Day 4

Wednesday. "This too is wonder"

We did probably 5 hours of seated meditation throughout the course of the day, in thirty to sixty minute segments broken up by yoga and walking meditations. I don't know if i was more amazed at my physical or my mental/emotional stamina! Not to say that it was perfect but my legs didn't once fall asleep, I wasn't agonizing over whether to reposition my body or not (just do it...unless you're zen!), and I didn't have to run away for the "sanity" of life outside my own head. 

This experience verified a pattern i thought I had seen in my own practice too, and I'm curious to find out how common it is. Lovingkindness and Tonglen practices come so much easier to me than the seemingly simple awareness and concentrative practices. There is so much immediate satisfaction, a sense of interconnectedness, and prosocial impulses, that it honestly makes me question how necessary the other practices are...although I feel kind of ignorant saying that. 

We had a dharma talk at the end of the day which Roshi Joan opened with the announcement that her fellow Zen teacher, Joko Beck had died that morning and that her final words were "this too is wonder". A beautiful gift to leave for us. It really made me question the wider implications why and how I teach secular mindfulness to students. Lots of people here are highly educated Buddhist scholars and practitioners and the question of teaching practices out of the context of ethics, without the goal of enlightenment, and without the support of an experienced sangha keep coming up.

The final piece of wisdom from the day that I'd like to share is something that Barry Kerzin, an MD, monk, and leader of most of our practices on Wednesday, said about the relationship between knowledge and wisdom. He was explaining why HH the Dalai Lama is such a big believer in scholarship as a path to wisdom and he said that we can think of Knowledge like two sticks rubbing together and eventually they produce the spark of wisdom, at which point the sticks (conceptual understanding) burn away because they are no longer necessary.

It felt good to talk again at the end of the day and to call some of my beloveds finally to talk with their answering machines today. The voice and verbal expression are  really something to be grateful for.