Running Scared

This sitting thing is hard.

I've tried regularly sitting zazen off & on (mostly off, I'm afraid) for years. The longest stretch I'd managed was this past summer, and then Barbara miscarried, and I stopped just about everything, including sitting.

But I'm back at it, and determined not to stop, no matter what, this time. I did miss the past couple of days, and so I expected today to be difficult -- which it was. It's not called "practice" for nothing -- if you miss, you know it.

Anyway, although I do try not to fall into thought loops or narratives, it's hard. Impossible, most of the time. But for the first time, today, I realized that my mind was moving so wildly because it was scared. I've read this before, but feeling the reality of it is very different. The more still my mind, the more anxious I became, and then the sun came out.

It touched the wall I was facing, gilding the sky blue paint with aureate light. For a moment, I stopped moving, and the sunlight moved across the wall, and was gone.

Immediately, my mind started running again. And it was then that I realized that it wasn't the stillness that was causing the anxiety, it was that the running mind was carrying the anxiety, not running away from it. When I felt I was becoming still, but becoming more anxious, I wasn't really becoming still -- I was just focusing on the nervous energy. When I could contrast that with a surprising moment of real stillness, the contrast was so clear.

Then I felt this sorrow, sorrow that I carried this, that I was hurting myself.

I also realized that part of that anxiety -- a lot of it, actually -- was the result of putting things off. By making those choices, I was causing myself pain, unnecessary pain. It seems so stupid, trying to put things off to avoid unpleasantness actually causes more unpleasantness. Of course, I know this, intellectually, in a sort of, "Yeah, right, of course," way. But I felt it viscerally.

From the sorrow came a desire to be gentle, loving.

I'm writing this down so that I can remember it, so that it isn't washed away in the torrent of thinking.