The practice period at zen center starts tomorrow. I'm signed up for it, but only in my own head. Each time I've heard the Ino talk about signing up for the practice period, he's described it as a commitment (maybe even a public one) to deepen your practice. When it came time to sign up for it, I didn't "sign up" for the practice period, just for the first one-day-sit and the Thursday night class with Paul, the Abbot of the zen center. It freaked me out to publicly sign up for the entire thing. I think I wanted to be able to pull back if I felt like it and not have anyone know (yes, I see the irony of announcing this on a blog, especially one read by the very people who will know that I signed up for this, but what else can I do?).
Last night I attended the dharma talk at the zen center and the speaker talked quite a bit about the practice period. She kept referring to it in terms of its length: 90 days. I hadn't thought about that, I was more focused on the one-day-sit and taking a class with Paul. 90 days is a long time. In some ways, this "practice period" is no different than what I have been doing since the summer intensive started in July: sitting twice a day and listening to lecture when I can. But the thought of really focusing on my practice for 90 days feels daunting. Actually, writing the words "my practice" freaks me out just as much.
But here's what else is really funny. For the past week, I haven't been sitting zazen in the morning. I won't go into the reasons why, but let's just say that it came from a place of genuinely thinking that I needed to be sleeping and taking care of things in my own life (as if zazen was somehow separate from my own life). And guess what, this past week was the first week that I lost my patience with the kids and fell back into habits that I watched fall away over the summer.
Then this morning, I sat zazen again. Things didn't magically return to where they were before my little hiatus and that makes me realize even more how much zazen maintains my place as a compassionate teacher. But it also made me see that, whether I like it or not, I need whatever it is that the zen center is giving me. I guess that's a pretty good place to be in before you start a 90 day commitment to anything.
But I'm still scared. I've heard that people cry at their first one day sit and I have no interest in doing that. I'm equally terrified and desperately craving the intimacy that I've been told comes from practicing with others for an extended period of time. And then there's the whole "study of self" that the speaker talked about as being the core of the practice period. I have no idea where that's going to lead. But as I was walking home last night, asking myself "What have you gotten yourself into?" it felt kind of good to be terrified- to not know what lay ahead of me but to walk into it anyway. I also think that I just need to give in to my fear of commitment. If there's one thing I've come to accept in all of this zen stuff it's that when I'm experiencing suffering, the closer I come to it, the less it controls me and causes me suffering. I can keep fighting my fears around commitment, find ways to back out or deny that I might need something or that I do better with others or I can just give in and commit.
Day 1 starts tomorrow night with orientation. I'll let you know how it went on Sunday...
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