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Aug. 10th, 2021 09:47 pmLast night, I slept for eight hours for the first time in what seems like a couple of weeks, and it has certainly had a beneficial effect. If only I knew how I did it! Yesterday, I was feeling pretty bad, but I had a planned visit from Dragonfly that I didn't want to miss. When she arrived, I explained that I'd prefer to sit inside rather than enjoying the fresh air in the back yard as we often do. It's been hot, muggy, and unpleasant lately, with inferior air quality, and these things on top of no sleep disagree with my asthma etc. So we stayed inside, but when we went out to get lunch, she wanted to visit the noodle place. In view of the COVID variant disquiet, she didn't care to eat in the relatively small indoor space, so she suggested getting takeout and sitting by the lake. That was too tempting for me. I got some basil penang noodles for me, and some nutty masaman to take home for the Sparrowhawk. We walked the few blocks to the park and ate our noodles on a bench by the water. By the time I'd eaten a small portion of my takeout box, my stomach started hurting. By the time we parted and I went back to the car, I was pretty much done for the day. When I got home, the Sparrowhawk touched my arm and said "You're so hot!"--not in the complimentary way. It took me till seven or so, after he'd gone to the gym and I'd had a lot of ice water, and the sun had fallen low, before I cooled off and stopped feeling like crap.
Dragonfly returned my copy of Writing Down the Bones, which I'd forgotten she borrowed, and so had she, until she and her wife had to move furniture to paint a room, and it was discovered on a shelf. I brought down the rest of my stack of Natalie Goldberg books for her to look at, and she borrowed The Great Failure. I realized that I'd bought The Great Spring and never read it, so I read that yesterday evening while doing nothing. Natalie Goldberg is one of those writers that are like a dish that you taste because you think you'll like it, but then you don't know if you like it or not, so you have to try it again in months or a year to see if you still don't like it, or if you like it now. (Maybe other people don't do this with food items, but I do.) There are many things that I enjoy about her writing, but other things that leave me perplexed and put off. One of those things is that I can't seem to grasp what she's looking for in her thirty years of Zen practice. The Great Spring seems like a kind of summing-up of her practice, but in the end, it's about emptiness and rootlessness, being without a home in this world, knowing you're going to die but focusing on the color of moments, whether sweet or bitter. I was puzzled and thought "But this is where we START, all of us. How can this be the END? For this you served unreliable masters and tortured yourself for thirty years of kneeling on a bare floor at three o'clock in the morning? Oh honey no." But what do I know? I'm not a famous writing teacher. Perhaps she has these feelings in some way that is ever so much more meaningful and transcendent than the way the rest of us have them, sort of like that saying by Dogen (a Zen master in her lineage): "Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.” Again, I acknowledge that when I speak of Zen, I speak of what I wot not of. Still--I cannot shake the feeling that if this is enlightenment, you can have it.
Hopefully tomorrow I will pursue my unenlightened life in better shape.
Dragonfly returned my copy of Writing Down the Bones, which I'd forgotten she borrowed, and so had she, until she and her wife had to move furniture to paint a room, and it was discovered on a shelf. I brought down the rest of my stack of Natalie Goldberg books for her to look at, and she borrowed The Great Failure. I realized that I'd bought The Great Spring and never read it, so I read that yesterday evening while doing nothing. Natalie Goldberg is one of those writers that are like a dish that you taste because you think you'll like it, but then you don't know if you like it or not, so you have to try it again in months or a year to see if you still don't like it, or if you like it now. (Maybe other people don't do this with food items, but I do.) There are many things that I enjoy about her writing, but other things that leave me perplexed and put off. One of those things is that I can't seem to grasp what she's looking for in her thirty years of Zen practice. The Great Spring seems like a kind of summing-up of her practice, but in the end, it's about emptiness and rootlessness, being without a home in this world, knowing you're going to die but focusing on the color of moments, whether sweet or bitter. I was puzzled and thought "But this is where we START, all of us. How can this be the END? For this you served unreliable masters and tortured yourself for thirty years of kneeling on a bare floor at three o'clock in the morning? Oh honey no." But what do I know? I'm not a famous writing teacher. Perhaps she has these feelings in some way that is ever so much more meaningful and transcendent than the way the rest of us have them, sort of like that saying by Dogen (a Zen master in her lineage): "Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.” Again, I acknowledge that when I speak of Zen, I speak of what I wot not of. Still--I cannot shake the feeling that if this is enlightenment, you can have it.
Hopefully tomorrow I will pursue my unenlightened life in better shape.
