September 2010
18 posts
What is it like to be enlightened?
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What is it like to be enlightened?
I’ve thinking about this passage the whole day:
One of my teachers, Soen Nakagawa Roshi, was Abbot of Ryutaku-ji, a monastery in Japan. Nevertheless, he still did sesshin with Harada Roshi, clarifying his practice. In fact, he was criticized by some people; “Why are you going for sesshin to another Roshi? You are Abbot, you have monks.”...
Adding zazen to my life, little by little
Today I surprised myself doing some mindful breathing before starting several tasks. It made me really happy. Sounds like practice is settling little by little. :)
Counting my own breath
But email is waiting me!
Counting my very breath
And those dishes are dirty!
It does make a difference
One grain of rice or two halves
Everything you encounter is your life
This sentence poppep up in my mind several times while doing zazen today. It is the title of the third chapter of “How to cook your life” and It’s getting little by little my motto for this ango
Not sleeping much
Visiting doctors today
Watching my child play
Having a nice cup of tea
All you find is life. Your life
Serendipity
I met my adopted child only four days before starting the Ango. He helped me to understand
, to experience some key ideas of Buddhism and Buddhist practice of the Ango clearly helped to be a better father.
Today a Japanese friend tells me that Keita, besides being an African name is also a Japanese name, and it means: “the treasure of a child” yes, he really is a treasure. The...
Walking meditation with child
While doing kinhin
I hold my son in my arms
relaxes and sleeps
Taking care of him
Helps me to be more focused
Not the reason I’m holding him
Stress
These two last days have been quite stressfull, dealing with doctors to get a series of tests for our kid. In those moments one goes to meditation to find support and relax, but then it is quite difficult to reach a relaxed state of mind. Meditation leaves you when you most needed, I started to think. Then I realised that meditating is orecisely stay with your mind in whatever state it presents...
A better life
While bicycling, I tend to get grumpy when people are standing in the bicycle track, or bicycles are coming from the wrong side, it doesn’t go into much, -I’m not a violent person, don’t worry :)- but it’s no the great experience either.
Fortunately, thanks to the combination of metta, loving seeds, remembering passages from “How to cook your life” and so on I...
Minimalism step by step
As I keep on dwelling this ango, priorities slowly change. Suddenly I start remenbering Walden, and the need for a simpler life. So I added one thing in my commitment: to get rid of something every day: A book that I no longer going to read, a kitchen utensil which I barely use, those floppy disks that will not work in any computer I have access to…
It’s not like a zen master burning...
90 minutes zazenkai
Today I had some time on my own and I was able to do the 90 minutes sitting. It went quite well. I had to fight sleep a couple of times but I finally manage to stay awake and alert most of the time. It wasn’t the same day that it was performed, but, hey time is relative after all and I view my own zazenkai as if the rest of the sangha was doing it at the same time.
Recorded video
In my...
Singleminded without purpose
Re-reading the second chapter of How to Cook your Life after an average -nothing special- zazen session I realized what goes on When a shinkantaza goes well. I’m fully engaged in keeping the posture, following the breath and so on, but I’m not looking for anything in particulat. i know, i’ve read it dozrns of times, but today, it also made some empirical sense.
The blue sky...
My new zen master
Having a small child at home change so many things. My Ango experience has also been powerfully activated by him. In front of me I have this creature able to live 100 %in the present time, with no concepts to interfere with the direct experience of things. I have read a lot about children and zen, and what was your face like before you were born, but one needs a direct experience to realise how...
Tankas
In days like this, apretty normal day, it”s difficult to find something interesting to say. The highlight eould be that I almost forgot my metta meditation. Despite tbe fact that I’m probably the only one that read this blog :-) - or maybe because of that- in case I feel like re-reading it some later time, I decide to change the format into poetry. I’ll discuss something that...
Four hours zazenkai
Starting parenthood and meditating for four hours are difficult to combine. I was worried I couldn’t do this month’s zazenkai, but Jundo got a very good suggestion: to break the zazenkai into parts, that way I could take care of my son as well as doing the zazenkai.
I’m going to start aftef sending this message :)
Do just one thing
I’m working with the mindful eating process, which is improving little by little. Today it helped me to connect it with some ideas from “How to cook your life”, and how important it is to do one thing at a time. You can’t mindfully eating a zucchini while you are mentally reciting the chant, trying to feel grateful and watching TV plus talking to your partner. The zen way...
Watching the ox footsteps.
This morning while I watched my child sleeping, I had a wonderful meditation experience. I didn’t have such a balanced, focused and alive sitting in months. It was very intense, I had this feeling like when you see something through the corner of the eye, of how a an enlightened sitting might be like, exiting the meditation I remenbered the ox paintings and I had the feeling that there is...
Mindful walking to the pharmacy
Nothing teaches you impermanence better than small children. Smiling one second, crying the next one. And they got sick so fast. Yesterday we put Keita, our recently adopted child, to sleep, and he was fine. Around midnight he started to cry out loud, with some fever. It was our first medical emergency at home and we weren’t prepared. So I hit the streets, nervous and anxious, looking for a...
Mindful eating
Curiosly enough, the task that I find most difficult to undertake is one that seems quite easy: mindful eating. The main problem is that I tend to forget it when eating. Tonite I was halfway dinner when I finally realised that my commitment included mindfully eating that dish too.
Part of the problem I guess is that me being an omnivore, it sounds a little hypocryte to care about the wellness of...
The first three days
It was strange starting the Ango in a foreign city, in a very atypical activity; staying with your son in a orphanage. This however, helped to make the experience more powerful. If I have to choose one meaningful experience from these days, it would be without a doubt, it would be the nurturing seeds.
International adoption process is quite an strange process. You are traveling with four more...