Reef feeding

I find I have little energy for blogging - I have just spent the better part of an hour composing an e-mail to Penelope, and I feel no more urge to write. I will take this as simply an ebb in compositional energy.

But here I am, and so I'll try to make a few remarks.

One is that my daily zen practice has dramatically deepened since the sesshin. The intense practice was just what I needed to shed some serious complacency about my practice. Henry has challenged me, along with the koan practice, to see what it takes to be perfectly physically still. It's an impossibility, but he advised me that the effort is quite illuminating as to how the mind functions. Basically, his theory is that a huge portion of our sense of self is founded upon unconscious physical movement. This is most noticeable in states of anxiety, with fidgeting, twitching, anxious foot tapping and other gestures. I am guilty of a lot of that. But he says even during zazen, you might move your toe a little bit, or try to fix your posture ever so slightly, and this, too, is an affirmation of the self, no matter how you justify the movement otherwise.

In my experience, I have noticed that my eyes dart back and forth a lot. The motion of my eyes is closely linked with the succession of thoughts in my mind. I don't exactly know what this means. But it's an interesting "in" for me: if I can master this phenomenon of the eyes, it will help me master my thoughts.

When I do manage to slow my eyes, my face begins to twitch. If I still my face, my shoulders quiver. If I still my shoulders, my hips begin shaking. It's not too, too violent, but it is a strange little dance that begins on the zafu. I wonder if others have experienced this before? I don't feel it as a "need" to move or wiggle as much as as an involuntary spasm - but it's not that either. It's both conscious and unconscious. I think this means there is more to it, and I simply need to come back to it and investigate.

Strange. More on it later.

Good night.