Zazen

Zazen is not the bird in Aladdin. Crudely and ignorantly put, it's a Buddhist practice where you sit (and sometimes stare at a blank wall) so you can face all of the crap in your mind. Do it for years and years, and you may start tearing down the filters, misconceptions and outright lies you see the world through today. "There is no spoon."

I have bad dreams. Sometimes scary, sometimes uncomfortable. And they outnumber the good by a mile. It seems the moment I let my life become misaligned with what I think to be right, it slaps me upside the head in my dream that evening. I'm not talking about sins, or lying, or being mean (though that works too), but rather, not doing my best, not honoring my committments, or being afraid to follow my dreams. I must be very out-of-whack in many areas of my life because it's quite plaguing...

So I sit in my apartment hallway surrounded by mini piles of laundry (clean or dirty, who can tell?) and a huge box I can't bring myself to unpack (I think its contents are multiplying), staring at the only empty wall, questioning myself, questioning what I thought was right for me, asking why I feel the way I do, even simply acknowledging a feeling in the first place - denial is blinding. Maybe with some truth, peace will follow.

I know that sitting can result in a scary confrontation with your weaknesses, your evils - your demons - because no one is immune to these things. We all have failures resulting from our weaknesses, pain imposed by our evils and selfish desires, fears that prevent us from living our true life. We're human: it's part of the package. But the more you examine and acknowledge "the dark side" of yourself, the more you can keep it in check. Right Obi Wan?

Yuck. That's not my leading objective right now; it's just an important byproduct. I'm examining the resistance I throw at certain things. You might say life is a system of arteries, and I have a few blockages. It's time to Roto-Rooter those things out.

(If you want a couple of interesting books written for more of the non-Buddhist, like me, try "Hard Core Zen" by Brad Warner and "Everyday Zen" by Charlotte J. Beck.)