Woke up this morning at 5:30 and went down to zen center for a half day meditation retreat. Just finished about 45 minutes ago. I don't have much to say about it, other than it's good to take a break from the wild, moving, everyday world and watch yourself more closely. It's really no break, just a different expression.
Got to sit with that mud I wrote about yesterday, watch the waves of fear, tightness, and mind chatter rise and fall. Lots of fleeting hang ups, but also a bubbling brook of desire to stay devoted to embodying the bodhisattva vows in my own, unique, lay practitioner life. Everything I wondered about yesterday is still valid, just less frantic and tensed up.
Waking, I bicycled to bird calls.
Stepping back into the world six hours later,
to a greeting of tar
and road construction.
Every breath
seamlessly
moving through it all.
May your lives go well.
How wonderful. And coincidentally, yesterday our local group did the same thing, gathering at a ranch near the mountains early in the morning for a one-day retreat.
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