Meditation Poem Series: #26

I woke up super early, but I was able to still sit on my meditation cushion (zafu). I don’t realize how exhausted I am sometimes till I am still.

Meditation Poem #26
keep coming back
sign of fruitful practice
breathing, just sitting

Meditation Poem Series: #25

A bit of a struggle to get out of bed this morning. My room is pretty frigid, and blankets feel so cozy. I sat for 15 minutes, tired and cold. I had to wrap myself in a quilt while in sitting position.

Meditation Poem #25
cold bones
thoughts burning
the Dharma cuts
through it all

Meditation Poem Series: #24

My daughter woke up early, and I was not really able to sit during nap time since there wasn’t the usual long nap time. Needless to say I am exhausted, but grateful I got to sit in meditation at the end of the day. Being a parent to a toddler and maintaining a daily meditation practice is possible. 😉

Meditation Poem #24
loneliness surrounds me as I sit
diving into great emptiness

Meditation Poem Series: #22

sitting
doing
being
breathing
thinking
itchy
lazy
sit
breathe
be

Meditation Poem Series: #21

An extremely cold morning, I meditated in my coat. It was difficult not to plan my day. But grateful, I keep coming back to my seat.

Meditation Poem #21
all my urgencies drop away
when I sit and breathe

Meditation Poem Series: #20

sitting just as I am
nothing more, nothing less
Be!

Meditation Poem Series: #19

I sat very distractedly this morning. I am having lots of thoughts of confusion, and trying to remember I am not my thoughts. And live rights actions, and my thoughts will follow.

Meditation Poem #19
thoughts lead me astray
my breath grounds me
to now

Meditation Poem Series: #18

Today, I sat in meditation on a wooden bench at a Quaker meeting for worship. There are different sects of Quakerism, but I belong to one where people sit in Silence and speak out that Silence. I was pretty physically tired, the drowsiest I’ve been in sitting meditation.

Meditation Poem #18
the deepest silence cannot
hold the infinite emptiness
of heart

Reflection: Just Sitting

There’s form of Zen, where teachers stress shikantaza, or just sitting. If we just sit fully, then we just are, nothing special. Zen teachers like Kosho Uchiyama teach this sort of zen that embraces the everyday life, in his exploration of Dogen’s writing on the cook of a temple, Uchiyama writes:

The most important point to bear in mind here regarding the buddhadharma is the expression mantoku enman, or perfect harmony. To have goodness emanating naturally from your character is living more truly by Buddhism than having had some so-called kenshō or satori experience. There should be no doubt that living out your life, acting and being in perfect harmony, is indeed living out the life of the Self. A satori which is unrelated to your personal character is nothing more than a kind of drunkenness. It is no more than the elation you might get from taking drugs. Needless to say, this has nothing to do either with religion or with the buddhadharma.

We are not practicing for some goal, even for a goal of enlightened. We do zazen to do zazen, and in just sitting, we are just being.

Needless to say, I have not been able to just sit, I am distracted by a myriad of thoughts and feelings. But I try to keep coming back to the practice of sitting meditation over and over. Uchiyama says of zazen:

Your practice of zazen must not be something separate from your own experience of your day-to-day life, nor from the overall direction of your life. Rather, in constantly working to refine and clarify your everyday life, or the life of your total Self, your practice accords with the dharma.

I hope I can live this way of being, and live in a way that spiritual life is not a theory but a lived out experience in each moment.