Journaling: My first memory of Paul

The past month has been a busy one.  While that is true, the busyness of this month has also been a major story I've been telling myself.  It is more the story than the busyness that has led to me feeling more stressed than I have in been in a while, and that has led to my practice slipping and the awareness of my mind and heart been somewhat cloudy.  So this is what I have to practice with right now: life, right? 

In the midst of this especially busy week, I felt a real need to do some journaling - I've been thinking and writing constantly, but none of that has been about myself and how I'm doing - a recipe for feeling out of sorts.  I opened up some of the old journals on my computer and found my notes from the first lecture I heard Paul give.  I think they're from August 2010, and thought they would be fun to share.

First talk I ever heard Paul, the abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, give: he speaks of sila, ‘the deliberate engagement with the internal,’ and of cultivating the supportive structures for Samadhi. 

-          “The disposition of zazen is non-doing”.  (Shikantaza, the practice of ‘justness,’ is non-doing.) 

-          “Stop, pause, and breath: then you notice what you are actually feeling”.  (A good way for me to think about it.  I often think, ‘breath, and create that space of calm from which awareness can arise.’) 

-          Stopping and breathing is an action that that takes no effort.  It may take effort to convince oneself to stop and breath, but actually stopping and breathing is effortless. 

-          “Attending to the moment as its own event” and not just a method to achieve something higher.  Stop and breath simply in order to stop and breath. 

-          “When we settle our perceptions become more subtle”.

-          Bringing your awareness back to the self thousands of times enhances the neural pathways that enable you to do that.

-          “Let the request for awareness be granted”.  “On the inhale, let the natural request of the body be granted”.

                      - “When you let go of language, you let go of conceptualization.  The practice of silence is                     the practice of letting go of conceptualization”.

And, from that same journal entry, a funny little note to myself:

  

           "Story about the sound of Buddha's heartbeat".