Sitting, Day 17

"A student asked Soen Nakagawa during a meditation retreat, "I am very discouraged. What should I do?"
Soen replied, "Encourage others."~from Essential Zen

Amazingly, today is the seventeenth of the Tricycle's Big Sit. Though it seems to have gone by quickly, I have been sitting each morning for fifteen minutes. Honestly, the sitting has been the "easy" part. An element of participating in the "challenge" is the completion of a "vow," really a form created by Reverend Jo-An Alan Tibbetts at Enkyo Roshi’s Village Zendo in New York City. The purpose of the vow is to act in support of this "ango," and includes sentence stems with which you can include personal goals for mind, body and spirit. (As a practical matter, I have taken to reading each morning before I sit.as a way of making the experience more intentional.)

When I said the sitting was "easy," make no mistake that the act and focus is not easy in the sense that it is simple to accomplish, but rather, that in comparison to some of the commitments I wrote in my vow, the relative ease of the very hard physical act of sitting is pale next to the difficulties I experience meeting some aspects of my vow.

One part, in particular, is wherein I say to myself that "I will honor my body by bidding adieu to a bad habit." As challenging as it is to break myself of habits which are detrimental to my physical person, and therefore prohibit me from displaying "right action," it is the sense of shame I feel at this failure, at not achieving what I have set out to do or, worse yet, achieving for days or weeks, then backsliding.

When I do break my vow, or promise, I once again reaffirm my desire to bid adieu, and hope that through sitting I will discover the strength to avoid those behaviors which draw me from a right path.

Breathe in, breathe out... YOU AND I ARE ALIVE!