Friday morning at the zen center

The first time I came to a Friday morning at the zen center, it was because my friend said there would be pancakes. "Plus," she said," you'll experience the Diamond Sutra."
I was intrigued, especially by the pancakes. But it turns out there were no pancakes. There was a Diamond Sutra, though, and it was definitely an experience.
I had thought about writing a post about it afterward, likening the Diamond Sutra to the Mad Hatter's tea party in Alice in Wonderland. But I didn't, because it felt disrespectful. I knew that the service only looked crazy to me because I was looking at it from the outside, trying to compare it to something I knew. Plus, to liken it to something crazy would have been insulting to the people who were participating in it, suggesting that they would do something foolish and without meaning.  I knew it was me who was being foolish, not them. There was something to the Diamond Sutra, I just wasn't seeing it.
This Friday, I spent the morning at the zen center again. Still no pancakes but definitely a Diamond Sutra. And I think, that the Diamond Sutra, is actually, like, perfect practice for dealing with the craziness of our lives.
Here's how the Diamond Sutra works (or, at least, this is what I did this morning):
Everyone is given a copy of the Diamond Sutra and you open it to any random page and start reading it aloud. You keep doing this until it's time to stop.
So that means that there is a room full of people, each reading totally different words, all at the same time (but not in chorus at all, it's pretty much the opposite of chanting, total cacophany).
And the words that you read? Well, I've only read it twice but from what I read, it seems to be an endless series of questions between a student and a teacher. And they all seem to be koan questions, juxtapositions, answers that leave you even more confused than when you started or answers that seem wrong but turn out right. (This is why it felt like the Mad Hatter's tea party to me).
But here's what happened this morning.
I did what I was supposed to do: I opened the book and started reading. At first, I paid attention the the text- sort of trying to listen to the conversations between these guys, trying to learn something from the teacher's teachings to the student. But then I started listening to the person who was reading next to me. I wondered if we were on the same page.
"Focus!" I thought, and tried to put my attention back to the sutra. I did for a while and then my attention started to drift to the person across from me on the tatami, to the sound of his voice, and I started to wonder about his son, how tall he was, whether or not they were German...
"Dude!" I shouted at myself. "Get back to your reading!" And I did, but it was hard. The reading was so random and seemingly confusing, and the cacophany in the room was distracting but also totally inviting. There were so many voices, and so many people, so much that I could pay attention to. And the thing in front of me, this task that I was supposed to be paying attention to, was really confusing and super hard to follow. It was almost impossible to pay attention with all the distractions in the room.

And then it occurred to me: "Ohhhhh, this is like life! This is like every day. This is like trying to be present, with all those distractions around you. This is like trying to focus on some one or some thing that is really hard to focus on because it keeps on changing or it doesn't make sense. This is totally life!"
And then, it was really funny, a car alarm started going off. And it kept going off. And it just added to the cacophany and distraction and I thought, "Yep. This, pretty much, is life. There are a million things going on at once and we can't control any of them. We try to focus on one thing but we get distracted by all those other things that seem to need our attention. And we bounce from one to the other and feel pulled in a million different directions and we can't get to any of them because we're trying to get to all of them.
And this Diamond Sutra thing? This trying to maintain focus in the midst of absolute chaos? I think that's why we're doing it. I think we're practicing focusing on something while a million things are going on around us because that's how life is, there are a million things going on around us. And the words in the Diamond Sutra? The way that one question leads to another and that as soon as you think you've got it, you don't? That's like life too. You can never really grasp at it, you just have to keep focusing on it, coming back to it, being present to it even when it doesn't make sense.
And then it was time to stop, so I stopped. We put the chant books away and I lined up for soji.

It was interesting to watch myself this morning at the zen center. I was late for service because I had practice discussion with Vicki and started to worry about how to enter the Buddha hall. But then I thought, "Just do what needs to be done," and I walked in to the Buddha hall and stood along with everyone else. Then I didn't have a chant book when we started chanting and I started to try to find one and then I thought, "Just participate," and I did, and it turns out I that have unintentionally memorized that darn chant! During soji, I tried to figure out what job we were doing but then I said, "Just line up, do whatever that guy tells you to do," and together the bunch of us got the job done.

It's weird, all of these mornings I have been spending at the zen center (I've been coming for the full morning every Saturday as part of the practice period) have started to seep in to me. It's like I know what to do at the zen center. But actually, it's not like I know what to do at the zen center. There isn't a "what to do" at the zen center. It's just... do what needs to be done, participate as best you can, and help wherever you're needed.
Which is what everyone told me from the beginning but... well, I guess I had to find out for myself.