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.