3rd One Day Sit: Hokey Pokey, the kitchen, and a new bow: the gasshu (gesundheit!)

Here are the highlights, details in the next post:

The Hokey Pokey (sing it with me): You turn your body to the left, (because you think it’s time for kinhin). You turn your body to the right, (because you realize it’s time for service). You put your hands in gassho (‘cause it’s time for prostrations) and shake yourself about (‘cause you can’t stop giggling at yourself)- that’s what it’s all about.  

The kitchen: SO MUCH FUN! It’s like you get to be someone else’s hands! You just stand there with your hands in shashu and do what the person in charge of the kitchen tells you to do. Then when the bell rings, you leave. Is the meal ready? Dunno. Did I get enough done? Doesn’t matter.  Was I present for all the chard that I ripped and washed? Yep. Was I aware of and present for the people working with me to rip and wash said chard? Yep.  Well then, get on with your bad self and go drink some tea ‘cause that’s what the schedule says to do.

At the work meeting, watching someone put their hands in shashu, but then raising it up to eye level because everyone around them was doing gassho. (It kind of looked like they were covering their mouth and nose like they were sneezing). Thinking what that combination bow would be called…Shasho? No. Gasshu? (Gachoo!) Definitely, and then biting a hole through my lip to keep from laughing about it.

Wondering if, like the full moon ceremony, there is a one-day-sitting-afternoon-zazen-ceremony. Apparently, this ceremony involves a silent zendo, 75 meditators willing to sit still for three periods of zazen, and an annoying noise. In the first one-day-sit, it was a chipper shredder and a chain saw. This time, I don’t know what it was, (other than annoying, metallic, and difficult to ignore). But I swear, it always happens during that afternoon zazen when it’s hardest (for me at least) to sit.   

Finally getting to empty the garbage can in the bathroom from my second one day sit.

“Letting go” of time so much that I forgot about the period of zazen before the dharma talk (I sat anyway, just in the gaitan).

Watching a server gently pick up each of the seven grains of jasmine rice that another server had spilled on the zendo floor.

Waiting for dokusan, hearing laughter, and thinking, “Oh yeah, if someone is laughing they’re having dokusan with Paul.” 

Learning (from Paul) the phrase, "You have a propensity for..." and then using it to see all those things about myself that I'd rather not look at (or admit).

Sitting with friends. Not zazen sitting, just sitting on a couch or at a table- without making eye contact or talking.

Only low point: having to choose between standing up the abbot or standing up my dad.