Practice

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,

This morning brings a day of Zazen at Clear Mind Zen Temple. From 9:00 AM until 4:00 PM we will practice Zazen. Zazenkai is an opportunity to gather our mind and body together only to open our grip on them and let them fall away. When we sit we face ourselves, we begin to notice there is nothing that stays the same, everything is changing, and the only constant is change itself.



How do we respond to this constant change? Do we ignore it? Do we try to stop it? Do we grasp and cling and fight against it? All of these create our suffering because just as the ocean’s waves have rolled to shore and receded once again for millennia, so too everything in our lives will continue to change, evolve, transform, and fall away.



One response is fear. We close ourselves, build little barriers between ourselves and change. We see the potential for pain and we erect buttresses against it. Our pain is our fear and our body’s response to change. Some of us manage our pain by retreat. We give pain a place in our lives where it is holding the reins. We think, “when this pain goes away or is more “manageable” I will be able to practice.” This is not so. Our pain is our practice and we will experience it whether we are sitting in the Zendo or in our sofa at home.



One response is no response whatever. It is to notice with an open mind and heart everything that is: our environment, our thoughts, our feelings, our suffering, our joy. This is the deep response of shikantaza. Open, free, and not clinging. We appreciate without possessing. We witness.

Zazenkai is training in this direction.



Be well.