and ways of speaking I can put on paper easier than I can express or utter them.

So....*cough* on the way home...We were stuck on the highway, motionless, for quite some time...maybe moving a few feet every once and a while. I noticed there's a Chick-a-fillet headquarters down there, interesting. I took a lot of "lookie I'm bored" pictures if you can't tell from the slide show. After we got moving I sat in the back for a bit with my arm up just pushing the picture button. That's how I got the whoo hoo pic.

1 comments:

Kalki Weisthor said...

Good post. Actually, I've noticed the same thing about Brad's face; he really doesn't have much of a poker face, does he? I find it a little intimidating. That's probably I talk less than usual when around him....