"It's a snake's nature to move in a crooked fashion. But if you put it in a bamboo tube, it becomes straight. The control of the mind through samadhi is also like this."
Nagarjuna
Last Spring three of my friends went off to do a three-month training period at Yokoji-Zen Mountain Center. This happened to coincide with Tricycle Magazine’s The Big Sit 90 day Internet Ango. I wound up going to Mountain Center at least once a month to sit for long weekends and trained in my own householder way for 90 days. This fall, I decided to take the concept of a prolonged training period, create some group commitment areas and individual commitment areas, get a small group of non-Buddhists together to work with me, and call it 90 Days of Great Determination. So far, I’m sucking at this big time.
One of my commitments last winter and spring was to blog on a regular basis. I think I did alright. Summer rolled around and I slacked off a bit, but I was going to start at it again as part of my 90 training period commitments. So here I am two weeks into this and all I feel like is a failure every day. I intended to meet with my three participants at least once every two weeks. We can't seem to meet. I intended to keep a daily journal. It’s been weekly at the most. I am keeping up with SOME of my commitments but my small community component has so far crashed and burned. Still, I’m seeing how I should have begun it differently and when I do next January, I’ll make changes.
That’s not very specific, I know. For now, that’s all I can type.
One of the cool things about 90 days though is how long it is. Yes, I have been dragging my ass on several commitments from day one, but every day I look at my training schedule and see them shouting at me to get started. Hence this post.
And what has been coming up for me also is reflecting on how I would be handling this in a more traditional Zen training schedule. I used to think that just going to the zendo and following the schedule day in and day out was enough. Now, I see that I was always a failure. There was never a day when was present for the whole time. There was never a ceremony where I didn’t make some sort of a mistake or drift off in the middle of chanting.
I once said to Tenshin Roshi that I was enjoying just digging in and surrendering to the schedule. He smiled and said that we are always surrendering to the mountain’s schedule first and our Zen schedule second. I got this a little bit when I woke up last April one morning to a blanket of powder. Sandals in the snow made for a cold day. But how was I to know, it had been 90F in Phoenix when I left and 70F on the Mountain the day before. By the next day, the snow had melted and my feet were warm again.
And after an endless summer of 110F days I would happily walk barefoot in snow right now.
I suppose last spring was a honeymoon period or beginner’s luck. Looking back that 90 days seemed so effortless. But I can only be at where I am. I surrender to the mountain that is my life first and then dig in, surrender to the schedule, and keep moving forward through the tube. Hopefully, the pressure of this first post will press me on to the next.
