NoTHING to worry about

School starts tomorrow. Actually, school starts in a matter of hours. I should be worried. I should be planning the day, rehearsing it in my head. At the very least, I should be in my classroom doing last minute things to make sure that tomorrow, the first day of school, goes perfectly.
But I'm not.
And in a nutshell, here's why:
There is no perfect.
There is no first day.

What happens tomorrow is totally out of my control. And even if it were in my control, there isn't an actual FIRST DAY that I could make. There is no RIGHT first day of school. The only first day of school that I can have is the one that I'm going to have tomorrow. And the only way that I can make it "right" is to be responsive to it, to make harmony with it, to not fight it or try to make it one way or another- to simply be in it, fully.
And I can't do that, today, on my couch, at my computer. I can't do that until tomorrow, when there are 22 eight year olds looking at me. And all I can do tomorrow is respond to them- openly and generously- to see them, just as they are. And to see myself and our room and what happens in it, just as it is.

I do have intentions for tomorrow. My goal is for the kids to make a friend (or at least feel like they know someone) and to like school enough that they want to come back the next day.  That's all. And I've prepared for that- I've designed games to help them get to know each other and I've planned lessons in which I believe the students will feel competent, that they actually can succeed in school. Those things, I have covered.
But other than that, I'm not planning or scheming or trying to control anything else, because I can't.

The other thing I'm seeing- when I do start to worry- is that it will be fine. Even if something horrible happens, we will respond to it, we will exist with it, it will happen, regardless of us. And we can make peace with it, experience it, and be with it, together. I know this is true because I have experienced things, with 22 third graders, and we do make it through. And often, those are our best times. But mostly, I know, that we will be fine.

So I am off to bake cookies, because that does need to get done. It needs to get done because on Tuesday, I tell the kids about how chocolate chip cookies were a mistake and that if the baker had thrown them out instead of just trying them to see how they were, chocolate chip cookies wouldn't exist. And then of course I have to give them cookies. How can you talk about the importance of chocolate chip cookies and not give them out?

So I am off- not to worry, but to bake instead.

The down side of (not believing) in Santa Claus

I teach third grade, and there always comes a point in the year where there is a division between kids who believe, and kids who don’t believe in Santa Claus. The kids who do believe are quite earnest in their belief, even going so far as to agree with the kids who point out that “it’s your parents” by suggesting that some of the Santa presents are from your parents, but there still is a Santa Claus. The kids who don’t believe strut around, flaunting their “adult” knowledge of this “secret” that you keep from kids.

Often, the kids ask me if I believe in Santa Claus. I give them the excellent answer that I learned from the principal of the first school that I taught at: “Well, if you don’t believe, you’re not gonna get presents. So, I figure, I’ll believe.” No one can argue with that.
Recently, I have discovered, that delusions, are delusions- and this is like not believing in Santa Claus. See, when I first learned about delusions, I started to see that I had them often. I noticed how frequently I made them up, how pleasant they were, how elaborate I could get with them, and how close they were to reality. I discovered that I spend a lot of time in delusions. They’re fun, they’re interesting, I get to control everything, and they always work out great- and if they don’t, I just make up new ones.
Then I started trying not to get caught up in them- to notice when I got lost in them and to bring myself out of them again. This was frustrating at first, but over time I started to notice just how fuzzy I got when I was lost in delusions and how clear I felt when I was present to what was in front of me.
But then one day, I realized, that delusions are actually delusions- they are not reality.  See, I was having a bummer day and I went off into a delusion and it occurred to me that it really was just a delusion. It was all in my head, it was all just thoughts, it did actually nothing to change whatever unpleasant situation I was in and trying to avoid.
“This sucks!” I thought. “I didn’t get in to this to figure out that I can’t avoid things! I didn’t get in to this to realize that my thoughts aren’t reality! This totally sucks! This practice only brought me to the reality of this situation that I don’t like!”
And the worst thing was, I couldn’t even do anything about it. I actually knew that any delusion I would dream up to avoid this reality was just that: a delusion. It had no use to me anymore- it wasn’t effective at all, it was just stupid thoughts that I made up and it had absolutely no effect on the reality that I was experiencing.
I felt cheated, and angry, and also I laughed at myself. But mostly I was pissed because this lovely tool that I had for avoiding reality was robbed from me, by me being so darn earnest in my practice.
Of course, I still go off into delusions. I suppose you could call it my dharma gate; but I like to refer to it as one of my greater qualities ‘cause I really am good at making up delusions that are only a hair’s breadth from reality.
Apparently, I still want to believe in Santa Claus. Who wouldn't? Who wouldn't want a room full of presents with only you and your imagination to decide what's inside them...

Preferences limit you

This is an older post, written in Japan while I was staying at Eko In (a temple in Japan)

This morning, as I was sipping the last of my green tea, I noticed the residue on the bottom of the cup.
“Hmmm,” I thought. “It looks like matcha. I wonder if in those matcha ceremonies they have some special thing at the end so that you drink all the matcha, so that you don’t leave any residue in your cup.”
And then I thought, “Yeah, definitely not interested in those matcha ceremonies: frothy green tea? No thanks.”
And then I realized that I have never done a matcha or green tea ceremony. I have totally and completely missed out on this thing just because I have a preference against green tea (especially the frothy ones). And that seemed kind of silly- my preference, my idea of what would happen in a green tea ceremony- completely denies me a life experience.
And I think that’s one of the reasons we practice having no preferences. I used to think it was just to help you to like those things which you didn’t like but now I think it can be bigger than that. I think it’s to keep you from limiting yourself and your experience. If you only do those things that you prefer, it means you’re not doing things that you don’t prefer- and so you’re denying yourself a bunch of life experiences. And the thing is, since you actually don’t know what’s going to happen in that experience, it’s not like you’re necessarily missing out on some kind of suffering or bummer situation- you  really have no idea what’s going to happen with that thing you don’t prefer. And by skipping it, because you don’t want to do it or don’t like it, you’re skipping out on part of your life.
So it seems like preferences, and the lack of them, actually open you up to new experiences. Instead of "protecting you" from things you think you'd prefer not to do, they end up limiting you from experiencing things that might turn out to be really cool.

The loneliness of self- sufficience

This is an older post- written about halfway through my time in Japan.

I have to say that I consider myself a pretty independent person. I don’t like to ask for help, would much rather figure things out on my own, and often take pride in how self- sufficient I am. But recently, in Japan, I realized that my independence makes me kind of lonely; and that my dependence, makes me feel connected.
I arrived in Japan with absolutely no knowledge of it. I didn’t speak the language, knew nothing about its transportation or accommodation system, and honestly, had no idea how to get to where I was going for my first night’s stay. So, I did what I do when I'm not sure what to do at the zen center: looked around and followed the crowd. This got me through customs, but after that, I had to start asking for help. And I did. I went to the tourist information spot, told them where I was going, and they gave me the map of the Tokyo Metro system and sent me on my way.
From there, I asked everyone what to do. I asked how to buy a ticket, then I showed the ticket to the people at the gates to make sure I was walking in to the right place. Then, while I was waiting for the train, I showed my ticket to the people near me to confirm I was getting on the right train and, finally, when I thought it was my stop, I asked the people around me to make sure it was right. Once I got off the train, I started walking in the directions they said on the website but also approached some nice policeman and, eventually, made my way to the hostel. Once I got there, I asked for help in finding a place to eat. Then, after dinner, I got lost. So I asked a stranger on the street and he walked me back to my hostel.
The next day, when I went in to Tokyo, I did the same thing at each metro stop and was gently guided to downtown Tokyo. Then that night, on my way home, without me knowing that I would get lost, a stranger walked me through the transfer station so that I could actually get back to the stop near my hostel. Then I headed up to Ei Hei Ji and had a similar situation- me trying to make my way by asking questions, people seeing this, and them stepping in to make sure I got where I was going.
Then I spent four lovely days in sangha with the other members of the sanzensha (zen training program) at Ei Hei Ji where there was even more of this. Since I was the only one who didn’t speak Japanese, everyone was looking out for me, checking to make sure I had my chant book, reminding me to bring my oryoki bowls, showing me how to make my bed, etc.
In all of these situations, there was barely any speech. Well, actually, that’s not true. In many situations, people did speak to me, only it was in Japanese, and I truly did not understand a word, not even a syllable of it. And I didn’t speak anything either. I still don’t know any Japanese except: good morning, good afternoon, thank you, and I’m sorry. Seriously, for the first two weeks of my stay here, that’s all I said, and I said it in Japanese.
And all of this was fine and good. I actually felt really safe and happy and totally fine in Japan. I was surprised by this- surprised that I hadn’t gotten homesick yet, surprised that I wasn’t feeling lonely. But it was just true- I was totally fine. Last year, at the same point in my trip in Malaysia, I was feeling unsettled and didn’t understand why until I heard Ray LaMontagne on the radio and saw a Golden Retriever and understood that I was desperately missing the familiar: I was homesick. And that was when I was traveling with a friend, who spoke the language and could actually help us navigate our way around so I shouldn’t have felt lost at all.
But here I was, completely alone in Japan with absolutely no one to talk with and I felt fine.
I spent one more week visiting a couple of small cities in the north, and then I headed back to Tokyo to visit with a former student of mine and his family and then spent the weekend with my cousin who lives in Okinawa.  I have to admit that it was really nice to have people to talk to. Being able to just talk in English- to make jokes, to ask questions about the language and customs, and to just be myself- was a really nice break from being so dependent on gestures and so limited to “functional speech.” 
But after the weekend was over, I had to go back to navigating my way around the country. At this point, I had a pretty good understanding of the railway system in Japan. I also had figured out convenience stores, shopping malls, ATMs, and restaurants. I actually started feeling pretty confident in my ability to make my way around Japan- so I stopped asking for help. I started figuring out my own way from metro stop to metro stop. I started going on line to figure out the price of tickets and, instead of asking, would tell the train station agent where I wanted to go and how much I would spend. I started looking at street signs and using maps instead of asking for help. Basically, I started to become self- sufficient in Japan… and it totally backfired.
I was totally alone. I was riding my bike, making my way around town, visiting temples on my own, but I had absolutely no interaction with anyone. I just showed up, did what I wanted, and went home. I have to admit that I really liked this feeling of knowledge, this feeling of knowing that I could figure out how to get from one place to another- in some ways, it made me feel safe. But I also know that I really did start to get lonely. And I noticed, that the times when I did feel energized or connected, were those times when people approached me to ask if I needed help or when we would share looks of confusion and laughter as they would speak to me in Japanese and I would shrug my shoulders and say that I didn’t speak Japanese.
I noticed this- noticed that my desire to ”master” Japan, to “figure out” how things works here so that I could “find my own way”- was pulling me away from others. It was stroking my ego, it was giving me a sense of self- efficacy, freedom, and safety. But it also removed from me any feeling of being taken care of or connected to others. In all those times when I had to ask for help, I was reminded of the kindness and caring of others. In asking for help, I kept getting helped, which, honestly, makes you feel cared for, and safe.
But this is not my normal association with being helped. Normally being helped feels like being weak, being dependent, owing someone, feeling powerless. But in Japan, when I had no choice but to ask for help, I was constantly helped which meant that I was constantly being taken care of and that left me feeling connected and not alone at all even when no one spoke to me (nor I to them). 
I don’t know. It makes me think twice about the value I place on being able to take care of myself, in being able to do things on my own. It’s true, I don’t rely on others or make them do things for me but I also end up not interacting with them at all, and that probably contributes to me feeling lonely.

Hiking in Japan

This is a really old post- probably the first one I wrote in Japan. It's from my trip to Kamikochi which, as far as I can tell, is Japan's version of Yosemite. It's incredibly beautiful there and I highly recommend a visit, if you have the time.

So, yesterday, I decided I would go on a little hike, up to this hut called Dokesawa. The American guy said there was some snow but it was only and hour and a half up, the Japanese woman at the tourist office smiled with relief when I said I was hiking it instead of the other one (especially when I answered NO when she asked if I had crampons and an ice pick), and I figured we were in the Japanese Alps, so everything would be much smaller and easier.  I had originally planned to just hike on the valley floor that day so all I had was my laptop bag, a couple of power bars, and about 16 ounces of water. I thought I was going on a nice stroll up a mountain side to a warm hut with steaming ramen and smiling hikers.
I was wrong.

scree

The hike started out easy enough, along the forest floor, and then gradually climbed up along wooden planks with some areas of cleared brush. After about an hour, the trail started getting much more steep, straight up at times, and at one point, headed out of the forest to a section of scree (an accumulation of rocks, sliding down the mountain). As I worked my way up the scree to the section of boulders, I looked down and realized that I was now climbing the snow capped peak that I had seen from the valley floor.
"Darnit," I thought. "This is going to be longer than I thought." I also thought, "Damn, I'm really out of shape," so I stopped a lot, and caught my breath. I kept an eye on the time, to kind of gauge how I was doing and I thought "I've done this before, I've hiked from hut to hut in the Dolomiti, like 6000 feet up, like all day long." And then I remembered how after two days of spending the entire day hiking and only sleeping at night, I decided it wasn't really a vacation anymore and caught a bus to Austria instead. And then I was grateful that on this trip, I was only doing day trips, not hiking from hut to hut, because even this little trip was pretty exhausting.
And then the trail turned to snow.
"Really?" I thought. "Snow?" When the American had said there was still snow on the trail, I thought he meant snow-on-the-trail, patches of snow on a flat forest floor trail, not snow-as-the-trail. But there it was, in front of me, a mountainside of snow with small trees sticking out from under the snow and little path markers telling me to head for these trees.
This didn't make sense to me, usually you go for the clearing between the trees, not straight for the trees but then I decided that the trees might provide some traction for making it up the hillside, so I followed them.
It wasn't as bad as I thought, and then I remembered how I had hiked through snow in Norway and how you had to kind of kick your boot in to the snow to get some traction and I felt kind of grateful that I had had that experience in Norway, that I had snow skills. And I also noticed that when you did this, you made pretty good progress up the mountain, that hiking up in snow was kind of easier than hiking up rocks or hillsides. I also felt extremely grateful that I had had the wisdom to buy new hiking boots in the brief hour I had between train connections in the big city, instead of waiting and hoping my old ones would hold up. There was no way my old boots would have survived this snow.
And then the snow trail turned to the left and I was out on that mountain side again only now things were even steeper, and there was no apparent end in sight.
I asked myself, "Why are you doing this? Why are you still going up? What is it you are hoping for?"
And for some reason, I pictured the hut. I realized that I just wanted to make it to the hut. So I took a few more steps and then stopped, because I was out of breath again and I asked myself again, "Why are you doing this? Why do you want to make it to the hut?"
And I really didn't have an answer for that but I also knew that I didn't want to go back down. But then I reminded myself, "You don't actually have to make it to the hut. You have a hotel room waiting for you on the valley floor. There really is no reason for you to make it to this hut. Once you get there, you're just going to turn around and walk back down."
And I answered, "Yeah, but what if I was really close and I turned around just because it seemed so far when really, if I had just kept going a little bit more, just pushed myself a little bit more, I would have made it."
"Fine," I answered, and kept going, and stopping, and going again and then I came to an even steeper part of the trail, straight up mountain side. It wasn't covered with snow but it was straight up. I sighed in annoyance with myself, for my persistence, for my stubbornness, and continued to trudge up the hillside.
And then, the trail turned left, not up, and I thought, "I'll bet it's the hut! I'll bet it's the hut!" and it was...
And then I saw what I always see:
The hut, which is lovely and inviting and so rewarding and...
The trail, between me and the hut.

the trail, between me and the hut

Without fail, the trail between you and the hut, when you first see the hut, is always, ridiculously, seemingly insurmountable. I'm not lying about this, this isn't a figment of my imagination or some perception on my part, it is just the truth. I have hiked to many a hut and every single trail has the exact same ending leading up to the hut: you can see the hut but there is always some obstacle between you and it.
In this hut's case, it was a snowy mountainside with no apparent trail, that I had to traverse, sideways.
I laughed, but inside I cried, because I really didn't want to traverse that snowy mountainside because I was exhausted and cold and wishing I were just back down on the valley floor, not about to reach a hut where I wasn't staying for the night. But there was no way I was turning back at that point so I did my best to turn my boots sideways, and gingerly made my way across the snowy mountainside. I finally made it there and saw two other hikers, sitting on the deck of the hut, boiling water with their camp stove.
The hut itself was quite minimalist but I spied an outdoor sink with a faucet and a sign above it that said "For drinking." I was so relieved that there was water (I only had a bit left) and reached in to my bag to get my water bottle to fill it. As soon as I did this, one of the hikers got up, stopped me, and pointed to the door that lead in to the hut. I started to walk in but hesitated, usually you have to take off your boots and I didn't see a place to do that. I looked behind me at the hiker and said, "Boots off?" and pointed to my boots. He gestured that I should go ahead, that I should walk in to the hut. Then his wife got up, looked around the corner of the hut, and realized that the keeper of the hut was outside. She went to get him, told him I was there, and then he came through the back door of the hut and walked up to me. I held up my water bottle, he took it from me, filled it, and returned it to me. I said "Arigato," bowed to him, and sat down on one of the benches on the deck.
The man who had cautioned me against drinking the water put his hands on his upper arms and gestured up and down, to ask if I had a coat. I smiled, pointed to my bag, and said, "I have." Then his wife offered me her unopened styrofoam cup-o-noodles that she was about to cook. I bowed to her, pointed to my bag again, and said "I have," and took out my Clif Bar.
As the three of us sat there, I wondered if I should have taken her up on her offer of the noodles but then I watched as I noticed that it was their only cup of noodles and I felt better about not taking it. They ate their lunch and we all looked up at the sky which, at that point, was quite foreboding. The wind was picking up and it felt like rain. We all put on our coats and I noticed that they had crampons (spiky things that help you to get traction on the snow) and I began to wonder about my perception of the hikes in this area as simple "day trips," ones that I could do on my own without much in the way of supplies.
I noticed that they were packing up their things and I felt like I should travel with them back down the mountain. Even though I had already traversed the very trail that I was about to return on, something about the weather and their crampons made me feel like it would be a good idea to stay with them, to possibly follow behind them, to rely on their expertise to make it down the mountain. But then I thought about how they had offered me their only ramen, that they had been worried about me being warm enough, and I felt like if I did follow them, they'd feel responsible for me, and I didn't want to do that to them. Also, part of me wondered if I would travel more slowly than they would so that it might be better for me to go first, to have them behind me in case something happened. So, I packed up my things, waved goodbye to them, and made my way down the trail away from the hut.
As soon as I stepped off the deck, I noticed a hiker coming up the trail. As he walked, he placed poles in the snow. Then he went over to the scary trail I had just traversed and removed the poles from it.
"Oh," I thought. "I took the really hard and dangerous route. I think I'll just follow these new poles back down the mountain."
And I did. I followed them back to the regular trail and the hike down wasn't as bad as I thought. The hikers whom I had seen at the hut never ended up catching up with me and it turned out that those foreboding clouds never materialized into rain.
But I did learn a couple of things about hiking in Japan.
#1 The huts in Japan (at least the ones in this region) are not like the huts in Austria. They're kind of minimalist- not so hot cocoa and camaraderie and warm place of refuge- they seem to be more like stopping and refueling stations than lovely places to spend the night.
#2 The Japanese alps are the same as any alps and I'm beginning to think that alps means "above the tree line" or "really steep hike," not so much a lovely stroll up a sloping trail....

People leave

This is an older post, written while I was in Japan, in mid- June.

This morning, I was one of the last people to file out of the main hall after service (I’m staying at a temple in Japan where only one guy speaks English) so I wasn’t with the group as they walked to the next building for the fire ceremony. It was my first time walking from the main building to the building where they had the fire ceremony so I had no idea how to get there. I worried about this as I tried to catch up with the group.

“It’s okay,” I reassured myself. “No one is leaving you. You’re not going to be left behind.”And I noticed this- this fear in me of being left and I connected it with my mother’s death and how maybe I felt like she had left me, behind.
“Your mother didn’t leave you,” I said.
And then I answered myself, “Yes… she did.”
And it’s true. My mother left. At least, I think that's what happened. My aunt explained to me once that she was with my mom, when she spoke her last words. They were sitting on the couch, in the living room, talking, and then my mom stopped talking. Apparently, the cancer had reached the point at which she could no longer speak and at that point, they decided to take her to the hospital. I’ve been told that we each were sent in to say goodbye to her and then, presumably, she got in the car and they drove her to the hospital. It was there that she died. (I believe about two weeks later, in her sleep). 
Cognitively, logically, even factually, my mother did not leave me, she did not choose to walk away from me and leave me behind but physically, and in the cognitive ability of a six year old, she left, and never came back. It’s likely that I experienced this as being left regardless of what actually happened, and so it contributes to my fear and desire to be included, to make sure that I am safe, to do all kinds of things to secure my personal relationships with others.
This was going through my mind as I hurriedly put on my shoes in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the group and follow them to the next building. I was relieved to see a monk, standing outside the building, directing me to the next destination:
He gestured down the road, “Go… and turn left,” he said and I bowed to him in gratitude.
“See,” I said to myself. “It’s okay. People are looking out for you.”
I walked to the end of the driveway and turned left. There was no one on the road in front of me. I kept walking anyway, assuming that everyone had already walked in to the building. I came to a building that looked like a store front. There was a man there, sweeping.
“Fire ceremony?” I asked. He looked at me blankly. I gestured flames rising in the air. He continued to look at me blankly. Finally, I said “Eko In?” (the name of the temple) and he directed me back to the building I had come from. “Well,” I thought to myself, “That monk must have confused left with right in his translation,” and walked the other way down the street.
But then, there was no one on the road in front of me in either direction. I started to cry: I had no way of articulating that I wanted to go to the other building where the fire ceremony was, had no idea where else to go, and could only picture everyone at the ceremony, without me.
I tried to calm myself down by reassuring myself, “Look, the ceremony and the building aren’t going anywhere, you’ll get there eventually and even if you don’t, it’s just a ceremony and you can go tomorrow morning if you can’t find it today.”
And then, I saw two people walking out of the main building on to the street.
“Ahhhh,” I thought. “It’s okay, you can follow them, you’re going to get there even if you’re late.”
And so I did, I followed them, and I got there, and sat in the back.
As the ceremony was performed, I reflected back on what happened.
“Did you see that? Did you see that no one left you? Did you see that there were other people who were late and you weren’t alone? Did you see that you got here anyway, you just had to wait?”
And I did, I did see that but I also felt the truth.
People leave.
My mom left. Everyone, at one point, is going to leave me. And at one point, I will leave too.  When I die, I will leave others. It just is. I am alone in this world, I am constantly being left and then being met- our relationships are impermanent and people come and go constantly. And I mean that in the most frequent sense of the word- people come in and out of my life on a daily, hourly, minutely basis, it’s just a truth. It’s not a truth that I enjoy, it upsets me greatly, but it’s a truth all the same. Arriving at the ceremony didn’t change this, having that monk give me directions didn’t change this, getting lost and finding my way doesn’t change this. Everyone leaves, including me.

Meditation in Japanese

Again, this is an older post, from mid June, that I didn't get around to posting until now.

This week, I visited Koyasan- this incredibly beautiful tableland in the center of Japan. It’s amazing. Just getting there is crazy. You’re on this railroad that travels, literally, on the tree tops. I’m not exaggerating. We really were at the level of the tree tops. It was weird. I was wondering how they built it. We were up so high and we were on a train, like, someone built these tracks, way up here. And there was a train, an electric train, with people on it, traveling, through the tree tops. I suppose it must have just been built really tall a long time ago and the trees have grown up around it but that doesn’t matter. The end result is that you are traveling through the tops of trees on a train. And that’s just getting there.
Once you get there, it’s like temple town. Apparently, some monk asked for a place to set up and develop the practice of Shingon Buddhism and I think some emperor said “Here, take this land, that should work for you.” And I think it did because the kind of practice they do is actually out in the forest and I think it’s related to nature because the third level of their meditation is picturing the moon and themselves as no longer separate from each other. Either way, the town is filled with temples and they’re all beautiful and they’re all out in nature.
I was fortunate enough to stay at Eko In, this really cool temple run by young monks. Also, I got the best room in the house (the monk even told me so). My room was in the trees, facing the meditation hall. All I could see was trees and I got to sleep with my window open and no one could look in to my room and I had it all to myself and oh- it was absolute heaven. Oh! And don’t even get me started on the food, that was served in our room, and so good!









Anyway, if you ever go to Japan, go to Koyasan, ask to stay at Eko In, and ask for room 5 (ask two weeks in advance to make sure you can stay there).

Now, the reason I actually chose to stay at Eko In in particular was because the Lonely Planet guide had said that they were one of two temples that offered meditation instruction. I thought it would be cool to meditate with the monks there and I assumed it would be meditation like we do at the zen center: first thing in the morning, silent, bow to your cushion, listen for a bell, etc.
It wasn’t. It was at 4:30 in the afternoon. The day that I was there, they actually had a guy who spoke English so we got meditation instruction, and this is how it went (at least, this is how I remember it)

In our practice, Ajikan meditation, we focus on the Sanskrit letter “A” (and he pointed to the Sanskrit letter that was on a sort of small scroll-like thing in the center of the room, and he said Ah). The letter “A” is the first sound that humans utter (mama, papa) and without it, there would be no speech.
He talked a little more about the significance of the letter “A”, about the meaning of the other symbols on the scroll, and three levels of Ajikan and how they help you to reach enlightenment. Then he explained that we would only be doing the first level today. He asked us to sit seiza and to bow to the Buddha image.  
Then he gave the simplest instruction in meditation I have ever seen (now that I think about it, it was kind of like the fukanzazengi):

First, sit down, without your cushion (and he sat, with his legs spread wide).

Next, you bend your left leg, like this (and he took his left leg and bent it so that his foot was touching his inner right thigh).

Then you take your right leg and you place it on your left thigh, like this (and he bent his right leg and lifted up his foot and put it on his thigh).

Now, I have to stop here for a moment.
I’ve never wanted to sit lotus anything- no desire, no need, nothing. Both my teacher at the zen center and my yoga teacher have attempted to help me sit half lotus and, when faced with what my legs do when I attempt it, have backed off of that notion. But when this guy said what he said, I just did it. I actually put my leg in half lotus position. It hurt my ankle a little bit and my right knee was about two inches off the ground but I did it. It was so simple, who wouldn’t?

Next he said that your knees and buttocks must be grounded to the floor and so you use the cushion to help you (and we all grabbed our cushions and put them underneath us and that helped).
Then he showed us how to do the cosmic mudra.
Then he said that our back should not be stiff, like this- and he sat up all rigid and tall. Instead he explained that we must tilt our pelvis out, forward, that it must be stiff but that our belly, should hang down, relax. He reminded us again that our pelvis should be stiff and straight but then we should relax our shoulders and chest. Then he told us to place our head on our spine.
He told us our eyes should not be open or closed. If they are open, they are distracted by the world around us. If they are closed, they are distracted by the things inside us. So, we keep them halfway between the two (and he demonstrated lids half closed).

Then he told us how to breathe:
The first three breaths, you breathe in through your nose as slow and long as you can, then out through your mouth as slow and long as you can. Do this for the first three breaths. After that, you should breathe regular, but you should count: in…out 1, in…out 2, and keep going until you get to 10. When you get to 10, go back to 1. You should not go past ten. We like to count and think we are good or bad but that is not good for meditation so we stop at ten, and go back to 1.

Then he explained about thoughts:
If you think thoughts, you should not say “I am bad for thinking thoughts” or “Don’t think thoughts.” Instead, think of that thought as a leaf on a tree and try to see the whole tree. If we only see the leaf, we get stuck but if we picture a whole forest, we can let go.

Then he got up and said, “I’ll be back later,” and left.
It was hard not to laugh at that comment. I wanted to say “You’ve got some zen in you after all… later indeed, guess we’ll just stop when we stop…”
But I didn’t, I actually started counting. I’ve never counted before, it never worked for me, but that day, I tried it, and it worked- it kept me focused on my breath. Of course, I totally kept count of how many sets of ten I did, 3, and I did lose track a couple of times but mostly, I just counted my breath, in and out, and sat there- half lotus- who knew this was all it would take?

After about 30 minutes a bell sounded, somewhere in temple town, and then some very cheezy music that sounded like the music they play when they show a tranquil jungle in cartoons started playing but the guy didn’t show up. I wondered if these sounds were just random or if they were an intended distraction or if the guy was running late- but then I went back to counting.
Then I heard footsteps and he apparently walked back in the room. He then had us sway our bodies from side to side about 5 times, then from front to back. Then he had us do this cool thing with our hands. He told us to lift our hands up toward our face, palms facing our face. Then he had us trace them down the front of our body, but not touching, then over our legs and finally to the floor- pushing away anything that had come up. We did this two more times. It was kind of a nice way to end our meditation, like we were cleansing ourselves.
Then he explained that enlightenment can take a long time but that meditation can help you to control your emotions, maybe not get so angry or upset. He said that you can do it three minutes, five minutes, ten minutes- however long you want- just take a breath and it may help.
Then we sat seiza again, bowed to the Buddha again, and class was over. 

Wanting a child

This post was written while I was in Japan- about halfway through my trip - I just didn't get around to publishing it until now.

You see kids a lot in Japan- and for some reason, they all look really happy. You also see moms, with their kids in Japan- a ton of them wearing those ergo baby backpacks. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t speak the language here so all I see is physical affection between moms and kids or all I see is pleasant interaction because I don’t understand a word they’re saying to each other. But I am seeing a lot of moms with kids and what I see is love, affection, happiness, joy. It’s like these little running-around-bundles-of-life followed by these nurturing, supporting, grownups. And those little bundles of life seem to actually make the moms smile and laugh; like the moms seem kind of resigned, but in a good way, to just supporting those kids to be little bundles of life: exploring water and birds and steps and the physical realities of life with a sense of wonder, discovery, and pure joy.

Last night, I was thinking about how I knew that I would never want to raise a child as a single parent, that I knew how difficult it was to raise a child on your own. But that difficulty, that sense of being overwhelmed or trapped by caring for children, wasn’t matching what I was seeing in Japan. I started to realize that my association with parenting was based on stories I had about parenting, about what children are to their parents.

My mom died when I was young, and my father never remarried. At the time, people were often surprised by this: single parents were uncommon in the seventies, especially a single father. My brother and I often laugh about the fact that everyone seemed surprised that my dad hadn’t shipped us off to boarding school. And, to be honest, the only stories we read when we were growing up that actually matched our experience- a mother dying, a father “left” with the children- were those Grimm fairy tales. And in those tales, the story was that the children were a burden to the father, that he had no choice but to marry an evil stepmother, and that the kids were a constant source of strife between the two, with the stepmother trying to either kill or lose the children in the forest somewhere. My father never said we were a burden to him but society, fairy tales, and the looks on the faces of others when I told them that my father was raising me on his own lead me to believe that I was darn lucky not to be sent away and that I’d better earn my keep if I wanted to stay around.

I hadn't noticed this before, how much this story affected my perception of raising a child. But what I also noticed was that that association, was changing. As I saw all these moms running around, loving their children, I started to see that parents can love their children, that they can enjoy raising them, that it can be a pleasure to support another person to just be, just grow, just discover this world and who they are in it.

I also noticed how the kids seemed to make their parents laugh and smile. I saw that kids can be a source of happiness for their parents, that their wonder and silliness and cluelessness about the world can sometimes bring this same sense of joy and wonder to their parents. The moms just seemed to like running around behind their kids, waiting while they touched water or chased ducks- like it was okay for kids to be just doing what they are doing and that the moms were okay supporting them- that the kids weren't keeping the moms from getting things done.

Who knows, maybe all these moms were totally thinking about their shopping lists or the friends they were meeting or the troubles they were having with their husbands- I didn't see any of that. All I saw was love and joy.
And that made me want to be a mom again. It made me see that parents can enjoy parenting, that I can have a child and it won't be a burden to me, it can bring me joy and life and I'm sure it can bring me suffering too but that it isn't only about this thing- being put on you- because someone died.
I think that really is what I felt like. I think I really did think I was a burden to my dad. He never said this and I know that if I asked him he would say that I was never a burden to him, that raising me was what he did, he was my father and for all the stuff that came with it, he did it, we did it together.
He might even say that I brought him joy- though that would be atypical of him, not because I didn't bring him joy but because he doesn't say things like that- I don't know that he's ever uttered the phrase "brings me joy." But he actually has said that he takes credit for raising me (since I was the youngest so he still played a big role in raising me after my mom died) and that it is a good credit- that he thinks that I am the combination of the best of him and my mom.
So maybe my six year old self made him laugh a few times or that when my needs came up and interrupted the things he needed to do as a single parent of three children, maybe it was okay, maybe he was okay with it.