Zen-d'oh!

I've been a good zazen pupil. I've headed out to the little Zen community center twice a week and have tried to do sitting practice (harder than it sounds, dear reader) at home. Just when I thought I had brought my performance down from Keystone Cops to something along the lines of Groucho Marx, they go and mix up the routine.

Last Tuesday, I went to zazen and I was doing all sorts of stuff that was outta sync with the rest of the zen-crew. I bumped into people during walking meditation, I ended up facing the wrong way a couple of times, it was a mess. The thing that makes it difficult is that when we go into the zazen sitting room, everyone practices complete silence, so other than an occasional, somewhat vague finger pointing, ya kinda have to figure things out by watching people. It makes aiming for tranquility a little more challenging, I tell ya. On Tuesday, the woman I was sitting beside who had been trying her best to point me in the right directions all evening finally gave up at the end of the second round of meditations. She had been trying to reposition me to another spot on the floor and I was not quite getting what she wanted. Finally, she broke the silence and whispered, "Sit here and face Carol!" The way she had me positioned was to face an empty spot by the wall where no one was sitting. No one was there and we all sat in zazen for a good 5 minutes. At about the 10 minute mark, I was thinking for sure that this might be the part where it's revealed that we were all waiting for some divine visitation. At last, a small yoda-esque woman climbed up the stairs and took a seat at the empty spot on the floor. So, it appears that Carol likes to make an entrance.

The dharma talk ended up saving the evening as it was the first real Zen chat that we had since I've been going. Not to detract from the other leader, she's great, but this talk was much more in line with what I was expecting. Now if only I can figure out the rhythm of the place, I'm sure I'll be walking on the tops of bamboo stalks in no time.

For Your Consideration

For your consideration...

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"That's the beauty of West Hollywood The Castro The Village Camden, you're allowed to be different, you know, an individual."

A reminder

Gay Pride in Iran....

Two years ago, the Islamic Republic of Iran hanged two youths after tarring them as homosexuals. After international outcry, Iranian officials said that the sentence derived from a rape charge. Given the continued program of lynching men construed to be gay in the subsequent couple of years, trumped up charges only demeaned their deaths further.

What's worse, Iran is not alone in this. One need only look at Jamaica where men targeted as being gay are murdered with a burning tire tied around their head. Wide swaths of Africa force gays to live in constant fear with governments and newspapers maintaining homophobia to the level of mass hysteria. It's not a good thing and it's gonna take a long time and a lot of work to sort it out.

I guess one way to start is to think about what we do during this pride season and how we can make a difference not just at home but for people labeled as "us" in places where "we" are not allowed to exist.

Lights, Camera, Goofiness

So, one of the projects at work is to start creating teaching tip videos. Turns out it is much harder than it would seem. I had figured that it would involve more than jsut standing in front of the lights and the teleprompter. It was a bit of a learning curve to catch on to the finer touches of standing in front of the camera.
Too much moving and ya look like a goofball.
Too little movement and you look like a zombie goofball.
I learned that the closer ya resemble a used car salesman, the better.

The hands, the facial tics (wow, lots of those), trying to an-nun-ci-ate clearly, trying to not look like I'm reading... No matter what, I look like like I am outta my element.

I showed Brett some test video and we could not stop laughing. He has a new-favorite activity: stop the video clip at any point, take a still image and naming it. He's hilllllllarious. Although, to be fair, it's comedic gold.

Ah well, the things we do for our craft.

I had a lot of fun, though. I got to dress up, stand in front of a bunch o'cameras and play Guy Smiley. The video's director (yes, we have an in-house director and an in-house producer) was super patient and a great coach. Hopefully the editing does wonders.

I Zen'd My Ass Off

It's been something that I've been wanting to do for a long time, dear reader. Join a zendo and begin a course of meditation training. I had tried to do it in Texas, but the final days of my sojourn there were rather chaotic. I found a local zendo that I am somewhat confident is reasonably sane. This past Sunday, I signed up for an intro class. It's just down the road from me, a quaint renovated house filled with twisting hallways and a spacious upper floor patio. The interior decor is SoCal-inspired Japanese drag. It is bright, clean, covered in white paint with bamboo veneers and contains an un-Zenly amount of Chinatown trinkets. The afternoon event covered zazen basics, nothing new to me theoretically. Practically, it wasn't too strenuous as we only sat for about 10 minutes.

There were five other folk there, all women and, weirdly enough, three of them were named Deborah/Debbie/Deb. Yes, dear reader, I thought the same thing! I had not entered some innocent Zen training class but instead had stumbled into some strange cult where initiates change their names to Debbie, sign over all their worldly possessions to the "zendo" and marry some unwashed long-haired hippy dude named Gary. I'll keep my eyes on this Debbie thing. In the end, the energy of the group was pretty good, and we were pretty much all new to Orange County, coming from Iowa, San Francisco, Boston and Washington, D.C. Post Buddha boot-camp, we parted after a snack of organic lemonade and seedless California grapes (holy mixed message!) I left excited about my new course, harboring only a slight disappointment that we weren't supplied with some zen swag for our $$ -- perhaps a bodhisattva bottle opener or maybe a t-shirt boasting something like, "Real men heart Buddha"...

This Tuesday night, I went to my first full zazen session. This involves two 30 minuted sitting sessions and one ten minute walking meditation. There was only one other newbie from Sunday there, the woman who wasn't a Deborah. There wasn't much of an orientation; I entered the zendo and someone pointed out a spot for me. I had inaccurately gauged the appropriate size of my zazen ass-cushion and I chose poorly. My selection was far too small for me and my posterior began to slowly and painfully squeeze the blood from my legs. Another distraction was the fact I had been given a spot in front of the dishwasher; I kept trying to imagine a Japanese zendo with an automatic dishwasher and it sorta took the romance out of the whole thing. It was also a bit rough trying to be mindful of one's breath while my ankles slipped into a coma. Always eager to strive for academic poise, I alternated between being mindful of breath and mindful of the developing deep vein thrombosis in my left anterior tibia. One blessing of losing blood in the lower extremities is that eventually starved of oxygen, distracting nerves stop tingling. Of course, being the prim Zen newbie that I am, I certainly did not want to stir and reposition myself and then disturb the 15 or so other practitioners. After the first half hour, the zen teacher struck a gong, everyone stood up and bowed. This is where it got interesting...

I was able to pull myself up and lean against the dishwasher with one leg. The left leg was really groggy and I could not move my foot at all. I experimented with swiveling my hip around until I could pivot my left foot flat on the ground. I couldn't put any weight on the leg, lest I tip over. Cursing to myself, I tried to figure out what people were doing next. Everyone in the room was facing my direction. Great, I didn't feel awkward at all. I tried to turn in the general direction of the group but started to tilt over on the side of my dead leg, augh! I caught myself without falling into the man next to me but did tip a chair backwards, almost dropping it onto another meditating fella. Then the group took a step forward. Dammit, the walking meditation was beginning and I had no motor conrol of my feet. A knot in my stomache forms and I have visions of being the first newbie to injure himself by falling and impaling myself on the nearby pointy buddha-statue. Thanks be to Quan-Yin, "walking meditation" involved taking one step every 15-20 seconds at first. By the time I had to cross the room, I was able to stand without leaning against wall or cabinet. Needless to say, I was not particularly in Zen-mind for the second sitting session. Still, I managed to sit for the next 30 minute session and then gingerly step over to the reading group. Next time I head back to the zendo, I'll be sure to grab an ass-pillow that is more dimensionally appropriate.