Daily Grind

Making an effort once again to make room for daily zazen in the mix of work, attention to family, and all the rest.  Of course, all is part of the same fabric and web, but it sometimes feels at the end of the day that all I did was grind it all up, mix together well, and exhaust myself.  More sleep might help to stay awake in the zendo, more zazen might help me to be fully present when blowing bubbles with my younger daughter.

Beach Zazen

Traveling with family, it is hard to find the time and place for zazen.  The room at the inn was crowded with the shrapnel of clothing and stuff from 4 people.  So, I took my inflatable zafu down to the dunes by the ocean, and sat on a bluff overlooking rocks and sand.  It seemed fitting, as the travel zafu is basically a beach ball with a fabric cover.  The sound of the waves made concentrating on Mu very difficult.  A dull roar, pulsating, changing, the sound never the same, and punctuated by the gulls.  Thoughts of my family, and guilt at taking this time away from them.  Sunset, and returning to them, always, like the breath, like the koan....

Practice

Both of my daughters are learning string instruments.  The older is very disciplined, practices almost every day, pushes herself with new challenges.  You can see the steady pace of her progress, and hear the beauty of her music.  The younger is more temperamental, and gets caught up in the suffering that comes with the difficulty of learning new things.  Two sides, and in both I see myself.  On the way to the Zendo early this morning, I was tired and grumbling about my small suffering with this commitment to sit every day.  So early, it seemed particularly burdensome.  Suddenly, I was thinking about my younger daughter who seems to struggle and suffer with with musical practice, but does practice almost every day, growing steadily. Her struggle and perseverance spurred me on.  Practice....and practice.  Gumble...sit on the zafu....MU!

Parent and Child, Teacher and Student

Raising children brings to the fore the always-changing nature of teacher-student. Often we thing of being a parent as being the teacher, protector, and provider for our children. And yet, there is no separation between parent and child on the path. At times, the child is the teacher and the parent the student, a student of what we once knew as children and forgotten, a student of what we never knew but our children have taught us. Isn't this the nature of zazen practice? We try to realize, to truly live without concepts, what we already have...our essential nature. What do our children seek, yet they already have? We are all parent and child, student and teacher, trying to see the true nature of impermanence and attachment, death and birth, and delusion all around.

Taking what is given

What is given is sometimes a thing, a path, a desire. With children, taking what is given can be trying. As a householder and parent, you want to help them understand that cruelty, disdain, and slander are not appropriate offerings. At one level, this is certainly not taking what is given. But what does this precept truly mean? Surely not taking destructive acts? Perhaps it means taking what is offered, as it is offered, in the exact spirit, and working with that rather than what you hoped would be given. Then, when your children see the anger taken as anger, absorbed, and returned as something transformed, you become a living lesson by example. When they see love taken, filtered through the anger at one's bad day, and returned hewn by that anger, oblivious to their true offering, that too is a lesson. Take what is given, return it transformed, and let compassion and choiceless flow along the path determine the transformation.

The Language of Being

Words and speach are the language of knowing. The languague of knowing divides, categorizes, judges, describes, makes images of the unimaginable, and seeks communication. It has a speaker, that which is spoken, and an audience. Action and non-action, movement and stillness, the void and the ten-thousand things are the language of being. Zazen, koan practice, shikuntaza, kinhin, and compassion are expressions of the language of being. There is nothing to speak, nothing which is spoken, and no audience. Be zazen, be the koan, be compassion. Children have this ability, and one merit of family practice is the opportunity to become the language of being with your children, to re-learn it.

Lessons from our Children

Householders with children have the advantage of seeing the world anew through their children's eyes. A few years ago, one of my kids did something that she knew she was not supposed to. Discussing the "event" at bedtime, she succinctly described that sinking feeling. "You know when you aren't supposed to do something, and then you just did it?" Yes, that jolt of eyes-wide-open clarity after action and before consequences. Children seeing karma clearly. In zazen, I am re-learning to immerse my "self" in that flash of bright stillness.

Children and the Dharma of Change

Children embody the dharma of change, and transmit that dharma mind-to-mind to their householder parents. I experience this most acutely when some new hungry ghost appears in my house. Who switched my kid? Or more directly, who is this child now? Who? The Dharma of Change stands before you, persistent and noisy, demanding that you be mindful of it. Wake up, look, show me mu! This often appears as some new attachment, desire, or aversion. But when I watch closely, the thing that I assumed was a poison changes, and my child is again transformed. Even the meta-patterns of these transformations change. We were all once these children, and still are. Thus manifests one unique benefit of parent-householder practice, reality bonking me over the head with a stuffed animal, even though I would like to hide from that reality by doing zazen in the zendo right now. Like our children, we all walk on the Path, even if we do not know it.

Koi

Watching my children watch koi in a pond. So simple, and I again realize what tremendous concentration they have. How is it that we unlearn what we knew as children, splinter simple moments into ten thousand fragments?


Golden fish
The world reflected
Who is under water?