The Sound of Rain

I’ve had plantar fasciitis for almost a year now, a painful inflammation of the sole of the foot, plus a heel spur that has me limping and screws up my ankle and knee joints. I can’t walk everywhere, like I used to, can’t get any kind of exercise that involves putting weight on my feet. It’s been hard. I’ve gained weight, and lost some ground with my fitness level.

I’m starting a new program this week to try and get back in shape. I want to do yoga, pilates, or some other kind of exercise every day. I’m also doing a raw food cleanse.

I’ve done some yoga or pilates in recent weeks, but going for more than a few days without keeping it up now means that I lose almost everything I’d gained, so it feels like I’m starting over. I guess this is part of what happens when you hit 40. It’s going to take some time to get back to where I was. I don’t know that I’ll be able to improve past that, but I’m going to try.

In pain and feeling crappy, I’ve started with some easy yoga routines. I’ve never been a super-athlete, but I’ve been better than this. It kills me to struggle with a simple forward bend, when I used to be able to stand on my head.

But I remind myself: the point of yoga is to deal with my body where it is in that moment. The point is not to get somewhere; the point is to be where I am. That’s where I start. That’s where I have to start. If I try to start where I  want to end up, I will hurt myself or get frustrated, and simply fail.

The trick is, while knowing that there’s a goal I’m working towards, to forget that and focus on what I’m doing right now. Ease into that forward bend, to the place I can reach today. Feel the sensation and breathe. Come back to the mat tomorrow.

This is true for everything I’ve ever wanted to accomplish.

Meanwhile, here’s a recipe for a delicious, vegan, mostly-raw salad dressing that I think tastes better than Caesar.

I’ve been thinking about why pictures of cats with funny captions is funnier than pictures of dogs with funny captions. Could be just my opinion as a cat-lover, but there’s a reason why icanhascheezburger.com was about cats before it included dogs. And why there’s a stuffonmycat.com and My Cat Hates You (home of Bad Cat, much funnier than Bad Dog or Bad Baby), and lots of others. Keep reading »

Adorable. And just waiting for a chance to break your concentration.

A sesshin is usually seven straight days of zazen. We start at 4 am and go till 10 or 11 pm, sitting zazen, doing kinhin, chanting. This is an amazing experience, by the way, one I highly recommend. During a 7-day sesshin, we have dokusan, or one-on-one meetings with Roshi, every day, and Roshi gives a teisho every other day.

Sometimes during teisho, Roshi will refer to something someone said to him during dokusan. He doesn’t identify the person, just mentions that someone said such-and-such, and it made him think of something he wanted to say to all of us. The first time I heard this, instantly my mind started to scheme: What can I say during dokusan that will make him mention it during teisho?

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Here’s one of my favorite Zen stories. No idea where I read/heard this.

There was a prince in India who heard about the Buddha and decided to become his student. Though he wasn’t used to difficulties of any kind, he gamely did his best to do what all the other followers did, putting himself on an equal footing with them.

This prince had been so spoiled, he had never had to do anything for himself – even walk. From lack of use, the soles of his feet grew fine, golden hairs. And even though he was in agony, he still did kinhin (walking meditation) every day.

One day the Buddha walked by and saw him limping back and forth. As the prince walked, he left bloody footprints on the ground from his delicate, unused feet.

“Hey,” Buddha said. “Knock it off. You don’t have to kill yourself over this. Trying too hard is just as bad as not trying hard enough.”

***

Here’s another version that I just found:

A monk named Sona in the Sitavana Monastery at Rajagriha was so zealous in walking that his feet left a bloody trail. The Buddha asked him if his lute could be played well if the strings were too tight or too loose. Just so, excessive zeal may make the mind weary and one’s thoughts irritable and uncertain. He suggested to Sona that gradual progress led to self-mastery and happiness rather than anxiety.

http://www.san.beck.org/EC9-Buddha.html

A mourning dove, taking a break.

Back when I first started going to the zendo, I had a funny experience.

I got to the zendo a bit early, as usual, settled onto a cushion and began zazen. I sat for maybe fifteen minutes before the opening bell rang, and we got up to do the first round of kinhin, or walking meditation. We walk in kind of a long, skinny oval, threading our way through the ground floor of a building that’s about as narrow as a New York building can be.

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Absurdbeats asked, why Zen over other forms of Buddhism?

This one’s easy. In the following, understand that I’m talking about Buddhism mainly as seen in the US.

There are two basic kinds of Buddhism: Mahayana and Theravada. Mahayana means “Greater Vehicle” and is meant for everybody, including monastic and regular people. Theravada used to be called Hinayana by the Mahayanists, only the Theravadists didn’t like that, because it means “Smaller Vehicle.” I don’t think they meant it as an insult; they only meant that Theravada Buddhism was a practice meant for monks, for people willing to shut themselves away in a monastery and not engage fully in human life, e.g.,  marriage, family, working, etc. And oh yeah, women couldn’t join.

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Most cats are Buddhists.

(Part 1 here.)

I went abroad for junior year, so no more meditating with the professor and his group. I tried to do it on my own, with miserable results. I’ve dealt with major depression all of my life (my mother’s death, mostly). Sitting down alone and focusing on my breath while suffering from untreated depression was A Big Mistake. ‘Nuff said.

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I’ve always been a fan of apocalyptic literature, and I’ve heard Nevil Shute’s On the Beach mentioned often as a must-read in the genre.

The basic plot is that the countries of the northern hemisphere have engaged in all-out nuclear war, a war lasting about a month. Between the nuclear blasts and subsequent radiation sickness, everyone in Russia, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America are dead. The story takes place in Australia, where the eerily calm survivors – there were no bombs for them – are waiting as the radiation creeps southward. Our heroes are an American submarine commander, stranded by the war in southern waters, his Australian liaison, the liaison’s wife, and a female friend of theirs who befriends the submarine commander. We wait and watch with them until the end. (Spoilers ahead.)

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Daibutsu, Great Buddha in Kamakura, Japan

Calling myself a Buddhist makes me uncomfortable. In a way, that’s why I became one.

Let’s see if I can be a little less obtuse.

My search for ultimate meaning started early. My mother was diagnosed with leukemia, and died just before my fifth birthday. The adults around me did their best to explain and to console me, but not much of what they said about death – and where exactly my mother had gone – made any sense to me. God? Heaven? Angels? You die, and somehow you end up in this really nice place where everyone you ever loved eventually shows up too, and then you spend eternity there. But, you have to earn it.

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I have to admit, I can’t get enough of pictures of cats with funny captions on them. These are also known, of course, as LOLcats.

I’m not ashamed of this, though I am a little embarrassed to add that I have devoted hours of my all-too-brief and precious lifetime, to making my way steadily through the archives at http://icanhascheezburger.com/.

Time spent laughing is time well spent. And in honor of that, here are some of my favorite LOLs.

That’s enough for now. More later.