Waking Up with a Koan

I wish I meant "waking up" in the "getting enlightened" sense, but I mean it in the "woke up when The Cop got home from work at 2AM and couldn't fall back to sleep and got to thinking about a koan" sense.

The fatal flaw was to wake and think about work. It must have been playing in my mind while I slept. We had a long meeting today, and one of the people in my department, though not on my immediate team, was just pretty darned disrespectful throughout the meeting. And pointedly disrespectful to someone on my team. I walked away quite conscious of the fact that this person is angry about the evolution of the organization, and I keep trying to feel compassion for that, but I also feel like I am supposed to do something to help the situation.

Sigh.

Okay, so this person is suffering, and creating that suffering, and attached to that suffering. And I don't know the right thing to do. Leave it alone? Call her on it? Oh boy. A simple shift of perception would alleviate her suffering, but I know if I were to suggest that, it would be taken as an insult or an oversimplification. So I wake at 2AM and suddenly think of the last koan I was given by my Korean teacher (they're called kong-ans in the Korean schools, BTW). This sucker has been dogging me for years:

Somebody comes to the Zen center smoking a cigarette. He blows smoke and drops ashes on the Buddha.

If you are standing there at that time, what can you do?

LOL! So I wake up and have this little drama of the day playing in my mind and all of a sudden, I think: Hey, it's the dropping ashes on the Buddha koan! When you sit with koans, you kind of put them in the back of your mind. Sure, the text messes with your conscious mind and makes you try to figure out logical answers; but the koan eludes logic--it eludes you, and your ideas--over and over. Until one day something happens in life and you realize, "Hey, it's that koan!"

Don't get me wrong. I haven't realized the koan. I just finally had an example of what it's trying to teach me. I still don't know my correct function in this situation. I'm a step closer, though--I can feel that there is a shift of consciousness that is possible, that will make this come clear--and I just have to keep the question and keep "not knowing" as much as I can.

The beauty part of this whole thing is that I set aside koan practice a couple of years ago because I was getting so attached to it. But then, a couple of days ago, I thought, I ought to go back to some koan practice, when I saw a new book by one of my favorite zen writers, John Daido Loori. And after all this time of thinking I wasn't thinking about koans, up from my subconscious bubbles the last one I was working on, and the small insight that it relates to this current situation.

I know, this is a lengthy bit of chatter about something that isn't Ashtanga. But it is kind of like getting a new pose. I can almost feel my fingertips in the bind of this koan. I also know that if I focus on it too much, if I try to figure it out too much instead of just doing it, I'll lose ground. But if I just practice practice practice...well, we all know how that will work out :-)

Ready, set, go...home!

Zen means meditation, and meditation means keeping a not-moving mind from moment to moment. It is very simple. When we meditate, we are only using certain techniques to control our body, breathing, and mind so that we can cut off all thinking and realize true nature. Many people think that in order to do this, we must be sitting rigidly on the floor with both legs tightly crossed in a half- or full-lotus position, completely unmoving...

True meditation is not just dependent on how you keep your body: from moment to moment, how do you keep your mind? How do you keep a not-moving mind in every situation? Thus, true meditation means mind-sitting. Keeping a not-moving mind in any situation or condition is the true meaning of meditation.

--Zen Master Seung Sahn, Compass of Zen

This morning I got up and happily prepared for the first day of Mysore practice at the Starbucks Studio. As I pulled into the parking lot, I thought, "Is today the right day?"

I was reassured to see Returning Guy waiting there in his car. As I got out of my car, he opened his door and said, "Is today the right day?"

"April 3," I said. "Is today April 3?" We both stared at each other blankly.

"We're not very good readers," I said.

"Well, we read right," he said, "But we heard what we wanted to hear."

"Okay, then, see you Saturday at led class." And off we drove.

It's a little hard shifting focus from one plan to the next. I was tempted to bag practice because of the change in...well, in reality. But I managed to drive home and practice in the yoga room. I felt vaguely discombobulated, but practice was good enough. It was one of those days where I felt kind of self-critical. Not my favorite, but at least they don't happen too often. Not unlike the occasions where the cat finds and consumes food I leave out by mistake. It doesn't happen often (last time was about 2 years ago when I left vanilla cupcakes on the counter to cool and went shopping for a few hours) but it's always unpleasant when it does. Last night he found a container of flour tortilla chips and made a (very messy) feast of them. When you run flour and oil through a feline system, the result is quite nasty. Nastier, even, than vanilla cupcakes. Just FYI.

And thus begins a new week.

Karma of a Dog

The dog is out rolling in the grass and the sunshine. Oh, and hacking up balls of grass she's eaten. She is so happy. I went out to take a picture of her and to look at the buds on the rose bushes, and the air smells strongly of orange and tangerine blossoms. Gorgeous. Well, not so much for The Cop. He got home from work late this morning, at 9AM, and headed off to sleep. As I drove off to led class, I noticed contractors pulling in at the next door neighbors' house. They're putting in double-paned windows.

So practice is done, I've come home and am eating my lunch, and the contractors are hammering. As far as I can tell, the installation of double-paned windows involves about seven hundred thousand hammer hits per half inch of window frame. And much loud discussion. The Cop appears in the livingroom, looking very tired and very annoyed. I tell him he should sleep in the guest room, which is a little quieter, and get him a blanket. He opens the front door and looks out threateningly (well, as threateningly as one can look while clutching a pillow), then thinks better of his homicidal plans and just sacks out in the guest room.

So now the dog is out rolling the grass, seemingly oblivious to the merry endless hammering. And The Cop sleeps. I hope.

Led class was good for all the usual reasons: a chance to see some friends (Chanting Man and his daughter, The Cat, were there, and The Other Dave, and Returning Guy), and a chance to practice in unbelievable heat.

Perhaps it is the return of summer, perhaps the ambient temperature is higher to begin with, perhaps there were more people than usual--but dang! it was hot. Hot as in having to bend over after poses to keep from blacking out. Or maybe that was just me. Nah, I saw The Other Dave "taking a moment" a few times. I could feel my heart beating really fast. It was weird, too, because I was keeping my breathing slow and even, and underneath that, there was my heart, racing.

There were two new people to my left. New as in new to Ashtanga. I find this very distracting, because I feel responsible to be a good role model. Dorky, I know. But I do much better practicing with people with more experience than I. Then everyone just keeps their driste and goes about their business. Today I felt like I was being watched. LOL! Good luck to them, if they're taking their cues from me! I guess that's just their karma.

Speaking of which, it seems that many people around me are wrestling with personal life karma. Yoga folks, work folks--lots of questioning and emotion and upheaval. If I prayed, I'd pray for them, but I don't. Of course, everyone will get exactly where they need to be, and even if things are awful now, there will come a day when life seems terrific again. At least the yoga folks know that there are days when practice stinks and days when it is transcendent--you just have to keep going along and accept that things will always change. Eventually the hammering will stop, eventually things will sort themselves out--and in the meantime, you just breathe. Unless you are a dog, of course, because if you are a dog, you just roll around in the grass and enjoy some sun. There is a famous koan: "Does a dog have Buddha nature?"

Generosity

What a great title. For one thing, it's five syllables--though the readability test Lauren provided only counts two-, three- and four-syllable words. I wonder if that engine breaks down the Sanskrit words we all use in our posts, or if it throws them away. I suspect the latter. Or it breaks them down using the rules of the English language--

Generosity is also the current life situation. This morning I practiced with Sanskrit Scholar at her work's health center. Volleyball Guy is moving Mysore practice to the Starbuck's of Yoga Studio here in Scottsdale, starting Monday. No practice this morning at his current place, so Sanskrit Scholar and I met up at her place.

Let me say this about Sanskrit Scholar: she is very generous. We waited a bit in the parking lot for The British Director (who did not show), and Sanskrit Scholar taught me the correct pronunciation of the next to last line, the penultimate line (look, four syllables!) of vande gurunam: sahasra sirasam svetam. And she was generous about allowing me my rather shocking inability to accurately (or aesthetically) repeat words in other languages. So I butchered that for a while and then we went in to practice.

During practice, she helped me out with an adjustment in down dog during the suryas, chatted with me about handstands and bandhas, and adjusted me in upavishta konasana and supta kurmasana. In theory, she was doing her own practice, but she was generous enough to keep mine in mind as well. Sign of a true teacher. Thank you, Sanskrit Scholar!

Generosity was also the name of the game last night and early this morning. My Gift has a cold, with a nasty cough that wakes her up at night. I got up a couple of times to bring her kleenex and water and cough medicine, and then I checked her temperature this morning as I was getting ready to go over to Sanskrit Scholar's. I told her to make sure she always helps people who are sick, always offers them something, because I hope those around her (I was thinking specifically of her going off to live in a dorm next summer) will also be generous when she needs it.

There's a commercial I saw on TV that is of people going about their daily business, but stopping to help out the people around them (opening a door, picking up something someone's dropped, etc.) and I keep thinking, "The world could be like that!" Of course, it's not, for the most part--but I want My Gift to give it a go, as I do. We can behave as if everyone is generous, and maybe it'll catch on. Nothing better to do in this lifetime, I figure.

Finishing

I know I've written before about disliking finishing poses. I'm not quite sure why I dislike them so much, but there's a good chance that it's in part because shoulderstand is my least favorite pose of all time. Why? Who knows. I love sirsasana, which is considered "the king" of asanas, but I hate sarvangasana, which is supposedly "the queen." Oh well. I am a well-behaved Ashtangi (for the most part ;-) so I dutifully perform my sarvangasana.

And somehow, despite my aversion, today's practice had some nice moments in finishing. For one thing, in headstand, Volleyball Guy has been having me keep my legs straight and lower my feet to touch my toes to the mat, then go back up. Five times. Sometimes it feels difficult, and sometimes it feels easy. Depending on whether I am thinking about it, whether I am expecting it to be difficult. Today I was totally in the zone: sirsana is the easiest place in the whole practice for me to meditate, and I watched my feet drop down and touch the mat and float back up, and it was all kind of amazing and yet totally normal.

A long time ago, someone asked a great Zen master, "Is attaining our true self very difficult?"

The Zen master replied, "Yah, very difficult!"

Later someone asked the same Zen master, "Is attaining our true self very easy?"

"Yah, it's very easy!"

Some other people asked him, "Is attaining our true self very easy or very difficult?"

The Zen master replied, "Yah, it's very difficult, and also very easy."

--The Compass of Zen, by Zen Master Seung Sahn

This isn't about "fooling" your mind. It isn't about auto-hypnosis or suggestibility. This is about the nature of reality. Like most Zen, it's more profound than it sounds, and also silly to even talk about.

The other fun thing was urdhva padmasana. Usually I just do what I like to think of as "the footie prayer thing," instead of attempting the padmasana. Why? I dunno. Habit, I guess. I can do padmasana right side up, no problem--but I've made some lame attempts to fold my legs in shoulderstand, and just kind of figured I'd have to wait for that to be possible (okay, yeah, I'm a total finishing pose slacker). Today I looked in John Scott's book, to check on a detail of another pose, and I saw him in urdhva padmasana, using one hand to fold the right leg, then the other hand to fold the left--all the while supporting himself in the shoulderstand. I gave it a shot, and it was so simple I felt like a dork for never thinking to use my hands. Duh.

I try to both pick my battles and not get overly attached to poses or details of poses (a contradictory and yet delightful process ;-) so I guess it's bound to happen that I am trying too hard on some things and missing the boat entirely on others that I could do, if only I even tried. Do I feel bad about that? No. It makes practice seem like a scavenger hunt of sorts--there's stuff in there that's going to be very hard to find, and other things that I'll just stumble across and be happy about. It cracks me up. I can grind away at practice day after day, and there are moments of great joy and moments of "Duh! Why didn't I ever think of that!"

It's very difficult and it's very easy.

Community

Saturday led class is all about community. I see the same folks week after week, and there is a lovely sense of community. Some folks I know well from Mysore practice, some just come to Saturday led. They are faces I see each week, people I am pleased to spend practice time with. I know they struggle with the same things I do, and that we all share the same practice.

Then there is the selfish side of Saturday led. The heat. It gets mighty hot and steamy, and I can see how my practice is progressing. So hot that my hamstring doesn't nag (full hanumanasana on the hurt left side today, and no pain at all!), so hot that I can get my arms through on garbha pindasana without using a spray bottle (not enough to fully crook my arms yet, but enough to get up into kukkutasana for a few moments). So hot that I believe baddha konasana with my chin on the floor is possible in this lifetime.

Speaking of baddha konasana: I had my first serious baddha konasana adjustment yesterday at Volleyball Guy's. I saw him coming over and was terrified. Breathe, breathe, I kept telling myself. The adjustment turned out to be way cool--a pop in my sacrum which felt really good, and not nearly the amount of pain I would have expected. That last phrase probably makes Ashtanga sound like masochism to non-yogic readers...

My Gift is working at The Juicy Yoga Studio 'til 1PM today ("My manager sent me my schedule, and he ends his emails 'Hugs'!" she told me this morning) and The Cop is sleeping after working all night. I imagined St Patrick's Day would be all about drunk driving arrests, but he said it was quite slow. They get more DUIs on a regular night. I guess everyone is on board with the not drinking and driving for holidays, but less motivated on non-holiday nights.

So I've practiced and eaten a soyburger. What next? Reading and a bath, I believe. Maybe combined--and with a cup of mint tea thrown in for good measure. Yup, this is paradise.

Are you in my way?

Gosh, it seems like days since I practiced and blogged yesterday. A more than full day at work, even though I left the office at noon. A long, heartwrenching session trying to comfort and counsel a co-worker who is feeling frustration and despair at her work situation. I want so much to help, but I can't quite seem to find the key. There's a saying my zen teacher used to quote: "Perhaps more suffering is necessary." That may indeed be the case for her, but just because it's necessary doesn't mean it isn't hella painful. It's weird, because I can see her creating her perception of the situation (karma, again!), but I can't seem to help her shift her perception to a place where it wouldn't be quite so agonizing.

Anyhow, left the office at noon to pick up My Gift for her annual celebration of Lobsterfest at Red Lobster. She has attended Lobsterfest religiously since she was a kid. She picked up on the commercials when she was about 8, and has just always been totally excited about it. Her New England heritage, I guess. Then we went for annual eye exams and the ordering of new glasses and contact lenses. I am a hopeless wreck when it comes to fashion stuff, so I let her pick my glasses. What will I do when she goes off to college? Who will help me pick my clothes? Okay, I'm overstating my ineptness, but not by much.

To continue just a bit with my previous post about left and right: I have also been aware of front and back. Volleyball Guy has been helping me sort out my absurdly tight shoulders, and the other morning, he touched my upper back in down dog and said, "Try to keep an awareness here." I thought, "Oh for goodness sake, I always am trying to press through my upper back and shoulders--how much more awareness can I possibly bring to bear?" But, duh, this morning I finally understood.

I've been cranking at my back and shoulders, totally working my back body, when in fact, I'm going to have to open up my front body if I really want to make this work. I am always rooting around in what is considered "back body" stuff in yoga mythology: the subconscious, intuition, dreams, poetry, memory--that's my comfort zone. It's the front body stuff that throws me--appearance stuff, the everyday stuff, the extravert, social side. So yeah, I have to stretch my front. I'm actually a three-dimensional being, and not just a back and shoulders. Sigh. You'da thought I'd know that.

Enough of that. Let's end with a story My Gift told me at lunch: She was walking through a public doorway with The Frenchman, who is endlessly polite and dear. And fluent with English, though sometimes a little off. They encountered a woman going through the doorway in the opposite direction, and there was some jostling. The Frenchman, trying to be polite (though his attempt was misperceived by the highly insulted woman) said, "Oh, I'm sorry. Are you in my way?"

Arnica nightcap

Last night, as I open the tube of arnica, I think: "Left knee." Then I find myself arnica-ing my left hamstring insert. Followed by left psoas. Then collarbones. "Huh. Usually I only need arnica for one spot." I think for a moment about arnica for my hip flexors, but figure if I'm gonna bother with that, I might as well just rub it all over myself. A little restraint was in order. Plus, it's cold to put on.

Not sure what the deal is, but all of the significant sports injuries I've had in my life are on the left side: torn left arch from running, messed up left knee from weightlifting, torn left rotator cuff from climbing. Primary series promises a balancing effect, doesn't it? Maybe I can finally square this left/right disparity.

Karma

Ah, karma. Such an interesting thing. I always think of it as the mind's habits. Habits which arise in this lifetime, and habits left over from past lifetimes. We don't even think about these habits--they are the "wallpaper," the "way" we think our minds are, just a given. With meditation, I've become a little bit aware of how those habits get made, how they can be let go of, etc. Lots of practicing, is how the zen masters say you can burn off your karma. I always kind of heard that in exactly the way you're warned not to--I heard it like I was looking at the finger pointing at the moon, i.e., zazen leads to burned-off karma. It's not that, though. It's not linear or causal--though with practice your karma does indeed seem to shift.

Today I thought about body karma, which when I think about it even a teeny bit I realize can't be separated from mind karma. Except I can't conceptualize without splitting them off, so I will. What brought this up was practicing with The Cop this morning. More accurately, he practiced and I observed the Moon Day. Gave me a chance to pay more attention to him, since usually I just practice with him and he's kind of on his own. Which really may be to his benefit, because this whole Ashtanga teacher thing stymies me. When to help, and when to just leave someone alone. When someone needs help physically and when they don't; when they need help mentally and when they don't. Sigh.

When I started zazen, I just went to a zendo and they told me how to sit and then I sat. Anything else I learned was pretty much on my own initiative. Granted, I am overly attached to researching my interests--so in zen, as in Ashtanga, I did lots of background work on my own. I'm a little single-minded when it comes to these things.

And now The Cop wants help and I'm pretty much at a loss. I think I can only practice with him and then eventually bring him to a Saturday led (once he's off his awful work schedule).

So anyhow, helping The Cop this morning made me really see body karma--the habits of the body. And I realized that this is what I am feeling change with my Ashtanga practice. Sure, I feel despair about my tight shoulders--but they are made of my posture, my old practice of weightlifting, hundreds of climbs on rocks and artificial walls, the way I hold my shoulders based on my fears and beliefs and tensions, etc. They are simultaneously the shoulders I am stuck with and the shoulders I have made. Likely they will follow me into other lifetimes, somehow.

And as I watched The Cop (who has the same kind of shoulders, BTW) work his forward bends, I realized that there is body karma getting burnt off in me in relation to my lower back. There is a whole belief system in me about my lower back and how it works and what is safe and how it moves and feels--and all of those habits are in flux due to Ashtanga practice. Kind of like my solidified habit of body is freeing up somehow. I can't really say much more about this, because it defies words, and I imagine it's irritating for people to read such nebulous text--but hey, it was either that or write about what I had for breakfast.

One other note: yesterday at Volleyball Guy's, the strangest thing happened. I was finishing up practice when I was struck with the most incredible feeling of insecurity about being a slacker. I try to keep a holistic perspective on my practice--I really try not to get too attached to good or bad, or to specific poses, or despair about difficulties, or whatever. I breathe and I keep my mind still and whatever happens, happens, and I figure if I keep at it for a decade, I'll be alot better in 2016 than I am in 2006. But suddenly the whole thing kind of came crashing down around me and I wondered if I should be doing something else, something different, something more, to be a good practitioner.

I have no idea what that was about, and I'm not going to make any assumptions about it. I figure I'll just see what I feel like next time I am there. Quite honestly, I pretty much go along thoroughly enjoying my practice, and I think I just had a moment of regression, a throwback to a childhood of Catholic guilt, and maybe some weird reaction to having an authority figure present after weeks of rolling along with my home practice during his vacation time. Just a little bit of my mind's less helpful habit of insecurity. Strange. Vaguely unpleasant. But, ultimately, just grist for the mill.

He's baaaaack...

How much did it rock to go over to Volleyball Guy's yesterday morning? Quite a lot. Not the drive, so much, though. I am spoiled already with the yoga room in the new house. Already it has lots of good meditation energy.

Anyhow, I drove over to Volleyball Guy's and things were already in progress. The Other Dave and Returning Guy and Sanskrit Scholar were already in the midst of their suryas. A quick hug from a very tanned Volleyball Guy as I arrived, and then I was on my way.

I couldn't help but wonder what it was like for him, to come back and find himself in a room again with all these students waiting for adjustments. LOL! All those butts up in the air during down dog. I had to refocus, because it all seemed so absurd and so funny.

One thing about Volleyball Guy's versus my house: way warmer. More people for one thing, plus the ceilings are too high in my house for the heater to really make a significant impact. So it was great to practice in the super warm, humid atmosphere.

And adjustments. What can I say? There is nothing better than an adjustment from your teacher. It is simultaneously intimate and impersonal, and it is all about trust. It's about helping someone, even as you realize that the illusion of us as individual entities is just that--an illusion. Enough of philosophy, though. Let's talk about kurmasana. There I was, pushing as far as I could into the pose, and just when I think I can't possibly straighten my legs any more, there's Volleyball Guy, putting my feet up on sandbags. Yikes. I love how sometimes he surprises me into realizing I can do more than I think.

Sunrise in Our Hearts

Well, The Cop is still working on seventh series. Slowly, oh so slowly. He had one of those daunting, heavy, everything-seems-impossible practices yesterday. The first he's ever had. It's hard, when the initial novelty kind of wears off and you are faced with just practicing. But he chugged along through all of primary with me. Brave man. He's at work now--working the graveyard shift for at least a month.

My Gift is also at work. Her new job. She's the receptionist at my first yoga teacher's studio. Anusara. Hold your jokes, guys. This will be a good environment for her, I think. She's had her stint working in a restaurant, then paid her dues in a retail environment. At Christmas time, no less. Now she has a nice little studio to work at. She was thrilled last night when she got home. She said "I'm used to managers who yell; now my manager hugs me at the end of the shift." She laughed her head off a few weeks ago when she first went to him for a therapeutic session. Explaining how to pull her shoulders back and open her chest, he said, "Pretend you have a sunrise in your heart."

She's kind of a tough chick, My Gift, so I think this kind of softness will be a good lesson for her. We come from tough stock--my folks are first generation Irish and Italian, brought up in Massachusetts. My siblings and I all made our ways west as soon as we could, while the whole rest of the extended family--every last aunt, uncle, cousin and grandparent--stuck tight to New England. Nick went to San Francisco, Lynne to San Diego, and me to Phoenix. We're the weirdos of our family. Fine by me. But no matter how "nutty and fruity" we got, there is still a tinge of the East Coast cynical streak. No escaping it. And My Gift, of course, inherited it. Like me, her eyes automatically roll when someone talks about the sun rising out of their heart, but secretly we're curious. It'll be good for her to experience a bit of Anusara wackiness. Rest assured, though; I will draw the line if she starts calling yoga poses "juicy" ;-)

Tonight I am reviewing a proof of my book, which looks great, and getting excited about heading over to Volleyball Guy's tomorrow morning. First Mysore since he went to the Philippines five weeks ago. I'm sure tomorrow I'll be tempted to just head into the yoga room and practice at home, but I'll pull myself out of my current routine (what a creature of habit!) and once I am at Volleyball Guy's, I'll be thrilled.

REW sent me an email during my recent break from blogging, and we chatted a bit about blogging in general. This morning, she said, "The Hatha Yoga Pradipika says specifically to keep all aspects of one's practice to oneself so as to gain the most from personal insights." Hmmm. Yoga Pradipika: right or wrong? Blogging: good or bad? Any time I am tempted to make an "either/or" judgement, I like to turn to the zen masters. I opened an arbitrary page in Cultivating the Empty Field, by Hongzhi. Here's what I read:

Fully appreciate the emptiness of all dharmas. Then all minds are free and all dusts evaporate in the original brilliance shining everywhere. Transforming according to circumstances, meet all beings as your ancestors. Subtly illuminate all conditions, magnanimous beyond all duality. Clear and desireless, the wind in the pines and the moon in the water are all content in their elements. Without minds interacting, wind and pines or moon and water do not impede one another. Essentially you exist inside emptiness and have the capacity to respond outwardly without being annoyed, like spring blossoming, like a mirror reflecting forms. Amid all the noise spontaneously emerge transcendent.