3rd One Day Sit Part 2: Kitchen duty and dokusan

Kitchen prep: I have to preface this by sharing something that I’ve noticed about doing work at the zen center. I think that it’s our natural inclination, myself included, to do jobs “well” (efficiently or in the best way possible). I’ve noticed that when given a job, we immediately start thinking about the best way to do it and often put our energy in designing a way to get the task done better than the way we’ve been asked to do it.

But I think that the point of doing work at the zen center is to just do it in a way that we’re present for it. We don’t do work to do it quickly or better or to save time, we do it for the sake of it. I clean the bathroom so that it is clean for others. I move the chairs so that people can sit in them, that’s all. There are some things that you just do, doing them quickly or in a better way is kind of silly: it’s like trying to be more purple.  

So, I approached my kitchen duty with that in mind. The kitchen person told us exactly how to rip the chard, where to put the stalks, and where to put the chard. I watched the other helpers look in the chard buckets and try to clean them. Then I listened as the kitchen person explained that it didn’t matter that they were dirty, we were going to rinse the chard after putting them in the buckets.

I ripped my chard into bite size pieces and admit that I moved closer to the bucket so that I could drop them in as I ripped them. I admit too that as I rinsed the chard, I noticed that there were a lot of really big sized pieces. I wanted to say something like, “Hey, should we rip these a little smaller?” or even just rip them myself but then I thought, “You know what, I’ll bet that when they cook, they shrink and I’ll bet that no one’s even going to be able to pick up your little bite size pieces! ” But mostly, I thought, get your ‘self’ out of this equation and do what needs to be done: rinse the chard. And that made for a lovely kitchen experience.

Dokusan: I really hope I’m not breaking some unspoken rule by talking about what went on in my dokusan with Paul. I’m sharing what he said to me because I think that other people will benefit from it. If I’m breaking a rule, please, someone let me know and I’ll remove it. Also, this is my memory and interpretation of my dokusan with Paul. I’m sure he said things that I’m not saying here and I’m sure that I’m remembering things differently than what he actually said. Sorry, that’s just the reality of a recalled conversation between two people.

I started off my dokusan by talking with Paul about what feelings had been coming up for me during zazen. I did this because in our last class of the practice period, he had explained that instead of trying to cognitively analyze what was coming up for me during zazen, I should just experience what was coming up for me in zazen. I was experiencing fear and loneliness.

When we talked more about my fears, he suggested that I might be being a little hard on myself. I considered this, but felt like it was a cop out, felt like my fears were based on a genuine reflection of my abilities. I didn’t exactly agree with him, but I didn’t argue with him about it.

Then we talked some more and I agreed that there were some good things that I was doing. And then we talked about seeing the self, using our thoughts to kind of illuminate our habits, and then he suggested that I have a “propensity to pay attention to the negative aspects of my teaching.” And that I totally agreed with.  I am all about finding out what’s wrong on my own first so that by the time anyone else figures out what I’m doing wrong, I can say “Yeah, I know, I’m working on it,” instead of having them actually criticize me.

But it was interesting. Paul basically said the same thing he had said at the beginning “you’re too hard on yourself”; but when he said it this other way “you have a propensity to focus on the negative aspects of your teaching” I could totally accept it, agree with it, and see it in a way that allowed me to look even further into it.

So guess what I spent the whole next morning doing? Listing my propensities.

I have a propensity for logical thought. I have a propensity for stability. I have a propensity for minimal conflict between myself and others. I have a propensity for things to “work out.” I have a propensity to finish things. I have a propensity to gauge someone’s likeliness to leave me by whether or not I make them happy. I have a propensity… for chocolate.

It was kind of fun. I can actually see these things about myself without feeling bad about them. I think it’s because of the magic phrase: I have a propensity for… And here’s what I think is magic about it.

#1 I have a propensity for isn’t a fixed state. It’s like a notion, a preference, it’s true of me now but it might not be true of me later (well, that chocolate thing, that might be a fixed state).

#2 It’s not all me. I’m not sure where propensities come from but it doesn’t feel like I asked for it or did something wrong to develop it, it’s just a propensity, like brown hair or green eyes.

#3 It feels malleable. If I decide that I’m not so interested in having this propensity, I can do something about it. Propensities don’t feel like they ever go away but they do feel like you can manage them: encourage them one way or discourage them another.

Who knows, maybe Paul just found a word that I wasn’t too familiar with and threw it in there to keep me from seeing myself so negatively but I don’t think so. I think Paul knows exactly what he’s doing. Anyway, hopefully you’re as unfamiliar with the meaning of a propensity as I am and you’re willing to see it the way I do and use it to see yourself without judgment.