10/20/06

Awake, caffeinated, and ready to begin practice, when (woohoo!) it's Ladies Holiday. No wonder I felt kind of unmotivated. So here I am, all dressed up and no place to go ;-) Definitely can't leave the house: today's wardrobe includes yet another camouflage shirt (I love camouflage print) with a plaid shirt over that, and a Nick Nolte mugshot hairdo.

The plaid shirt is out of My Gift's closet--one of the few items she left behind when she moved to her dorm. We bought it when she was in the eighth grade. I always loved it more than she did--it reminds me of high school days (long, long ago, when most of the Ashtangis on this board were probably not born yet) when we wore long bell bottoms that dragged on the ground and construction boots and big plaid flannel shirts. What can I say? We were hippies back then.

Okay, so no yoga today, and quite serendipitously, no yoga tomorrow. The organization has prospective faculty fly in for training twice a year, and the training takes place on Friday, with the "audition" on Saturday morning. Bleh, work on Saturday. Not only work, but work starting at 8AM. I was going to have to get up at my usual time to get a practice in beforehand. I don't mind getting up really early during the week, but it seemed rather sad to have to do it on a Saturday.

Speaking of work. I really try to bring my zen practice to work, which as one can imagine, isn't always easy--particularly in a corporate environment. It's especially challenging when things are tense and stressful. Which, in my experience, is almost always, in corporate environments. So I'm always practicing--and running into pretty much the same stuff I run into in Ashtanga practice: new situations (poses) that are hard to fathom, even impossible, and one tries to remain calm and unattached, focused but not willful--strong yet flexible. Appropriate to the situation. And of course sometimes it's just a huge disaster and all you can do is say, "Yeah, well, I'll be back tomorrow."

Were you now to practice keeping your minds motionless at all times, whether walking, standing, sitting or lying; concentrating entirely upon the goal of no thought-creation, no duality, no reliance on others and no attachments; just allowing all things to take their course the whole day long, as though you were too ill to bother; unknown to the world; innocent of any urge to be known or unknown to others; with your minds like blocks of stone that mend no holes--then all the Dharmas would penetrate your understanding through and through.

Oh, it all sounds so lovely. Actually it reminds me of a day after a migraine--when everything seems rather relaxed and slightly spacey and I don't have the energy to turn on my sense of being responsible for everything.

Honestly, not too long ago, I would have said that the mind Huang Po is talking about would be absolutely impossible in a corporate environment. Or at least, that my ability to reconcile the apparent incompatibilities was just not there. The practice has been slow, but like all practice, it is slowly manifesting its changes. If nothing else, I know that if I practice, all is coming.

So I guess I'll just get myself to work, and commence with the practicing.