6 October 2009 - Introduction

I am writing this blog in order to keep a record of anything I commit to as a daily practice.

I have decided to live my life centered around such unending, daily practices. I find that this is the only way for me to do anything consistently and wholeheartedly. To give myself shelter from an activity creates a space in which I can insert my momentary whims and attachments, indifference, disgust and a whole host of other things between myself and the task at hand. Endless practice does not eliminate feelings; instead it simply reflects a conscious and final decision not to accept them passively. It is the decision to follow and watch all decisions, efforts, feelings, thoughts, inclinations, fantasies, passions and everything else; and like a parent, not to allow them to be at odds with one another, not to quarrel and feud and exclude one another. It is to keep one's self whole at all costs.

I am entirely inspired here by the Soto school of Zen Buddhism. I think the tipping point was when I read Dainin Katagiri Roshi's collection of essays, You Have to Say Something. In the appendix where he describes how to practice zazen, sitting meditation, he begins by saying: "First of all, you have to practice zazen everyday." This was a powerful sentence to me, and I guess it soaked me pretty thoroughly.

He's not suggesting that zazen is good for you, and therefore it would be good to do a little bit everyday, the way that a doctor might tell you to exercize everyday to get the best benefits for your health, or the way you're told to practice the piano everyday, or Spanish, in order to become proficient. Katagiri Roshi is saying that in order to practice zazen at all, you have to practice it everyday for the rest of your life. No joking. It is a commitment of now and forever.

I was kind of caught, actually. I was maybe a week deep in my 32 day wade into Zen at Chokaisan Kokusai Zendo, up on a hill in Akita, Japan, and I had decided I would give it as good a shot as I could. And now Katagiri was saying, to take on zazen means to take it on forever. I could not help but notice there was no way out of it. If I was to take Zen seriously at all, it would be for the long haul. Otherwise I was not giving it a fair shot.

What's so strange about this is how easily I took up that idea. I always look for the way out, the safezone; I relish coffee breaks, lunch breaks, tea breaks; I extend vacations; avoid seeking employment, even. I'm terribly attached to free time. But this makes perfect sense, and I have no serious resistance to offer it at all. I sincerely feel like I can see this through.

And so my practice has been unbroken since then. I will not break it. One minute is even enough. Being sensible about it, and practical, means making a little bit of a big deal out of it: finding a good spot, a good cushion, a good time of day, making sure I'm not drunk and not too full, and sticking to a set amount of time. It's simply good sense to try to establish a workable routine to give the practice momentum and a support structure. But the thing about zazen is that you can do it for one minute, and it's still zazen. No matter how busy you are, you can find one minute a day to sit down and not do anything. That's practice, still. Even if I'm drunk and nearly vomiting from junk food. It's still attention and care and concern, the roots of consistency. Zazen is always the same, and by sticking with zazen, I can see what sticks around in myself.

I hope I'm not turning people off by appearing as a zealous convert to a new religion. I sort of am, but I don't identify as a Buddhist, at least not yet. I hope it is clear, or at least that it will be clear, that this new practice serves as a sincere response to a lot of questions I have about life, and especially how to live life. Of course I have not put those questions down yet. But they will come, I guarantee.

And also, what is zazen, and what do I think about it? I'll leave that for later discussion. My plan here is that the details will unravel themselves as I talk about the details of my practices. I want to make a point of writing one paragraph containing my thoughts and observation about my practices twice a week, as long as I am wired and able.

My first practice is, of course, zazen. What's the other?

Writing. This one I find goes less to the core than zazen, for me. That could change. My inspiration here, too, came from a book: Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg. There's a lot of technique and advice crammed into that little volume, but basically what I gleaned from it was that writing could be used as a practice on top of zazen, as a way of opening up, of commiting to something outside one's self, and a way to develop expression. It all seems appropriate to me.

But as much as writing seems valuable for so many reasons, part of the nature of an endless practice is that you don't care about how useful something is. It's valuable in itself. To the endless practitioner, the task is its own meaning, its own pleasure, its own value. Writing works for me, because I have a background in it and an interest in it. Words and books are a huge part of my world. Writing practice puts me in an aware relationship with the ABC part of my existence.

But I don't want to get too swept up in rationalizations. I find myself in the middle of writing practice; I do it as best I can. This is how I eventually would like to approach everything in my life: it's not about what I do or why I do it, it's about how I do it.

Setting aside two special practices every day is of course still buying into the idea of a compartmentalized life, where I am more focused, more present in some moments rather than others. But this is the skeleton of a conscious life. As I go along, I hope to find a better vision of wholeness for myself. For the moment, my vision remains on what seems separate and what seems divided.


Note on the Name:

I named the blog Plum Beads after the Jizu or Buddhist rosary I was given at Chokaisan Kokusai Zendo. The centerpiece is a little plastic "viewfinder." If you point the bead to a lightsource, you can look through a tiny magnifying lense at a photo of the Manjushri Boddhisattva statue in the center of the Zendo's Sodo, or monk's hall, where I both meditated and slept during my time there. Surrounding the centerpiece are beads made from plumwood. I don't use the jizu for prayer or anything. I simply wear it because I like it, and as a reminder of my commitment.

I took the phrase "of Now and Forever" from the Star Control series of computer games. I'm not going to go into details here, particularly because if I were to explain the reference, it would seem not to make much sense in this context. Which it doesn't. I just liked the phrasing and thought it fit nicely here. Go ahead and look it up if you're interested, but I have to assert: I have no intention of enslaving this or any other galaxy.