If sesshin could talk...

Sesshin is seven days of silence. If I could have spoken, this is what I would have said:

Thank you for...

Reminding me of the importance of sangha by timing your bow with mine, every time

Offering me a huge wad of Kleenex

Smiling as you ushered me in to your office because I was talking in the hallway during sesshin!offering me chocolate

bowing deeply to me in the hallway after I cried my eyes out during tea time

suggesting, during dokusan, that I could talk to my mom

adjusting my posture

hitting me so that I would gassho to the server

facing out when I did kinhin

doing kinhin during “optional” zazen

turning on the lights

letting me watch you during oryoki
drying the dishes
asking me to wash Buddha’s bowls
making those chocolate cookies, and then those chocolate chip ones the next day
advising me
kindly saying, “I’m not responsible for kitchen jobs but I hope you can find someone to help you figure it out” when I silently gasshoed to you during kitchen soji
giving me a huge first portion of pumpkin pudding, because you knew…
walking us around the block
giving our bodies yoga every day
saying “this is a good time of day to do kinhin at a normal walking pace” and then clapping your hands, in the zendo
loaning me your watch so that I could be present for dokusan
suggesting that I “fluff” the cushions (because you could tell that I wanted to “fluff” some people)
motioning to me so I knew when to exit the Buddha hall after service
making me laugh during practice period discussion/ dokusan
sitting next to me during oryoki
telling us which chant it was when we couldn’t find the sheet
bowing to me in the hallway
telling me I didn’t have to dry the muffin tins
forgiving me
realigning our kinhin when the last person showed up
putting your hands in gassho, turning around, and making that darn bell ring during afternoon zazen
saying “you are” in dokusan
offering me a zafu during yoga
chanting the chants, so beautifully
making mistakes
taking my plates to the kitchen
saying my mother’s name in the well- being ceremony
balancing the gomasio bowl on the zabutons
serving us during oryoki
getting the chant books during service  so that I didn’t have to figure out the form
ro-sham-bo ing with me for first spot in practice period discussion, and then thinking the exact same thing: scissors!
noticing that the big guy in front of you had the same pants as your little ones, and then checking to make sure you had three stripes in the back like he did
making tons of fudge, brownies, and meatballs during our last meal, not oryoki, so that I could totally pig out

Don't I BLOG you?

So, as part of sesshin, I'm not suppossed to read (or write) for a week. You, however, can read what you want. There's a bunch of blogs on my profile that you can read. Those blogs are my friends' blogs. I read them because I know the people who write them.
But there are these two other blogs by people who I know only because of my blog. There should be a term for this, like, we're blogquaintances or we-don't-know-each-other, we just read-each-other's-blogs.

The funny thing about blogs is that they're this bizarre combination of a revealing of one's intimate self within this anonymous medium of the internet. People share all about themselves, without ever even making eye contact. It makes you feel like you know the person. I feel that way about the first blogger, Chris. He has taught before and he's much more experienced at practice than I am so he's given me good advice and words of encouragement. I feel like I totally know him and his family, even though I've never met him.
The second blog is kind of funny. See, when you have a blog, you have this STATS page that shows how many people read your blog, which posts they read, etc. But there's also this other part that shows what blogs are reading your blog or linking to your blog. This one blog kept showing up: Welfare Love Section 8. I was kind of confused by the title but then I clicked the link and was like: "Whoa! Who knew you could do this with a blog." It was like a cross between scrapbooking and album covers and someone signing your yearbook... but it also had this zen piece to it. And then I started looking at the photos and I was like, "Wait, these people look familiar, but I don't know why."
Then, the very next weekend, this couple approached me at the zen center and said something to the effect of, "Hey, aren't you the one who writes that blog?" And I was like " Aren't YOU, too?" And it turns out that we actually did know each other because we had taken a class at the zen center together awhile ago.
Anyway, if you're in need of a read, I highly recommend both.
Have fun thinkin', hopin', plannin', and moving your body freely. I'll be busy breathin', chantin', bowin' and sitting still.

Sesshin part 2: WHAT will you be doing?

So, I haven't yet looked at the schedule for sesshin (the seven day meditation that I'm about to start) but if it's anything like the one-day meditations that I have done, it will go something like this:
5:30: zazen (meditation)
6:00  kinhin (walking meditation)
6:10 zazen
6:30 service (chanting and bowing)
7ish: soji (temple cleaning)
7:30 ish oryoki (eating meditation)
8 break? I actually have no idea what's going to happen after oryoki but usually, it seems, you don't meditate after you've eaten. The break kind of scares me. I never know what to do. Last Saturday I brought my laptop, thinking it would be good to test out writing while I'm at the zen center, thinking I might "sneak a write" during sesshin (you're not supposed to read or write during sesshin), thinking that writing might help me to process the stuff I might be going through or thinking about.
It didn't work. Writing, which I thought would help me process, express what I was feeling, ended up creating stuff. By attempting to explain or process what was going on for me last Saturday, I added stuff to it, stuff that didn't actually exist except in my head. So, writing is out during the break. Not sure what I'll do, maybe the roof? Maybe I'll go to Superman's office.
Then, we'll do some more...
9:20 zazen
9:50 I am hoping for a dharma talk (lecture) but I don't think it's going to happen- darn it! More likely we will do more of the same thing we did in the morning which is, basically, alternating between:
a half hour of zazen and 10 minutes of kinhin
This should bring us up to:
noon: which is when I think we do another service
12:30 oryoki (only it's lunch this time)
1ish: I'm guessing we'll have another break (because we just ate)
1:30 ish I think we do a different kind of work, one that's a bit longer. We usually meet in a big circle and bow, then the work leader assigns people to jobs that we tend to do as a group.
3ish: tea, at which point I will probably have some metaphysical experience with whatever foodstuff they offer us to go with our tea (last time it was a clementine)
4:00 afternoon zazen: my nemesis
and more of that same alternation between zazen and kinhin until
5:40 YAY PUBLIC (well, I guess this won't start until Monday, but I'm assuming that at 5:40 on Monday through Friday, people who are NOT in sesshin will come in to the zendo and meditate. I am SO looking forward to this)
6:05 service in the zendo
6:30 ish dinner in the Buddha hall (pretty sure this will be in silence)
7ish Again, I'm really hoping for a dharma talk but I'm not counting on it. Maybe we'll have another break 'cause we just ate but after that, I'm pretty sure we'll head back to the zendo for more zazen/ kinhin.
8:50ish service in the zendo, only, I think we chant the refuges (last One Day Sit we chanted the Dai Hi Shin Darani and it was lovely )
9:00 I get on my bike and ride home. I'm curious about this. I think I'm just going to want to go to bed when I get home. I'm going to try to do my sun salutations and take a shower but I won't be surprised if I want to read or write. We'll see what happens.
Also, I'm realizing as I get closer to actually doing this- to walking in that zendo and agreeing to this schedule with all these other people for seven whole days- I have some logistical questions.
I'm not sure how I'm going to brush my teeth in the morning. I'm assuming I will do it during one of the breaks but, like, is it 'kosher' to be brushing my teeth in the public bathroom? And, like, where do I keep my toothbrush?
Since I'm not living there but I'm spending my entire day there, I'm going to have stuff with me- does it all just stay in the coat room?
How do I move my car before Friday at noon when the street cleaner comes? Do I need to ask permission to leave?
Realistically, I know that all of this is fine, that I will find a way to brush my teeth, that there will be a place to keep my stuff, and that I can move my car without asking permission... it's just these little things that come up before you feel like you're starting big things.
And really, I know, this really is not such a big thing. All I'm doing is sitting in a room and breathing.

Oryoki: It's like breakfast in bed...

The first time I did oryoki (eat a meal in the zendo (the meditation hall)), I was terrified of making mistakes because I had heard that there were all kinds of rules about it. So, I searched the internet, found a really great explanation of how to do oryoki, and promptly memorized it. As I was memorizing the steps to oryoki, I got to this part where they tell you to fold the cloth in a "lotus" shape. I thought to myself, "This doesn't make sense. Why would they be all focused on making sure you have some sort of lotus shape with your cloth, all you're doing is folding it."
But then I noticed the cloth. The cloth was super long- it has to be long enough to wrap around the bowls you use to eat oryoki- but you need it to be super short, because it has to fit on the meal board in front of you. And I thought, "Oh, they're doing this whole foldy thing to deal with the fact that the cloth has to be long for one thing and short for another- they're just teaching you how to tuck in the corners, in a really efficient way."
And so I started looking at the rest of the forms for oryoki in the same way: rules that help you eat, in the zendo, at the same time as a bunch of other people. I thought about how you put out the cloth: how you want it to be wide enough to keep the meal board from getting wet if you spill, but not so long that it sticks out and gets in the way when someone comes to serve you. I thought about how you tuck your utensil holder under your cloth: you won't need it 'till the end so you might as well get it out of the way so that you have room for your utensils.
And then I thought about eating breakfast in bed. My mom had this really cool breakfast-in-bed tray when we were growing up. It had a flat tray on it so that you could put your food on there and not have to worry about it spilling. It also had two baskets on the side, presumably for your newspapers and magazines. It allowed you to actually eat in your bed. And I thought about the zendo, how it's where people spend their time meditating and how you wouldn't want crumbs or spills on your cushion. And I thought about the fact that when you're eating in the zendo, you're kind of meditating at the same time and so it would be good if you could do it in a way that was efficient and didn't require a whole lot of thought. And I thought about all those people, who actually serve the food to you and how it makes sense that there are rules saying who gets served first and how to hand them your bowl because they have to feed everyone in the zendo, and quickly, so the food doesn't get cold. And then I thought about the fact that we even have to wash our bowls, in the zendo, like, on the cushions and I thought, "Hmmm, ya know, the person who made up all these rules was really thinking- making this whole eating-meditation thing into a pretty efficient process."
And then I didn't feel so resentful of all the rules- they made sense to me. There's still too many to memorize but I'm learning them, feeling them, practicing them, and not so much worrying about them anymore. I know I'm going to mess up every time- it wouldn't be oryoki if I didn't do something wrong- but that's what makes it kind of cool, everyone messes it up some way or another...

Sesshin: The ultimate STAYcation (part 1: why would you do THAT?)

So, some people go to Florida for Spring Break, others visit family. Me? I'm choosing to stay local. And I mean extremely local, like, I'm not just staying in my own state or even in my own town, I'm staying in THE EXACT SAME PLACE, for seven days straight. And I don't even mean the same place like some destination, I mean, literally, the exact same place, like really, I'm not gonna move from one spot for seven days straight.
Okay okay okay, I will be moving from that spot; I'm just being a little spry here but still, I have signed up for sesshin and that means that I have chosen to attempt to meditate, all day long, for seven days in a row.
The thought of this kinda makes me want to go to Target.
But I'm not, I'm going to the zen center, all day long (roughly 5AM to 9PM) for the next seven days. I'll talk more about what I think I'm going to be doing during sesshin but first I want to talk about why I'm doing it because really, it's not something I ever would have expected myself to do.

I'm doing this sesshin because I think that if I do, it will help me to be more calm, more aware of what I am doing while I am doing it, and less attached to things happening one way or another...more observant than judgmental of this life, of others, and eventually, of myself.
Here's why I think this is going to happen. By way of the Calfornia State Budget Crisis (and SFUSD's all inclusive religious observance days), I have had many a Friday off during the past three months. On these Fridays, I have spent my mornings at the zen center. I've sat both sessions of zazen, attended service, and done soji. I've then done the same thing the following day (I agreed to attend the full Staurday morning schedule as part of my commitment to the Practice Period). So, basically, I've had a full morning of meditation, for two days in a row, about 3 or 4 times this Winter.
I have noticed that on the Mondays following these two days of back-to-back meditation, I have been more patient with the kids, seen their 'misbehaviors' as expressions of genuine need rather than manipulation, and have been more willing to "let go" of how I thought my lessons were going to go, and responded instead to the kids' experience with it rather than criticizing myself for designing/ teaching a "bad lesson."
Now, who knows, maybe it was the days off of work that gave me this patience, this clarity, this compassion for the kids or maybe it was just more time at the zen center, away from my work. But I don't believe it's just that. I really do feel like it's an accumulation, a deepening, a coming-in-to-practice that only happens through extended and continuous engagement. The only thing I can compare it to is when I attended surf camp in Australia. Because the water is so warm there, you're in it, learning, from 7AM to 4PM. You just have about a million more opportunities to learn and, as you learn each thing, you get another opportunity to learn, that is now informed by the thing you just learned. In the first two days of surf camp, my skills skyrocketed and I knew more than I had learned over the past five years of surfing (for an hour and a half on the occassional weekend).
Don't get me wrong, I am definitely not expecting this to be some sort of plateau, some sort of arrival or milestone. I know life doesn't work like that- it's not like having intensive periods of meditation gets you into a state of permanent calm. All I'm saying is that I have noticed that when I spend two mornings in a row at the zen center, I seem to be more patient, more aware, less tied up, and more likely to laugh than to yell when things go other than I had planned.
I guess I think that seven days in a row might have a similar effect, so I'm willing to try it. Also, the days coincided perfectly with Spring Break at my school so I thought that I really could be present, leave my thoughts behind, because I wouldn't have a class of third graders to worry about.
I'm also aware that it's likely that because I'm ostensibly going to be meditating all day long, I probably am going to experience my thoughts, my fears, stuff that has been lurking around, waiting for me to finally allow it to surface. That part scares me more than having to sit there all day long- the thought of crying uncontrollably around a bunch of other people but, I don't really have a choice in the matter. I'll either bawl quietly or bow to the person next to me, tiptoe out of the zendo, and bawl someplace else in the zen center.

You don't have to THINK in the zendo

So, if I had read the title of this post a year ago I would have said, "Okay, reason number one to NOT go in the zendo. I like my thoughts, I don't want to stop thinking."
But, I've been meditating for a little while now and I'm okay with not 'thinking' while I'm in the zendo and, honestly, I'm kind of grateful for it. Here's what happened to help me appreciate this:
I was at evening service. I was trying to actually be present (not think so much about what I was doing right or wrong in the zendo), for the whole time in the zendo, not just during zazen but for the bowing and chanting and service part too.
So, after fluffing my cushion, I stood up, hands in shasu, and meditated: I put my gaze on the floor about two feet in front of me and tried to feel my breath. I did the same thing as I do when I'm sitting on the cushion. And I just breathed, for awhile, and then I thought:
"Uh oh! How will I know when to bow if I'm not watching the doshi?"
'Bing!' went a bell and I was like, "Oh, time to bow."
And then I thought, "Ohhhh, that's what those bells are for!"
See, I always thought they were to coordinate us in our bowing, to time us together. I'm sure they help with this, but I also think they're there so that you don't have to think about who's doing what and when. You can actually meditate, and that bell will tell you what to do. You don't have to look around, check your watch, or worry about what's going to happen next; you can just meditate until you hear a bell, then bow until you hear another one, then chant until you hear another one, then bow when you hear another one, and then walk out when you hear the last one- all the while focusing on your breath and actually meditating.
Honestly, it's kind of a luxury to have this structure, this repetitive system in which you can just breathe and follow. I mean, if you want to meditate, to not have to think, the zendo is pretty darn supportive of that. (Okay, I get it, that's why it's called the MED I TA TION HALL. Be patient with me, it just takes me a while to get these things, but once I get 'em...)

What's up with all the chanting?

I don't actually know. It's probably been the hardest part of this practice for me. I've been, physically, so uncomfortable doing it that it has made me cry. Mostly, I just bear through it, sometimes nervously, other times cynically, but rarely pleasurably.
A couple of Friday mornings ago, I was attending service in the Buddha hall. Service usually involves bowing, chanting, and then bowing again and it appears to be a pretty regular schedule of specific chants. There are chant books, but most people who attend service seem to do so on a regular basis and so don't seem to need the chant books to follow along for most of the service. I, however, rarely attend service so I always use the chant book, and I use it the entire time. On this particular morning, I was chanting along with the chant book and I suddenly felt lonely.
"Hmmm," I thought. "Why are you feeling lonely in a room full of people?"
And I glanced around and I noticed that no one else had their chant book out.
"Oh," I thought. "You feel sad because you're the only one who's using their chant book. It makes you feel like you're the-only-one-who-needs-it, and that makes you feel alone."
And then I went back to chanting.
"Oh," I thought. "That was just like meditation right there. I was just going along, doing what I was supposed to do and a feeling came up and I acknowledged it and then I went back to what I was doing. Ohhhh, chanting is just another form of meditation! I'm not beating myself up for feeling lonely or for being the only one who needs a chant book, I'm just noticing it. Maybe that's why we chant."
I still don't know, you'll have to ask someone at the zen center- good luck getting an answer... ha!

Involuntary dokusan

Someone was having a bad day. I don't know why he was having a bad day. He started out great. I worked with him on his morning message and he was done before everyone else. But then, suddenly, he was calling out, pretending to get the wrong answers, saying things like "No!" and "I don't care!" and "Send me out of the room."
I tried all kinds of tricks: whispering in the ear, praising others near him, 'catching' even the slightest positive behavior and calling attention to it. But he just decreased, regressed, spun farther and farther in to failure, misbehavior, and distraction. I finally had to just let go, acecpt that he wasn't going to learn what I was teaching this morning (which totally frustrated me because it was test prep and I know how much anxiety he has around testing).
At recess, I told the kids to think about their behavior that morning, whether or not they had helped the class to learn or whether they had kept the class from learning. I asked those who had helped, to line up to go out for early recess and for those had kept the class from learning, to stay in to come up with some strategies to help them focus better.
Of course, he lined up for early recess. And I, I had to call him back to his seat. He refused, he lingered in the hallway, leaned against the door, and complained about how unfair I was...
I talked with the other three 'distractors' and they seemed to genuinely recognize the behaviors that lead them to disrupt the class and came up with strategies to do better after recess. Then they went out to play.
He, however, continued to linger in the hallway and I, I let him be. Honestly, I had things to do. My projector was broken so I had to prepare posters for the math lesson and I had to explain the lesson to my tutor. After that, I just sat down and ate my oranges. I looked over his test worksheet and saw all the mistakes he had made and realized that I really did need to teach this to him- he really needed to do this work.
He finally came back in to the room, with an apple and a cookie. How he got them, I have no idea, but he came back in and started walking around. He kind of went on a rant and it was really telling. Normally, kids who stay in at recess, complain about the work, talk about how unfair it is that they have to do it, lament over the recess they're missing, and ask how many minutes they have left. But he, he said none of this. This is what he said instead:
You don't love me. You don't call on me because you don't want to spend time with me. If you loved me more, my uncle would come to school more often. You're upset with me. You don't understand. I'm trying my best and you still won't help me.
And then he asked what time it was.
I was really surprised, and kind of confused by this. But I responded to each of his comments honestly. I explained that I did love him and that I wanted to spend time with him. I explained to him that I had looked for his hand to be raised this morning but never saw it go up. I asked him if he could raise it higher next time so that I'd see it. I also told him that he wasn't doing his best work this morning, that I had seen him do better. Finally, I explained that his uncle wanted him to try his best and to be respectful to grownups and that he hadn't been doing that this morning.
I don't think any of this helped. In fact, I know it didn't help because he was horrible for the next period too, even though our tutor sat with him the entire time and gave him his undivided attention.
After school, I called his uncle to report what had happened (he has asked me to do this on days when he is especially disrepectful). And guess what? Guess who visited their grownup this weekend? Guess who's dealing with issues of abandonment and rejection?Yep- that's who, that's what this was all about.
I heard Paul say once that he could tell a lot about a person's relationship with their father based on their approach to him in dokusan. I guess that happened for me this morning. But I think the really interesting thing about this, the ways this ties in to practice, is that I just let him be. Normally, when someone walks around the room, refuses to come in, doesn't do their work during recess... I make them do the work. I either remind them of the time, tell them they'll have to do it for homework, or suggest a phone call home. This time, because I just wanted to have snack, I let him be. And in some ways, it was good. He told me a lot about himself and, hopefully, he heard that I loved him, cared about him, and wanted him to do well.
It's a hard thing to do, to let him not learn the test stuff, to let him linger in the hallway, to let him totally disregard my directions. But it's a harder thing to do to force him to do this work, to deny him the suffering that he's feeling. Honestly, I don't know if it helped him to express all this to me this morning. I know it helped me. It made me see that he's going through some stuff right now and he needs my compassion, my love, my acceptance.
Tomorrow morning, I'm hoping to have an intentional dokusan with him- to talk with him about my own feelings about my grownup, about how they overwhelm me sometimes. I want him to know that I understand, that I'm not mad at him for this, that it's okay to have these feelings, and that I still love him when he feels this way.
And hopefully, we can look over his test stuff too. But if not, I'll let it go. It feels more important that I let him know that I see him, that I accept him, that he is loved.

Spring Equinox Ceremony

We are outside
I am tickled
by the union
of our voices
by their lift
their unintentional optimism
the way they rise, then hover
dance along the confines
of the courtyard walls.
Poetry
humor
reminders of delusion
then a mention of turning
of winter in to spring
of things ending
and others continuing.
Tears
annoyance with tears
rolling of eyes at tears.
Bowing
timing with others.
Bowing
eye contact with others.
hugs
ride home
poem.

You're still going to get hit by a Mack truck

The second time I had dokusan with Paul it went like this:
"What feelings come up for you in zazen?"
"Fear and loneliness."
"Fear of what?"
"I'm afraid that if I sit zazen, I won't be prepared for teaching that day."
A raising of the eyebrow, "You're afraid that by sitting zazen you won't be prepared for the day?"
An embarrassed smile, "Well when you put it like that it sounds illogical and silly..."
A reassuring and wise face," It's not about logic, it's about what you feel."

And so I started to feel what was coming up for me in zazen. This same image kept coming up over and over again. I'm sitting there, all upright like one of those mini buddha statues and some force, some invisible thing, broadsides me. I somersault over and over again like a tumbleweed, still stiff like a statue, and end up on my side, legs still in Burmese posture.
This confused me for a really long time. I didn't understand what it was that I was afraid of, what it was that hit me, and why I just rolled over and over again, staying stiff instead of collapsing.
But I've been thinking a lot about my life lately, and the things that happened to me when I was little and how they might have imapcted me in ways that I was unaware of until now. I think that when my mom died, it was kind of like a Mack truck hitting me. I don't think I got hurt, I don't think I even knew what hit me, I think that just one day my mom was there and the next day she was gone. In reality, it wasn't like this. She had breast cancer and was in an experimental treatment protocol at Stanford for a year before she died. But I think that to a six year old, it really was like this: one day my mom was there, the next she wasn't.  And I think that was the equivelent of being broadsided by a Mack truck: your whole world gets kind of turned on its head.
The stiffness of my posture, the fact that I didn't collapse, intrigued me too. I wondered why I maintained my posture, why I stayed so rigid, so unaffected. But then I thought about how things went after my mom died. The way I remember it, we just kept going- we lived our lives and moved on. I also think that the grownups in my life responded to this tragedy, this absolute upheaval of our lives, by trying to control everything they could. It makes sense that they would do this- that they would respond to upheaval with an attempt to settle but I think that I kind of picked up on this too. I definitely have a propensity to want to control things: to want to know what's going to happen, to believe that I can make things happen, to plan, to make sense of things, etc. And so I think that's why I am so stiff in this scenario- I think I'm responding to getting hit by denying it, by controlling myself, by attempting to be unaffected.
Last week, when I had a little "aha" moment about my underwear, things kind of changed for me. When I had the feeling that my underwear just occurred to me, I got this image of the world just coming up and meeting me. I pictured that same Mack truck, coming at me with the same force and speed but then it just met me. It didn't not hit me, it wasn't any slower, it still made contact but it was just a meeting, I just met it.
And I think that's what this is, or at least it is for me now. It's a meeting of life. It's a presence to what comes up. It's an awareness of yourself that feels like it gives you, like, a strength or a depth to, like, feel what comes- not absorb it or have it envelop you, but to meet it, experience it, maybe even hang out with it until it feels like its done, and then it fades away until something else comes up to meet you.
I don't know. That's what it feels like right now, like this practice doesn't keep you from getting hit by a Mack truck- that truck can always blindside you- but, it just, somehow it feels like instead of it knocking you over, you kind of meet it at the door and say "Hey, there you are and here I am."

Diversity in the classroom

I'm taking an amazing class at the zen center. It's called Harmony of Difference and Equality in the Context of Identity Politics. What made me want to take it was the description: "We will examine how issues of race, sexual orientation, and gender inform our practice."
The issue of race has been a really important part of my teaching over the past ten years and studying it has transformed my life. Lately, though, it has fallen by the wayside as the racial makeup of my school has changed toward the less diverse, and I have focused my interests elsewhere. I've never been happy about this, and wondered about my motivations for studying it if it appeared to have been just a "phase" in my life.
But even in our first class, we already had "difficult" conversations about our own biases, assumptions, and experiences with issues of race, gender, class, etc. By "difficult" conversations, I'm referring to conversations we have that are really uncomfortable, where we talk about things that everyone sees but doesn't want to admit. It isn't always so much about the topic of conversation as it is about staying in it and being as honest as possible so that we start to learn from each other. This, for me, has been the most transformative part of my studying of race and racism: how to stay in the conversation, how to foster these discussions, because racism can only exist as long as we allow it to, and we only allow it to exist if we keep denying its existence. That's a much bigger conversation and hopefully someday I can post about it but for now, let's just say that I was really happy to be in a class that had the structure and intent to foster these conversations.
But what this blogpost really is about...is the homework. The first night, the teacher gave us a bunch of handouts, one of which she asked us to keep present with us throughout our daily interactions with others. For me, it was like a set of precepts for living in a way that dismantles the institutions of racism/ sexism/ oppression in general. There are eight of them, but I was so intrigued and overwhelmed by the first one that I had to just stop there. Here it is: (Directing the Mind Towards Practices in Diversity by Larry Yang, LCSW 2004)
Aware of the suffering caused by imposing one's own opinions or cultural beliefs upon another human being, I undertake the training to refrain from forcing others, in any way- through authority, threat, financial incentive, or education- to adopt my own belief system. I commit to respecting every human being's right to be different, while working towards the elimination of suffering of all beings.
The first thing that stood out to me was the line, "Aware of the suffering caused by imposing one's own opinions or cultural beliefs upon another human being..."
I realized that I do this all the time; that I am constantly asking the kids to change their behavior to fit my beliefs about how a classroom should run, what you should look like when you are "paying attention," how you should talk, etc.
At first, I wanted to avoid this truth by suggesting that I needed to modify their behavior, that I'm a teacher, and that by nature of my profession, I am supposed to change children, broaden their minds and train them to be "students." But then I read the second part: "I commit to respecting every human being's right to be different..."
I pictured my third graders, and all their differences: their quirkiness, craziness, their stuff that drives me crazy and I pictured how much suffering they must feel when I don't accept this in them, when I try to change them into something else. I realized that they have a right to be different, that we all have a right, in fact it's our life's compulsion to express this difference, to be who we truly are.
And then I thought, "This...this is really important. This might be the most important thing that I do in my classroom this year: allow the children to actually be themselves, to somehow find a way to allow all of us to coexist in this room in a way where we all can be our true selves."
So, on Monday morning, I went in to my classroom with the intent to "respect every human
being's right to be different." I vowed to see their "differences" as their right, as their assertion of their self, to see "difference" as an equally valid participant in our classroom instead of something that I needed to change.
To be honest, it actually started out pretty well. The kids came in to do their "math message" and I watched them with a pretty open mind. They were supposed to cut out their fact triangles and write their initials on them. Some kids were meticulous cutters, others were writing their initials in artistic letters and I thought, "That's different." Some wanted to write their initials first, others wanted to wait until the end to put their scraps in the recycle bin, others wanted to walk around and collect the scraps and I thought, "That's different." Some wanted to dance around the room or bounce up and down beside their chair and I thought, "Okay, are they actually doing the task that I asked?" and they were so I thought, "That's different," and let it be. But then they started distracting others from doing the task so I asked them to stay at their own seats.
Then I saw someone standing out in the hallway, staring at the art that I had displayed and I
thought," That's different." But then I thought, "Wait, that may be different, but that's not
learning, he's going to be way behind or even miss the assignment." So I gently guided him
back to his desk and turned to the correct page in his math journal and asked him if he had
cut out his fact triangles yet. He said no and then started cutting.
And this was different too. Normally I would have called out his name and told him to pay attention. I'm pretty sure that when I do this, he feels bad about himself for "not paying attention." But in this interaction, when I just accepted that he was intrigued by the art in the hallway and simply guided him back to his desk, he was able to just do it. There wasn't any suffering involved, there wasn't any imposing of my beliefs upon his, there was just a simple direction to the task at hand.
Now, in full disclosure, I pretty much lost it in the afternoon after being all "That's different" all morning long. I yelled at them for talking with their friends during the read-aloud and totally called them out for reading together during independent reading time. But today, I also let them twirl around during vocabulary and laughed with them as they flopped on chairs and discussed parts of speech. I'm slowly letting go of my need to control them and that's bringing me way less suffering and I think it's making them happier too.
But as I write this post, I also see a really important distinction being made. Before, I thought that it would be impossible for me to be their teacher and not impose my values and beliefs on them. How could I possibly "educate" them without asking them to adopt behaviors or ideas that I believe are crucial to their understanding of learning in general and third grade standards in particular? But as I reflect on my interaction with the art kid in the hallway, I realize that I did that without judgment, that he was able to be himself and do what I asked him to do. I feel like there's a way to do this, to accept their behaviors, even those that seem disruptive, in a way that allows them to learn and be themselves. I also feel like I have to do this, that they have a right to be who they are and I can no longer oppress or diminish that.

How do I get out of my head?!

You're not going to like this answer, but, if you want to get out of your head, you need to get in to your body. Now, there is an inherent flaw in this advice because by suggesting that to get out of your head you need to get in to your body, I am creating a separation between the two and the reality is, your head and your body are one and the same.
But for me, during meditation, they feel like two different things: a head that just keeps making thoughts and a body that, even when I pay attention to it, still feels like it's being directed by the head.
I described this to Paul in dokusan. I explained that I could breathe from my gut and up to my lungs, but that my breath seemed to get caught there. I also said that the only way I could get my thoughts to stop was if I held my breath or concentrated really hard on my breathing.  
Paul suggested that I just keep coming back to my breath, instead of trying to hold it. And we talked about me trying to feel what I was feeling during zazen, to focus on what my body felt like instead of thinking about breathing a certain way.
Now, if Paul had said this to me before I took his class, I woudn't have known what to do. I would have thought, "Feel? How do I feel my body?" And I would have used my brain and my thoughts to try to figure out how to feel my body during zazen.
Luckily, though, I had been taking Paul's class and he had taught us some things that helped me to follow this advice.
On the first day of class, he had us sit zazen and asked us to breathe out. And then, he told us to keep breathing out, to breathe out until your body took its next breath. I think he used the words "let your breath breathe you" but I don't remember. So I did this. It was scary at first, I was afraid I was going to die, that I would stop breathing if I didn't breathe. But it turns out, your body will breathe itself if you let it, it's got a pretty good survival mechanism going on.
It took me a while to make this part of my regular zazen practice but it's what I do when I just can't get my thoughts to stop: I breathe out and wait. In some ways, I'm making my head give in to my body but also, I'm bringing my attention to my body, and that gets me out of my head.
But there are some other asepcts about bringing your attention to the body that, well, I don't know, help you, like, manifest the other parts of this practice: being present to the moment, experiencing reality as it is, and a sense of awareness rather than judgment.
Here are some things that people have told me about the body (as opposed to our thoughts):
Your body... can only be present, your body doesn't feel the future, your body doesn't make plans for tomorrow, it just exists, right here, right now. And it doesn't feel the past either, it can't. Unlike your head, it let's go of those things. Once it's done feeling it, it moves on to the next feeling and only experiences that one while it's feeling it, and so on.
Your body... experiences reality just as it is, it doesn't add anything to it, it doesn't bring any stories to it, it just experiences it. When you are cutting carrots and cut your finger instead, your body just bleeds: the blood inside your veins comes out through your skin, that's all. You, however, your thoughts, they're the ones who see blood coming out of your skin as: "OMG I'm bleeding!" and brings up all kinds of associations with bleeding (dependent upon your own stories about blood and your body and what it needs...)
Now, it is true that your body feels pain when you get cut: your body sends a message through your nervous system that says: Hey... over here... attention needed...
But, and here's where I think the non-judgment piece comes in, really all your body is saying when it feels pain is "Hey, over here, look at this."
But we, because of our causes and conditioning, place a value judgment on pain. We interpret pain (which is just a message of 'hey look over here') as a negative thing, as something to avoid, as something that causes us displeasure. When really, the message of pain is just a message, it's the same as tickle or itch- it's a sensation. We've just associated it with 'ow!' for so long that we don't even see that we've added on this piece, that our thoughts turned pain into something negative.

So, just FYI, I am totally with you here. I'm pretty sure that you're thinking: "Seriously? You want me to say that pain isn't bad? That I'm supposed to just accept pain as the same as pleasure? Heh- you're funny."
Yeah, I said the exact same thing when I was taking Paul's class. When Paul suggested that drowning was a mental construct, I laughed out loud. "Tell that to the drowning man,"  I wanted to say, but I didn't, because it was Paul. Paul just took a deep breath, and went back to his teaching.

But it stuck with me, this idea that we value things as better or worse, as good or bad. It coincided with another practice Paul had asked us to try: getting things done. I had started to look at my work in terms of getting things done: not getting them done efficiently, not getting them done better or worse, just getting them done in the way they needed to be done in that moment. And it worked, I got things done. Actually, I felt like I got way more done than when I made a to-do list or started to worry about how much work I needed to get done. Honestly, the amount of work I did was probably the same but because the judgment aspect of it was gone, it felt like my work was done.

And this has started to carry over in to my zazen. I have started to get in to my body during zazen and that has helped me get out of my head.
I feel for my breath: I feel my shoulders relax, I feel my stomach muscles release, and I wait. When my body inhales, I feel that too.
I don't analyze my breathing: I try not to think about where my breath is, I try not to think about how much I have breathed before another thought comes in to my head, I try to just feel my breath move through my body.
I don't judge my zazen (well, okay, I try not to judge my zazen). Instead of asking myself "Where is my breath?" or "Am I breathing right?" I feel my shoulders, I feel my stomach, I feel my breath. I wait for all of them to exist on their own, to not be controlled by my head, and when I feel that feeling, I try to come back to it. That's all- to come back to it, not to get it right, not to make it be a certain way, just to feel for that feeling.

And so I think that's why there's all this focus on your breath- it gets you to get in to your body. And from everything I'm learning about the body, it's kind of the zen master. It can only be present to the moment, it doesn't come with any stories, and it accepts everything just as it is. Man, how I wish I could do that.

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.

Regret

I was in a pickle. My dad sent me an email inviting me to the symphony. I was all excited until I realized that the date of the symphony was the second day of sesshin. I didn't know what to do.
Part of me felt like, "C'mon, it's seven days, you can miss one night to go the symphony with your dad."
But part of me felt like, "No, the whole point of this sesshin is that you really can slow down, be present to each moment, each activity that you do all day long. Going to the symphony with your dad will bring things in to your sesshin. Let it go about your dad and actually experience this sesshin fully."

It felt weird to be "choosing" sesshin over my dad. But then I thought, "No, you go to the symphony with him once a month. You're not choosing sesshin over your dad. He asked you, out of the blue, on a day when you normally don't go to the symphony. You're busy, it's okay to say no."

And then I pictured telling my dad this:
"Sorry Daddy, I can't go to the symphony. It's on the second day of sesshin at the zen center."
"Sesshin?"
"Uh, yeah. It's this thing where we meditate for seven days straight."
"Meditate?"
"Um, yeah...we, uh, sit... and we, uh, face the wall, and we... breathe... and we uh..."

Maybe I'll just tell him that I'm taking a class at the zen center.

But then I would be lieing to my dad, and I didn't want to do that.

"Oooh," I thought. "I have therapy this week. I can talk to my therapist about this and then get back to my dad."

So, I didn't respond to his email.

The next day, I got another email from him but this time, it was a confirmation of his purchase of the tickets for the show.
"Oh my gosh!" I thought. "He hadn't bought the tickets yet! And now he has bought them. I can't go, and I knew that, and I didn't tell him because I didn't want to deal with whatever I was dealing with. I wanted to wait, to make things smooth, to try to change the situation. I didn't want to accept whatever I was dealing with, I wanted to have it both ways. And because of that, he bought the tickets."

I sent him an email immediately, telling him I couldn't go and apologizing for not telling him sooner. That felt better, but what I had done felt horrible.
And I thought about this: why the email telling him that I couldn't go felt okay, but the waiting to tell him felt so bad. I thought about how it felt sending that email, being honest with him, treating him with respect instead of trying to create some fantasy relationship with him. And I thought, "You know what? I think if you had responded to his email right away, if you had just been honest with him, just been present to what you were experiencing at the time, I don't think you would have regretted your decision. I think that what feels so bad is the deception, the manipulation, the attempt to change the way things were. Even though you would have felt bad saying you couldn't go with him, I don't think you would have regretted it or wished you had done it another way because you would have been yourself and you would have been honest."

It's funny, my big thing about all of this was this whole idea that there was some kind of choosing between the zen center and my dad, that I would have to explain the importance of sesshin to him, that I would have to talk with him about what's going on with me and the zen center. But in that email that I sent, as soon as I saw that he had bought the tickets, I said nothing about the zen center- just that I couldn't go. Because that was all he needed to know- that I couldn't go and that hopefully he could return the tickets. In the email that I sent, I was present to him, not to my fears and anxieties, and that felt good.

I got three more emails from him:
The first one told me how great the show was going to be, how much the tickets were selling for on- line, and how much of a deal he was able to get on the seats because he was a season ticket holder.
The second one suggested that we try to find someone to buy them (or give them to).
The third one said "Oooops, I forgot. I'm having a medical procedure a few days prior to the concert. I probably couldn't have made it to the performance anyway but would have felt like I should keep my commitment to you and so would have gone. It probably is for the best that you can't make it. I can't make it either."

I laughed when I read the third one, because this is how life is. You really never know how things are going to turn out. But I still think that accepting the situation, instead of trying to change it, just makes it easier to let it go, to not get caught up in it, to make peace with this life and to not regret what you do in it.

The therapy of sweeping...

Last Saturday I got the soji job of sweeping the front of the zen center. I've had this job before and last time while I swept, I had a big ol' realization about judgment. This time I had a big ol' realization about being my self.
I was at the end of the line for temple jobs and the two people in front of me seemed new to the zen center. The work leader pointed to the three of us, asked us to sweep, and kind of motioned to me to show the other two what to do. I walked us to the broom closet, moved the dust pans out of the way, and handed each of them an 'outside' broom. One of them asked, "Don't we need a dustpan?" I explained that since we were outside, we usually just swept everything to the curb.
Then we went outside and they asked whether or not we should sweep the mats.
"Oh yeah," I said. "That'd be a good idea."
Then I went to the sidewalk and started sweeping. As I swept, I reflected on my interaction with these two women. I replayed what I had said to them, how far in front of them I had walked after handing them the brooms, whether or not I had held the door open long enough for them to get outside. Then I thought about how they felt about me being "in charge" and I thought about how well I had balanced that notion, that I had given them the support that they needed (gotten them brooms) but then left them to do their own thing, and that by acknowledging their idea of sweeping the mats I had made up for any criticism they might have felt when I told them we didn't need dustpans.
And then I thought, "Ummmm, do you see this? Do you see what you are doing? You're judging... your interaction... with these two people. You're looking for some right or wrong way to be with these people. There's no right or wrong way to be with these people. You keep trying to be one person or another. You keep trying to be some right or wrong person, as if there's some right or wrong you. Are you kidding? Like there's a right way to be you- ha! You can't even figure out who you are, how are you going to figure out some right version of you. Just be you. Seriously, no one else can do it, and  you're never gonna get it right 'cause there is no right you. You're just you dude, get used to it and start doing it instead of wasting your time thinking about it."

Turning 41

This post has nothing to do with zen practice. This post has nothing to do with teaching. I suppose in some ways it's what a blogpost is supposed to be: a web-based log of someone's thoughts or feelings.
I'm writing this post because when I opened my sister's email tonight, it ended with my mom's name. Seeing my mom's name made me cry, just a little.
My mom died when I was little- 6, to be exact. My mom died when she was 41, which, it turns out, is also little. I'm finding this out because I'm turning 41 myself this week, and seeing that 41 is really young.
I've been thinking about this a lot this week, and in these months leading up to my birthday. I've been seeing my mom as a person, a woman who was 41, who had three little kids (my brother was 9, my sister 12) and who liked to make chocolate mousse.
I had asked my sister to email me my mom's recipe for chocolate mousse. It was one of her specialties. She also liked Grasshopper Pie (apparently she would go to Chiacgo for the weekend, shop, and then have Grasshopper Pie made with Frango mints as a treat).
When I read the recipe, I thought it was kind of weird. It wasn't anywhere near as complicated as I had expected chocolate mousse to be and I acually wondered if it would work. But that wasn't what hit me, that wasn't what made me cry. What hit me was her name. What hit me was this person, this person who had written down her recipe for chocolate mousse, and had signed her name to it. I just pictured her, writing down the recipe and signing it. I can't really explain why this is important or why this makes me cry, just that she was a person, making chocolate mousse, and signing her name.
I pictured her, in our kitchen, making the mousse and writing it out on a recipe card, saving it for future use. And I guess in some ways, I'm picturing myself. I write recipes. I save them for future use. I know that feeling of wanting to keep a good recipe. And maybe that is what is hitting me: her earnestness, her signing her name, her making the recipe her own, her attempt to hold on to something, to keep it for future use, the image of her, being young, living in the present but planning for the future.
I just... it turns out that she was little too, that she was a person too, that she had hopes and fears and desires and friends and that she lived.
And it's really sad that she died, that she didn't get to keep on living, that her life stopped. And it's weird that my life is still going on, that I am going to be older than her, that I am going to experience things that she never got to experience. I will be 42 next year. She will never be 42.
I don't know what else to say about this except that it makes me sad and confused to surpass my mother. It's nice to know that she was young. It's nice to imagine her in our house, all healthy and busily making chocolate mousse for her friends but it's a really weird feeling to begin to see myself as older than that, to think that I will get older than her, that I will age in a way that she never did and that she is becoming younger than me.

Still in the gaitan

The title of this post is referring to the fact that when I first started meditating at city center, I meditated in the gaitan (the hallway outside the zendo) instead of the zendo. I did this for three months before finally entering the zendo, and only then went into the zendo to prove someone wrong. Once I did go in to the zendo, however, things were fine and all the stuff that I had made up about the zendo basically just dropped away.
Lately I have been noticing that in some ways, I am still in the gaitan, although it feels more like I'm sitting on the brick steps that lead up to the door of the zen center. I know that I'm the one sitting out there- that no one has sent me out there and that all I need to do is open the door and walk in.
But I just can't seem to do it.
A couple of weeks ago, I actually did step inside. Well, it wasn't so much a step as it was a desperate pulling open of the door, a rush inside, and an immediate sitting down, just inside the door. It was kind of like when it suddenly starts pouring rain and, caught without an umbrella, you step inside the nearest building for shelter: it's not so much that you chose that building, it's more that you needed refuge from the storm.
I had been struggling with some stuff, feeling confused about how to deal with people, how to change the habits that felt so ingrained in me. I went to Young Urban Zen, not with the intention of dealing with this stuff, but just because it was Monday night and that's when we meet. That evening, we studied a reading that talked about emotions: being present to them, noticing them as they are, feeling them without all of the baggage that our thoughts can add to them. I felt genuinely confused about the teaching- wondering how to understand the difference between those emotions that were kind of natural, that were actual responses to the moment and those other emotions that felt like real emotions but were just habits that I fall into. So, I asked the group, "How do you know when it's one or the other?"
And it was amazing: no one taught me about the difference, no one said "you should do this" or "this is how we deal with that," they just shared their experience and their wisdom. They just said "I have found that..." or "Yeah, that happens to me too and when it does I..." And being in this room with all these people who are living this life, who deal with emotions and with people, I felt so incredibly grateful that I have this resource, that I have this place. But I also realized that I need this; that for reasons that I don't really need to get in to, I don't have a whole lot of experience with emotions and I need some help around this. If the zen center is what helps me with it, then I just need to walk in and let it help me.

Am I a Buddhist? Everyone else thinks I am

My therapist says I'm a Buddhist.
My room mate says I'm a Buddhist.
The Ino says "What is a Buddhist?"
I say, "I don't know."
And I don't know. Is it someone who meditates? Is it someone who bows to Buddha? Is it someone who seeks to benefit all beings?
What would it mean to call myself a Buddhist? Would I wear robes? Would I shave my head? Would I have dinner with everyone at the zen center? Would I line up on the other side of the counter to get my meals? Would I go to Tassajara? Would I become part of a community of really lovely people? Would I feel like I belonged?
Can I be a Buddhist who rides her bike to the zendo in the morning? Can I be a Buddhist who sleeps in her own bed? Can I practice outside the zen center and still be a Buddhist? Isn't that what the people at the zen center do? Aren't they practicing all the time, it's just that they live there? Am I really so different from the "people in robes?"
What would it mean to "wear the robes?" Who would it benefit? Who would it alienate? What would it mean and why would I do it?
Can I be a Buddhist teacher? Do I need to wear robes or practice intensely to manifest this practice throughout my life? Can I just take the parts of it that I need and leave the parts that don't fit in with my life outside the zen center? Is it all or nothing? It sure does feel like that, like the more immersed I get the more it becomes a part of me, the less it's a practice, the less it's trying and more just doing.
What do I have to give up to become a part of the zen center? Aren't I already a part of the zen center? Is this enough?
It's all me. I can come or go as I choose. There isn't a threshold over which I will someday cross and become a Buddhist. I don't even need to become a Buddhist. I just am. And I don't mean that I am a Buddhist, I mean that I just am. This is who I am. I can call it what I want to make myself feel better or worse. I can label it, judge it, hold it up as profound or spiritual, fear it for all that I associate with it. Or I can accept it, which is hard because it scares me because it feels so final, so constricting, so much an identity. But it isn't. It's just what the Ino says: a bunch of cool people who care about others. And still, I still don't know if I'm a Buddhist...

Underwear Day 1

So, I was present to the kids today. I tried my very best to just let them occur . At times, I felt like an idiot but I didn't yell at anyone, didn't get frustrated, and kind of discovered that in the same way that I can't change grownups, I can't change kids.

As we were doing the pledge of allegiance, I was interrupted by:
Hood on head, unhappy face and "I am not taking my hood off all day long!"

I thought "Oh no, this is going to be a long day."

But then I inquired instead of assuming:
"What's going on sweetie?"
"This weekend? I fell down and hit my head and it really hurts. Can I get an icepack?"
"Of course, and you can wear your hood if you need to."
(imediately takes off hood)

During our spelling pretest I heard:
Much, much, much ripping of paper, into smaller and smaller bits, and "I hate spelling!"

I thought, "I shouldn't have let her go to the bathroom. She missed the first part so she thinks she's behind. I can't let her rip up her paper like that. I'll get her later by making her redo it during her lunch."

Instead, I go on with the prestest. She walks up to me, shoulders hunched and mostly crying. I want to send her to her seat but I don't. I put my arm around her. We finish the pretest. She goes back to her seat and goes on with her day. I don't make her redo the pretest.

We are walking up from lunch. I see:
Spinning, spinning, spinning third grader. Third grader spinning past me, ahead of the line, in front of his teacher.
I think, "Disrespect. Defiance. Out of control."
I hear, "That teacher can't control her class. Look at those kids, totally out of line, and that one is all over the place. What kind of learning goes on in a class like that?"

I remind myself to only see, not think so much. I see again:
Spinning, spinning, third grader. He keeps spinning all the way up to the classroom door. Then he stops and kind of laughs at himself, dizzily walks into the room, and immediately gets on task.

Here's what I think I learned in third grade today:

I can't keep the first kid from being hurt and angry. He was hurt (physically) and was probably feeling a little ebarrassed/ defensive about the big scab on his forehead. He needed compassion and I gave it to him. He yelled at me later and only did what I asked when I told him I'd call home if he didn't. He cried as he did what I asked so I laid off him a bit and gave him space. Bizarrely enough, he did his work (not all of it, but he did it of his own choice, not because of me).

Spelling girl felt dumb because she didn't know one word. I can't do anything about this aspect of her, it's just who she is. I thought that by telling her she'd have to make up the test at recess, it would keep her from ripping up her next test, but it won't. I can't keep her from ripping up her test but I can let her know that I care about her. I'll find a way to practice those words with her another time.

Spinny boy was just me, hearing voices that never spoke. All he was doing was spinning. No one is judging my line, and if they do I'm happy to explain that we are walking to class. As long as we get there in time for read- aloud, I don't really mind what we look like. If we're bothering you, let me know, we can be quiet and orderly when we need to be.


Here's what else makes today slightly okay for me. After the dharma talk at Green Gulch on the weekend of our Young Urban Zen retreat, Fu responded to a teacher in the audience by saying: "It's about the relationships you have with the kids. That's what I always remember, and that's what they'll remember. It's the conversations you have with them, it's about you seeing them, them feeling cared for."
And it's true, it really is what I remember about school. The teachers who noticed me, took time to get to know me, who genuinely cared about me. That was what made the difference for me, and that's probably why I liked school so much- there were some grownups who saw things in me and wanted me to do well.
It's hard to accept that this is what I'm doing because I so want them to do well in school, to not be behind, to catch up and be academically prepared so that they can succeed in school. But at the same time, I know that this really is what I do; I see kids, especially when I behave the way that I did today. Spelling words and fractions aside, hugs and understanding present, a balance between the two or even an acceptance that they're all a part of me seeing these little beings and letting them be.

Underwear

I'm not sure where this one is going but it feels important.

Lately, I've gotten into the practice of being totally engaged in the task in front of me from the time I wake up in the morning until I walk in to the door of the zendo (which is all of about ten minutes). It goes like this:
Light turns on, I wake up and get out of bed. I take off my pajamas and put on my clothes. I put on my helmet, grab my bike and keys, open the door, get on my bike, and ride to the zendo.
Of course, throughout this entire routine about a million thoughts jump into my head. When they do, I say to myself: "Those are your thoughts, get back to your existence" and focus my gaze and mind on the task in front of me: putting on socks, grabbing a sweatshirt, watching the street in front of me as the wheel of my bike passes over it.
On Friday morning, this happened:
The light turned on, I got out of bed. I pulled off my pajama pants and pulled on my fleece pants. As I pulled them on...
"underwear" occurred to me.
"Oh," I thought. "I need underwear." So I took off my fleece pants, got a pair of underwear from my drawer, put them on, and then put back on my fleece pants and went on with the rest of my routine.
But then as I was riding to the zendo it struck me: this is kind of how it works. If you are present to the moment in front of you, the "underwear" occurs.  You don't grasp at it, you don't freak out when it happens, it just shows up and when it does, you exist with it while it's there and then you move on.
See, I could have had a bunch of other interactions with the underwear:
Dude, you forgot your underwear?
Okay, from now on, you're going to put your underwear out with the rest of your clothes so you don't forget.
You're so lame that you can't even remember your underwear.
Remember when you forgot to wear underwear to church that one time when you were litle?
And on and on and on...
But the thing is, none of that happened this time.
See, it's weird- I struggle a lot with, like, what does it mean to be present? What does it mean to not grasp at things? How do you engage without getting caught up? What's it like to exist this way? How does it all work?
But that morning, when my underwear occurred to me, it was like a little mini lesson in a little parallel universe. It was like, okay, you live your life and you're present to it. And things come up and they just occur to you and you just respond  to them just as they are: underwear. Not "lame for forgetting" or "make sure it doesn't happen again" just underwear, and put it on.
I don't know, maybe it isn't important, but for me, it feels like maybe, someday, in this universe I'll be able to have things like child yelling out "You don't care about me! That's why you won't call on me!" just occur and maybe I'll be able to just respond instead of hearing "you don't give her enough attention" or "turn her card to yellow so she doesn't call out again."
Right now, I have no idea what just responding to her would actually be. But I feel like if I start being present to my classrom and my kids, the way I'm present for the first ten minutes of my day, maybe they can start to just occur to me too and that feels like I'll be on the way to responding to them instead of feeling hurt by them (and hurting them in return) or trying to change them to avoid any future suffering.