Feeling judged at the zen center

PLEASE READ the comments at the end of this post. You'll see that the actual "people in robes" (as opposed to my made up image of them) have so much to teach me and have never ever judged me.
I was talking with the Ino about judgment: where my feelings of being judged come from, what I get from feeling judged, and who is doing the judging. At one point, he pointed to the people in the room (we were in the dining room at the zen center) and asked, "Who in this room is judging you?" And I knew without even looking that no one in the room was judging me. I knew that all of the people sitting at the tables, the very same people who sit next to me in the zendo, who bow and chant alongside me during ceremonies or even just plain old dharma talks, are not judging me. I know it, I just do.
But I also know how I feel when I walk in the zendo and bow. I know how I feel when I open my bowls during oryoki. I know how I feel during service when I bow at the wrong time.
I feel like I'm being judged: that the people in the zendo (and I'm sorry, I have to be honest here, when I say "people" I am referring specifically to those wearing robes) are watching me, are evaluating my "behavior," checking to see whether I am doing it "right" or "wrong."
And here's the really interesting thing: In the same way that I know, absolutely, that no one at the zen center is judging me; I also know, absolutely, that the people at the zen center, especially the ones in robes, are watching me. They are paying attention to how I enter the zendo, my opening of oryoki bowls, my timing of bows during service. I know this because they say things to me like "You always bow when I walk by you in the gaitan." Or they make announcements like "Oryoki bowls should be carried at chest level as you enter the zendo and at eye level when you are in the zendo" (during an oryoki in which I carried my bowls at
whatever level I could to balance them on my support cushion).
Now, there are a bunch of things going on here. There is my actual experience: people at the
zen center have said things to me that they could not possibly have known if they weren't
paying attention to me. So to me, it feels pretty safe to say that I am being watched at the
zen center.
But there's also the "judgment" piece, and I'm discovering that this has a bunch of parts to
it. There's the role that I play in this feeling of judgment: that I desperately want to do
things "right" at the zen center. I want this for a bunch of reasons: I don't want to stand
out as the idiot who can't seem to figure out how to bow. I don't want to "disrupt" others who
are practicing. I don't want to be such distraction that they ask me to leave. I want to be
accepted and loved and my history around this is that if you follow the rules and don't
disturb others, then we will let you stay and we might enjoy being around you.
But there's another piece, and I think it has to do with a really fine distinction between
"judgment" and "feedback." I think that judgment has a value aspect to it: that there is a
"good" and a "bad" or that there is a "right" and a "wrong." But then there's "feedback" which to me means someone observing you and telling you what they see.
Last week, right before Vikki gave posture adjustments in the zendo she said something to the
effect of, "This is not meant to be a correction, this is not to say that you are sitting
right or wrong. This is "feedback" to your body, helping it to feel the posture that allows
you to breathe." At the time, I laughed; knowing full well that people were going to
feel corrected no matter what she said. I know for myself that every time they offer adjustments in the zendo, I totally straighten up as the person walks by. If they pass me, without offering adjustment, I think "phew, my posture must be good enough that they don't have to correct it." At the same time, though, I know that I kind of like the touch of someone adjusting my back and I've actually been really helped by the instruction I've been given around my posture.
And that made me think about a student in my classroom. He and I often spend a lot of one on one time together so that I can help him with his reading and math. He absolutely loves my
attention, but he also has some parameters around what kind of attention I can give him. We
can read together but he hates it when I correct him. We can do math boxes together but when I
start to point out to him where he is making a mistake, he suddenly wants to do it on his own.
Now, I know that he is totally sensitive to criticism and that he, like me, takes any kind of
rejection really hard because we both associate rejection with abandonment. But at the same
time, I'm his teacher. I can't just let him subtract starting with the hundreds digit instead
of the ones digit because it might hurt his feelings. I have to be able to correct him.
One day, after a morning in which he had gotten so frustrated by my corrections that he had
scribbled all over his math boxes, I said to him, "I'm your teacher. It's my job to help you
learn this stuff. I can't let you do it that way because it will get you the wrong answer, and I know that you want to get the answer right. I'm helping you not because you are dumb or that you don't get it. You do get it, you get a lot of it, but there are things that are confusing and when you confuse them, I'm going to show you how to do it because I've been teaching third grade for a long time so I know about these things." He didn't magically start taking my feedback or stop getting frustrated or suddenly become open to my corrections, but he did begin to be willing to listen to what I had to say about the math problems.
And these two things together got me thinking about the zen center: how the actual people there aren't judging me and yet still I feel like I'm being watched. This is what I started to see about this apparent contradiction:
#1 The "people in robes" (or at least some of them) are teachers. They have been studying
this stuff a long time. They know that it is confusing, they know you want to get it right,
and so they are going to give you "feedback" on your behavior.
#2 You have chosen to come to the zen center. You come a lot and so people are paying
attention to you; not because you're standing out, not because you're special, but because you
have chosen to attend a Buddhist temple filled with Buddhist priests and practitioners who
have taken a vow to awaken all beings. It's pretty much their life's passion to help you with
this stuff. You feel "watched" by them because honestly, they probably are watching you.
But they aren't watching you to accept or reject you. You may take their "watching" as judgment, as an evaluation of whether you are doing it "right" or "wrong," but that has to do you with you and your issues around judgment and acceptance. They are just giving you feedback in the same way that you are giving your students feedback.
And so, if you are feeling "judged" when you come in to the zendo, know a couple of things:
The judgment you feel is most likely coming from you (and you can go where you want with that statement)
But also, it's only judgment when you choose to see their responses to you as an evaluation, a criticism, a "right" or "wrong" instead of a "walk here" or a "bow at this time."