Sometimes to go deeper, we step back

Zen?  What is that?  I can’t say I ever heard of it.  This is how I feel right now, and it is as refreshing as cool mountain air.  This thing, Zen, perhaps I think about it too much, rely on it too much, even identify with it too much.  To not have it in my thoughts and routines is freeing.  I have cancelled my docusan appointments, have not been going to sewing class, to Young Urban Zen.  I even cancelled my training session today at Green Gulch to give garden tours to kids.  Obviously, I have not been writing much, but only recently am I happy about that.

There is only one thing in my life right now, and it is called a thesis.  It’s going to be done in a few weeks.  And it all makes me think that...

Sometimes in life, going deeper means stepping back.  We have all had to do it in our relationships, with our partners, our families, our friends.  Sometimes we need to do it with our professions, with activities we love, with our biggest goals in life... and with our spiritual paths.  Sometimes we need to step back for a long time, sometimes for a short time.  When this thesis is done, I’m stepping back: even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could fruitfully think any more about how history teachers can help students understand prejudice.  This is just the beginning of my work, but before I go deeper, I need some fresh air.  Until my mind stops obsessing over the data gathered, assessed, and synthesized from seventy articles on the subject and a hundred of my own ideas, I am a blind man.  

It was hard to give myself over to the thesis.  For a couple months, my body had been telling me, “Hey Lynn, don’t think about anything else right now.  Let go of Zen.  Let go of other things.  Just sink into the thesis, eat good food, go for runs each day... that’s it”.  I feel really calm having finally accepted my bodies advice.  

Sometimes stepping back means you can let go of anxiety.  Sometimes it means you can attain a better focus or place your focus elsewhere.  It can be a means to gain perspective, to see something more clearly, to understand why something is valuable to you or how it can better fit into your life.  For all these reasons stepping back from Zen for a month feels right.  And then, stepping back from my intellectual work will feel right.  Stepping back from both is right, because I want to go deeper - much deeper - into both.     

Nurturing energy, nurturing life

Just over two weeks ago, I found myself reflecting on on the paramita of virya, or the perfection of energy, and on the first grave precept: I vow not to kill or be thoughtless of life, but to develop energies within myself that nurture life to the greatest extent possible. I was in the midst of feeling my energy acutely and honestly in its relation to the nurturance of self and others.  I was becoming increasingly aware of how certain stories I had about my life, and especially my work, affected my actions, thoughts, and feelings.  Even more importantly, I was noticing how some stories allowed myself to maintain practices and habits that made it difficult for myself to have clear awareness and insight into my own energy and the energy of others - and thus to speak of those energies in a healing way, to explore them, to care for them.

Right now, my practice can essentially be summarized as a reflection on what it means to "nurture life to the greatest extent possible".  In a nutshell, what does it mean to care?  To care means to care for energy, to give energy that nurtures life.  From this point moving forward, the embodied answer to that question has everything to do with creating practices for myself that facilitate rather than dull my awareness of the energy of self and others.  I experience a dull awareness of energy as a decreased closeness to life - a decreased closeness to plants, animals, food, soil, myself, those I love and all beings.  Of course, a decreased closeness to life means an experience of life that reflects that - which is not only about thoughts, feelings, and actions that reflect less closeness, but the very way we experience our senses, the very way we see other beings, the way we feel the ground beneath our feet and the air we breath. 

Practices that bring me closer to life, to feeling and caring for life, are basic: for example, I purchased some new plants and am finding great calm joy in caring for them.  Along with reconnecting with my care for plants, I am paying more attention to food and to eating, from the whole history of the soil and labor from which food comes, to the smells in the kitchen and the feelings I have the day after I eat a meal.  The most miraculous way to care for life, and to manifest myself as a deeply caring individual, is to care for children, which is a mode of caring that has always felt out of reach to me.  But whereas before, I had passively accepted that caring for children could not be a part of my life, I have been seriously considering ways in which I could do this. 

Not drinking coffee or caffeine has been a story unto itself, and a major practice these last two weeks.  I have come into a full awareness of how caffeine dramatically clouds my clear awareness and insight into my own energy and the energy of others.  This last month of thesis writing is no time for total caffeine abstinence, but a simple four days with no caffeine, although quite challenging, also led to a significant energy shift in which I was far more keenly aware of energy.  To put it anther way, I felt much closer to life, more sensitive to and caring for life.  Discipline, held lightly, has much to do with care and closeness: after no caffeine for four days, I kindly let myself drink coffee for two, (yes, I got FAR more work done these two days!), and then I went off for another two days, and then kindly let myself have some more.  This has let myself feel what I am like with and without caffeine, and has also led to truly enjoying and getting pleasure out of coffee when I do drink it. 

...When I sit zazen on my own, I sometimes start to pray, or to make vows.  I bring my hands in front of my heart.  I position my body in whatever way seems to facilitate the prayer, which sometimes means I kneel or lean my head forward so that my forehead touches my hands.  I am so very much in awe of how this human body seems to be made for prayer, for contemplation, for meditation - so in awe of how the positions we put our bodies in naturally facilitate these activities.  Recently I have been saying:  I vow to nurture life.  I vow to honor and nurture the energies within myself.  I vow to feel and love, perceive clearly and care for the life energy of all beings. 

Visualizations naturally arise within me and accompany the vows: I imagine someone I love, and the various energies I see at play in them.  I imagine my own energy, and how it interacts with theirs.  I visualize what that would look like in its most caring form - in its deepest, most healing, most beautiful form.  I imagine doing this with children.  With plants and soil.  With the sky above me, and the ground beneath me.