Practice, practice

Eating
At lunch I was trying to finish one bite before loading my fork with the next bite, when I realized I was trying.  As soon as I smiled at that (I am trying to stop trying so hard) I knew where it came from.  My first retreat.  It was led by a student I’ll call Andrew who was in love with the forms and rituals of the Japanese tradition.  He terrified us with rules.

I can hear him now, saying “Keep your eyes on your own plate.  Don’t look around to see how others are doing.”  I was failing there today, looking at this person and that, catching my mind making little judgements like All that jewelry on retreat, or Seems like she’s on some strange diet. She’s a fire person, Irish blue eyes.  Catching my mind always thinking.

As for the food, I was enjoying the seitan with pineapple and rice, emerald-green broccoli, fresh young salad, a piece of cake with lots of icing.  But I was eating my peculiar way, not the slow. careful way, finishing each bite before spearing the next one.  Enjoying the food.  Wondering how we can be expected to spear rice.  No chopsticks here, nor is Andrew, and neither is my father, who always found something wrong with me (“You’re dead,” I tell his ghost, “so go away.”) Just eating and not reading, an effort in itself.  I must say, the problem is not with Zen - it is with me.  I am human.

Working
In Japanese work practice is called samu.  I signed up to break garlic bulbs into cloves for planting.  They grow a lot of garlic at Grailville.  Found my way to a spot at the crowded picnic table next to a woman who was very fast end efficient.  Right away I was aware of my hands, which have become clumsy with invisible arthritris.  I am also really slow to figure things out since my kidney function dropped below 10%.  But to look at me, you wouldn’t know these things.

The woman picked out a tool for me, so I got defensive, mindfully. I hate it when people tell me what to do, doesn’t everyone?  Judging from my experience with housekeepers and painters, etc, yes, everyone thinks they know how to do some dumb thing like break up garlic.  Moreover, I love to figure out new things, which I did, and became more proficient.

She never did correct me, but I was relieved when she left.  This freed me up to really enjoy the beautiful garlic, and begin collecting garlic bits for a photograph, maybe to draw.  It’s me, I noticed mindfully, turning everything into art, always making something.  An insight, of sorts. 

Buddha Knitting

[Buddha Knitting, from FunkyQuail on Etsy]
I was sitting here in the light from the west window, knitting along and thinking about the ways knitting (and many other relaxing activities) are not equivalent to zazen, the specific Zen method of meditation . . . when I realized I had just knit several stitches on the new row when I should have purled. Ah, I thought. Attention. Karma. That's how Buddhism is; it sticks out a foot and trips you up now and then.

Hardly any teaching is more fundamental to Buddhism than the idea of karma, or cause and effect. While it is sometimes the job of psychotherapy to examine the weighty karma of our past, Zen teachers tend to wish you'd drop it; our job in spiritual work is different. Our job in our lives is to build good future karma, for ourselves and the world we are firmly knit into. Whether or not we think about it, we do build our futures with every action. Nowhere is this more obvious than in knitting. Drop one stitch, and down the line you're going to know it.

I am new at this, and have already had the experience of ruining everything by trying to go back and repair a mistake; my teacher can do it, but I don't understand the stitches deeply enough. I tore out the last project twice, and then decided to buy a more forgiving yarn, a smooth, multicolored blend, and not to tear anything out, but to forge bravely ahead. The intended recipient will not be critical, but astonished that I could knit at all.

But to carry even this modest intention forward requires attention, a quality emphasized in Zen. Mine lapsed only a few seconds (Too conceptual, my teacher used to say) but that was enough. It's like walking blithely along and slipping on a patch of ice. Pow. Your knee will never be the same.

Knitting might not be zazen, but it makes good work practice, which is called samu in the Zen tradition. We (are supposed to) do our work with the same wholeheartedness we (are supposed to) bring to meditation. So it's more of learning to focus, to be all the way with whatever you're dong.

Knitting will surely cultivate attentiveness in me, though I am told you eventually get to where you can knit and watch TV. I doubt that I will. Not Boston Legal.