Lessons from the Coca-Cola Buddha

This past weekend, at the 2010 Master Sand Sculpting Competition at New Hampshire’s Hampton Beach, I came face-to-face with my new American idol: the Coca-Cola Buddha, the patron deity of appetite and abundance.

This wasn’t the first sand-sculpting competition I’d been to; last July, J and I checked out the crumbling masterpieces that remained weeks after the New England Sand Sculpting Festival at Revere Beach in East Boston. But among the various sculptures at that event, there was nothing even remotely Buddhist, so I wasn’t expecting to come face-to-face with divinity on the New Hampshire seacoast this weekend. Like any genuine spiritual experience, my Coca-Cola enlightenment came as a complete surprise.

In the interest of iconographic accuracy, I should note that the Coca-Cola Buddha isn’t technically the Buddha; he’s Hotei, a fat-bellied monk who carries a cloth bag filled with treats. If you’ve ever rubbed a Buddha-belly for good luck, you’ve had a close encounter with Hotei, the Buddhist equivalent of Santa Claus: a fat, jolly man who brings happiness wherever he goes.

Whereas the historical Buddha is an emblem of regal detachment, Hotei is a reminder of life’s sweet abundance. Buddhist monks live on alms, so a fat monk is one that is particularly well-loved. Because Hotei is such a happy, jolly fellow, his begging-bowl is always full, and he is happy to share that abundance with others.

Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter whether the Coca-Cola Buddha is the Buddha, as Hotei carries a bag full of lessons all his own. In his guise as the Coca-Cola Buddha, Hotei reminds us to fully enjoy life’s simple pleasures. Whereas the historical Buddha was a pampered prince who renounced his wealth and then experimented with various ascetic practices, you get the feeling that the Coca-Cola Buddha hasn’t said “no” a day of his life.

The historical Buddha eventually abandoned asceticism, deciding that the Middle Way of moderation was the proper spiritual path…and both Hotei and the Coca-Cola Buddha take the Middle Way one step further, suggesting it’s better to occasionally over-indulge and enjoy a soft-in-the-middle belly-laugh (and share that glee with others) than be a Seriously Religious sour-puss concerned only with philosophical intangibles. The Coca-Cola Buddha believes, in other words, that life is short, so have dessert first!

The Coca-Cola Buddha also reminds us to, in the words of a famous soft-drink slogan, obey your thirst. In a time when obesity has become an epidemic, it’s easy to view food and appetite through the lens of fear. As Michael Pollan argues convincingly in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Americans suffer from a national eating disorder whereby we obsess more and more over the healthfulness of our food while simultaneously growing fatter and fatter; in the words of Raj Patel, we live in a world that is simultaneously stuffed and starved. Given conflicting medical reports about which foods are and aren’t good for us, it’s no wonder our mealtimes are often fraught with worry.

The Coca-Cola Buddha offers diet plan far more simple than even the most popular fad or fast: when you’re hungry, eat; when you’re thirsty, drink. This is the wisdom of intuitive eating, a philosophy embraced by Zen masters, psychologists, and self-help gurus alike.

Too often we allow our head or our heart to make our culinary decisions, eating (or abstaining) from a particular food because we think we “should” or smothering our emotions with aptly named comfort food. If you listen to your gut, however, your body will tell you loud and clear when you’re hungry and when you’re full. The Coca-Cola Buddha knows that our bellies are usually far smarter than our brains. While our brains send us to the kitchen in search of Chubby Hubby to distract us when we’re sad, anxious, or bored, the wisdom of our gut is eager to tell us how much food we really need. Once you’ve learned to listen to the wisdom of enough, then you can share that abundance with others.

Lastly, the Coca-Cola Buddha knows that appetite can be sated only in the moment, and only for oneself. I can dream, imagine, and anticipate the soothing refreshment of a cool drink, but that imagined idea won’t quench my thirst.

Several weekends ago, I gave consulting interviews at the Cambridge Zen Center, and in lieu of hot tea, the Head Dharma Teacher left a small pot of ice water in the interview room for me to drink. The day was steamy, so I was sweating beneath my heavy Dharma Teacher robes…and when I raised a cup of cool water to my lips, I was delighted to smell the tang of a lemon slice floating among ice cubes. Just like that, a cup of cold lemon-water was more refreshing than Nirvana, a full serving of Ahhhhhhh soothing my summer-shriveled cells. But as much as I try to describe the deep-seated satisfaction of enjoying a cool drink on a hot day, the only way you can “get” this experience is to go to your own kitchen and pour your own glass: drink up!

A long time ago in New York, a student questioned Zen Master Seung Sahn about the efficacy of mantra meditation: do I have to understand the words of a chant or mantra in order to benefit from repeating it? Seung Sahn insisted that only three things are important when you meditate upon a mantra: first, your reason for doing it; second, your faith that it will work; and third, your tireless effort to keep that mantra.

“So you can chant Coca-Cola all day long and it will work,” the student asked, amazed, and Zen Master Seung Sahn’s reply was even more amazing. “If someone tells you that the words Coca-Cola have power in them and you really believe that, then Coca-Cola will work for you.”

This is the timeless wisdom of Zen Master Seung Sahn, big-bellied Hotei, and the all-American Coca-Cola Buddha. This Present Moment is a brimming glass filled with both sweetness and sorrow, and only you can belly up to the bar called Life to savor it, moment to moment, good to the last drop.

Click here to more photos from the 2010 Master Sand Sculpting Competition at Hampton Beach. If you want to visit the Coca-Cola Buddha and his sandy friends in person, the sculptures will be on display through June 30th. Enjoy!

 

The wisdom of mist

It’s still raining from yesterday and last night, although “rain” is perhaps too strong a word for this mist that falls without the sound of raindrops. You can see it in the air, and you can see it in the drops and rivulets that gather on impervious surfaces. But you can walk through it, like a cloud, without feeling you’re getting wet.

It’s a metaphor often used in Zen that meditation practice is like walking through mountain mist: without realizing it, you get soaked clear through. And I guess that’s how things have been with my own Zen practice: as I do it, it doesn’t feel like it’s working, but all these years later, look at how wet I’ve become.

I think many things are like that: if you do something daily, you get better at it without really knowing it. As Ken Kessel JPSN once said, we become what we practice, or as Malcolm Gladwell writes, it takes 10,000 hours of doing something diligently to become proficient at it.

I know that over the years, I’ve probably spent 10,000 hours on my meditation mat, and as many hours (at least!) scribbling lines in cherished black notebooks. And I’ve probably spent the equivalent of 10,000 hours blogging, or snapping photos if you could somehow tally the total time it takes to snap, snap, snap day after day, taking bad shots along with the good and gradually learning how to sort one from the other.

It’s not a mystery, this method of doing something every day whether it seems to be working or not. It’s simply the wisdom of mountain mist: an imperceptible influence that cannot be denied.

This is a lightly edited version of this morning’s journal entry, illustrated with images from yesterday’s misty-morning walk down Modica Way in Central Square, Cambridge.

 

A silent place

There is a strong, silent place I’ve found on retreat that lingers: once you’ve mapped the route to that place, you can return to it whenever you need to. That place is not distant, and it takes only a moment’s awareness–the span of a single breath–to return there. But the way to this place is elusive, and many spend their entire lives traveling far and wide to find it, to no avail. Like a dog’s own tail, it slips beyond your reach the more (and the more fervently) you chase it.

There were moments at Saturday’s hockey game, for instance, when I felt myself retreating to that place of calm as I waited, watching and alert, for the precise moment to snap a shot. Photography is nothing more than target practice, and to hit a target, you need an awake and alert eye. It is the strength and solace of that silent place that gets me through overloaded semesters, grading all-nighters, or early-morning teaching prep; it is the strength and solace of that silent place that helps me juggle two jobs when many struggle to handle only one.

The secret of this strong, silent place is not secret, but it hides under misleading names: calling it a place, for instance, is already a mistake. If you call it a place, you’ve already wandered from it; if you call it a thing, you’ve already mislaid it; and if you call it a person, you’re already estranged. “It,” after all, is not even an “it”: “it” is neither one thing nor two, incapable of either speaking or being spoken of.

And yet this strong, silent place is the most mundane location of them all: neither far nor near, it’s a place where we all dwell. Everyone knows it without realizing it, or has it without knowing. I think mothers know it best, this strong and silent place from which all things are born and the impossible can be done, but only with great love. Mothers know that life is borne from great pain, and mothers know that love never tires.

Click here for a photo-set of images from the grounds at the Providence Zen Center, where I went on a one-day retreat yesterday: a pilgrimage back to my personal power source.

 

Meditation

You’d think that last week’s Photo Friday theme, Meditation, would be an easy one for someone who practices and teaches Zen meditation, but the exact opposite is true. Because I practice meditation, I actually have very few photos of meditation.

Taking a “meditation” photo offers the same challenge as capturing the ponytail shot in my last post: how do you take a picture of yourself sitting and not taking pictures? The Dharma room is, after all, one of the few places where I don’t carry a camera, so I had to go all the way back to August, 2007 to find a handful of images I shot after practice at the Open Meadow Zen Group one morning. Notice I that I shot these photos after (not during) morning practice. These aren’t photos of meditation; instead, they’re photos of the scene of meditation. Over the years I’ve taken more than a few pictures of Buddha statues, Buddhist ceremonies, and pretty Dharma rooms…but statues, ceremonies, and Dharma rooms aren’t themselves “meditation.” The accoutrements of meditation aren’t the same as meditation itself, and that makes “meditation itself” particularly difficult to capture in images.

Over the years, I’ve illustrated most of my Zen posts with images that don’t look particularly “Zenny.” Rather than returning again and again to the same old images of statues, ceremonies, and Dharma rooms to illustrate the practice of meditation, I usually illustrate my Zen posts with whatever images I have at hand. This is, I suppose, a particularly “Zennish” way of considering the question of how to depict “meditation.” Meditation isn’t a special thing limited to a special room where you sit on special cushions while wearing special clothes, and the simple act of just looking at (and just snapping pictures of) whatever you happen to see can also be a kind of meditation. Yes, the trappings of Buddhist iconography help put practitioners in the mood to meditate, but meditation isn’t dependent upon them. If you don’t have a pretty Dharma room, a cushion in the basement will do.

If I had to pick, in other words, the scenes and objects of meditation in order to illustrate what meditation “is,” what scenes and objects wouldn’t I choose? Would I show you the sink where I follow my breath while washing dishes, or the car where I follow my breath while driving between Newton and Keene? Would I show you the streets and sidewalks where I follow my breath while walking, or the bed upon which I follow my breath while folding laundry, reading, or settling into sleep? Would I show the laptop where I sit following my breath as I type these words, or would I show the kitchen table where I will follow my breath while eating a late lunch after posting them?

The scenes and objects of meditation are many, and I’ve spent these past five years quietly blogging them, sometimes affixing the label “meditation” and sometimes not. But even when unnamed or unattributed, meditation is as close at hand as the breath on your lips.

This is my belated contribution to last week’s Photo Friday theme, Meditation. I was tempted to post a photo of virtually anything as my depiction of “meditation” but decided a trip to my photo archives was a more aesthetic (and cooperative) choice.

If you’re intrigued by the pretty Dharma room that illustrates today’s post, you can join us this Sunday for a one-day retreat at the Open Meadow Zen Group in Lexington, MA.

 

What it’s not

These days, I’ve been meditating almost every day after lunch, sitting for fifteen minutes on a mat and cushion stationed in J’s basement with the dogs, one room over from the washer and dryer. J’s basement is dry but unfinished, so the floor beneath my mat is poured cement, and I sit facing a bare concrete wall occasionally adorned with a sleeping spider. On days when either one of us is doing laundry, I meditate to the sound of the washer running through its cycles; on days when the washer is quiet, I listen to the dogs sleep, each snoring on its bed while I sit breathing on a not dissimilar-looking meditation mat.

I mention this to note all the things that my daily meditation session is not. I sit for fifteen minutes, not thirty. I sit after lunch, not first thing upon awakening. And although I sit on a traditional mat and cushion, my practice space is otherwise painfully plain and simple, an out-of-the-way basement nook that looks nothing like this but instead embodies quite literally the truism after the ecstasy, the laundry. My meditation spot in Keene is pretty; my meditation spot here at J’s is plain. Both places are perfectly sufficient for the work of Zen practice, which is simply a matter of waking up wherever you find yourself, whether that’s with the dogs, on a fancy cushion, or one room over from the washer and dryer.

As much as it might be difficult to define exactly what Zen is, it’s easy to define what it’s not. Zen isn’t somewhere distant and removed from the dogs, laundry, and basement spiders of your everyday life, and it isn’t something that requires the purchase of special trinkets or tchotchkes. The smells and bells of Buddhist iconography can make your practice pretty, but such decorations aren’t absolutely necessary. Zen is a matter of practicing where, when, and how you can, and a plain raft will ferry you to the other shore of This Present Moment just as surely as a pretty one will.

 

Showing up

All this week, I’ve still been feeling the blog-blahs I’ve previously described: when I think of something to share, I can’t find time to blog it, and when I find a spare moment to write, I can’t think of anything to share. A typical writing conundrum.

Last night, J and I went to see the New England Revolution play the Chicago Fire at Gillette Stadium, and as always we each took hundreds of pictures. Afterward, I came home, duly copied mine to yesterday’s photo folder, took a quick look at what I’d shot, and turned off my laptop, saving for some hypothetical rainy day another folder of photos that probably will lie neglected on my hard-drive. Someday, sometime, I’d like to sort the photographic wheat from chaff, post the best to Flickr, and post the bloggable…or not. At this point I have an oceanic backlog of photos from three Red Sox games in California this spring, a handful of Boston Cannons lacrosse games this summer, and all the silly random photos I snap from day to day, uncertain when (if ever) I’ll ever get around to re-visiting much less sharing them.

I have no idea when (if ever) I’ll get around to sorting through much less sharing the rest of last night’s soccer photos…but in the meantime, here are two shots of camera-wielding fans I particularly like. This morning I gave consulting interviews at the Zen Center, and one thing I find myself emphasizing time and again to the folks who ask me questions is the importance of simply showing up. Most of the questions people ask me have to do with struggles they’ve been having in their life or practice because they have some idea of how they should or want to be. Across the board, the people I meet in or out of the Zen Center interview room (and I count myself in this number) want to be calmer, healthier, more balanced, sweeter, skinnier, wealthier, smarter, or whatever: more of this, and less of that. And this very thought that “I’m not X enough” or “I’m much too Y” is exactly what keeps you, me, or any of the folks I encounter from realizing that everything, already, is pretty much okay as it is.

And so this morning, I found myself insisting time and again that Zen, life, and everything else isn’t about getting things right, perfect, or “good enough.” Zen, life, and everything else is ultimately about showing up, trying your best, and accepting that as “enough.” Just show up, I hear myself saying again and again, and see what happens. So here I am on a Sunday afternoon, just showing up with the same old blog-blahs and seeing what happens when I toss a couple paragraphs and pictures together: enough?

 

Scrambling

I’ve been scrambling this past week, trying to catch-up with too many to-dos as I prepare to leave for a conference tomorrow. On Friday, in the midst of this schedule-madness, I taught meditation to a classroom of senioritis-inflicted students at Lincoln-Sudbury High School in suburban Boston; on Sunday, I gave consulting interviews at the Cambridge Zen Center, stopping to snap a few pictures of some new stencils on the street-art mural along Modica Way.

At both the high school and the Zen Center, I reminded anyone who would listen to come back to the present moment, everything is already complete, and you already have it, you just don’t know it. Ah, the fatuousness of Zen teaching. If I really, truly believed these things–if I’d really attained them at the core of my being–I wouldn’t be scrambling, staring stressfully at my to-do list, or calculating in a panic the hours between now and tomorrow morning when my plane takes off with or without me and my still-to-do to-dos. Or would I?

If everything is already complete, then my scrambling, stressed self is also Buddha; if I already have it but just don’t know it, then part of the “It” of enlightenment is the stressed, worried mind I already have. If Zen is a matter of returning to the present moment, which I’ve taught time and again to anyone who will listen, where do I get this idea that my Zen Self should be placid and serene, as if a smooth lake is the only form “water” is permitted to take?

This idea that my Zen Self should be calm–this idea that I should have a “Zen Self” that is separate from and more pristine than my Regular Self–is a pervasive form of Zen sickness, an idea that clouds the clarity of This Present Moment as much as any lurid daydream or daunting distraction. This present moment is It, I try to remind myself whenever I find myself listening. The act of scrambling isn’t a matter of rushing to a place where I’ll find It, finally, when all my to-dos are checked off and I have a moment, finally, to let go a sigh of relief. This act of scrambling is itself It: nothing more, nothing less. Had I been listening to myself when I reminded those squirming high school students or those earnest practitioners in the Zen Center interview room, I would already know that.

 

Sitting pretty

It’s hard not to snap a photo of a bird that’s sitting pretty and all but posing for you.

I find it fittingly ironic that mere days after arguing the utter artlessness of the photos I post here, Hoarded Ordinaries took home two Blogisattva Awards, both of them for visual rather than literary merit. According to the folks responsible for this year’s Blogisattvas, which recognize “excellence in English-language Buddhist blogging,” Hoarded Ordinaries is noteworthy for its “Clean, Straightforward, Unaffected Design” and “Creation or Use of Graphics in a Blog.”

I should promptly point out that the presumably clean, straightforward, and unaffected design of this blog has nothing in particular to do with me: Hoarded Ordinaries looks the way it does because when I moved my site to WordPress last year, I picked an off-the-rack template designed by Vanilla Mist (a.k.a. Patricia Muller). I don’t know if Muller is a Buddhist, but I think she deserves more design credit than I do for any presumed “Buddhist” virtues underlying the look of my blog.

I also find it amusing that my “creation or use of graphics” here on Hoarded Ordinaries should be deemed somehow inherently Buddhist: two years ago, when I was creating and using graphics exactly as I do today, one of the folks behind the Blogisattvas pointed out that Hoarded Ordinaries didn’t actually qualify as either a “Zen” or “Buddhist” blog. I wonder what has changed between now and then to make the “look and feel” of Hoarded Ordinaries seem suddenly (and award-winningly) Buddhist? Have the pictures I post suddenly become more intrinsically Zen-like, or does the fact that I now have a category tag pointing to Zen posts make my site more overtly Buddhist? Perhaps I should ruin the presumably clean, straightforward, and unaffected design of Hoarded Ordinaries by tacking a label at the top proclaiming that it now boasts “New and Improved Zen Flavor,” given how the word “Zen” makes even household cleansers seem cool.

I never was one of the popular girls, I’ve never understood the politics behind awards ceremonies, and I certainly have never entered much less won a beauty contest, so this year’s Blogisattva Awards and the suggestion that the look of Hoarded Ordinaries is downright pretty has left me a bit flummoxed. I guess the appropriate response is to smile and thank the Academy, Buddha, and all the little people who stood beside me on my way to the top. For good or ill, it seems that as a Buddhist blogger I’m more effective (or at least more award-worthy) when I’m choosing blog templates and posting pictures than when I’m actually talking about Buddhism. If nothing else, I guess these two awards go to show that when it comes to the Zen of Buddhist blogging, silence is better than holiness, especially if you’re lucky enough to sit pretty.

 

Random

Yesterday morning on my way to Zen practice, I stopped to photograph Modica Way, the alley in Central Square, Cambridge, that has been taken over by street artists.

The most democratic of genres, graffiti is an extremely random art form: anyone with a spray can, paint brush, or inedible marker can add their scrawl. Not only is Modica a collaborative work incorporating the efforts of several different artists, the wall reflects various media of street art, with stencil work, free-hand tags, and all sorts of stickers covering the bricks, exposed ductwork, and other building surfaces.

Even at its most random, the Modica mural shows some semblance of order, with different sections being dominated by different artists, including Bren Bataclan, the Boston artist who painted my Christmas present. When I first visited (and photographed) Modica Way over a month ago, I wasn’t sure where the “real art” of the wall’s sanctioned artists ended and the popular editorializing of random punks began. On a wiki-like wall where everyone can write and revise, which version is the truest? After staring a while, I realized the point of pastiche is the ultimate randomness of it all. When your parchment is a palimpsest, every painting is pentimento: every iteration is a literal do-over, today’s version writing over yesterday’s.

I’ve had randomness on my mind all weekend as I’ve been spending a surprising amount of time staring at the gift I gave J for Valentine’s day: a digital frame for him to display his photographs. I figured a digital photo frame was a perfect gift for a photographer who has everything; what I didn’t foresee was the way I’d enjoy revisiting a couple hundred of J’s favorite images from the last year. Now that there’s a frame on J’s kitchen counter cycling in random rotation his various photos of me, our pets, and the places the two of us have explored together over the past year, I find myself stopping to watch these scenes from our shared life, marveling at how many memories two people can cobble together without really trying.

At Zen practice yesterday, I gave consulting interviews, and one practitioner asked about the difference between good thoughts and bad. How can you encourage the former and get rid of the latter?

“There is no difference between good thoughts and bad thoughts,” I explained. “The mind is a sense organ that perceives an endless series of thoughts, just as the eyes perceive an endless supply of visual stimuli, the nose perceives an endless series of olfactory signals, and the ears perceive an endless stream of sound.” Just as we don’t blame our nose for bad smells or gouge out our eyes when they see something ugly, we can’t blame or give credit to our minds for their thoughts. Thinking is what minds do, so it makes no sense to judge our thoughts or to cling to presumably good thoughts while pushing presumably bad ones away. Instead, thoughts will be thoughts, and our minds will be minds: like a digital frame set to “random,” our minds endlessly loop the thoughts and images they’ve taken and stored whether we like them or not.

And so the answer I’d give in response to Annette‘s request that I describe my life in six words or less would be the following Zen-inspired definition of consciousness: an endless series of random stimuli. Some folks wait until their dying breath to see their life flash before their eyes, but I say watching your life is as easy as walking down a graffiti-covered alley or flipping through the virtual pages of an electronic photo album, the accident of your life appearing in all its random glory.

Click here for a photo-set of images from Modica Way, taken yesterday and in January. Enjoy!

 

While you can

The vintage Shell gasoline sign at the corner of Magazine Street and Memorial Drive in Cambridge is (like the freeway revolt mural near the same corner) something I’ve passed countless times, both when I lived at the Cambridge Zen Center a decade ago and now whenever I return to Newton after practicing in Cambridge. When I lived at CZC a decade ago, I didn’t have a hungry blog to feed, nor did I carry a camera with me. But now that I’ve been staying in Newton every weekend, driving to and from the Zen Center a couple times a month, and perpetually looking for quirky, blog-worthy sights, I’ve been meaning to stop and take a picture of this sign.

When people think of landmark Boston signs, they immediately think of the Citgo sign in Kenmore Square, which is visible over the outfield at Fenway Park (and thus known and loved by Red Sox fans around the world). But the Cambridge Shell sign is something only a Cantabrigian would know and love. And only the People’s Republic of Cambridge (as citizens of my once fair city are wont to call her) would officially declare an old gas station sign a historic landmark even though during one point in its poorly maintained past, the sign read HELL after the neon bulbs in its initial letter burnt out.

Knowing this sign is not simply interesting to look at but actually historic–and knowing my personal history of having passed it so often–I’ve been meaning for a long time to stop and photograph it. And yet, every time I pass it, I have some reason or another not to stop. Usually I’m in a hurry to get back to Newton, or I have other errands to run, or the weather is bad for shutter-snapping. On Sunday, however, the weather was picture-perfect: bitterly cold, yes, but with a crisp, blue sky that makes a perfect backdrop for a yellow and red sign. As I started to pass the Shell station on Magazine Street on my way to turn onto Memorial Drive, an Inner Voice (my muse?) urged me to stop. “There’s no time like the present,” this metaphoric voice suggested. “If you don’t stop and take a picture on a clear, blue-skied day, what exactly are you waiting for?”

On Sunday, I’d gone to the Zen Center to give consulting interviews–a chance for me to meet one-on-one with newer practitioners and answer whatever questions they have about their practice. Consulting interviews are an optional thing. Although on retreat you’re expected to have kong’an (koan) interviews with the Zen Master, during Sunday mid-morning practice, consulting interviews with senior teachers are optional: you can opt in, or you can literally bow out.

When I lived at the Zen Center a decade ago, I often skipped going to consulting and even kong’an interviews. When you live in a Zen Center, you have countless opportunities to interact with teachers, sit retreats, and otherwise immerse yourself in Everything Zen, 24/7. What need is there, you ask yourself, to go to an interview to ask questions of a senior teacher who is invariably going to tell you to practice more, keep a “don’t know” mind, and figure things out for yourself? Only after I moved out of the Zen Center did I realize how precious those (often missed) opportunities really were. When I’m in Keene, the Zen Center and the people who practice there are an hour and a half away; even when I’m in Newton, the Zen Center is a half hour away by car (and about twice that far away by T). How much easier it was, I sometimes think, when I lived in the Zen Center and could literally roll out of bed and find myself face-to-face with a Zen Master!

Nowadays, I find myself in a funny position, the meditation cushions having turned. When I was sitting in the student seat, I put off going to interviews, figuring I’d have more time some other time. Now that I’m just as busy as ever (albeit with different things), I now find myself sitting in the teacher’s seat, wondering why more practitioners don’t make the time to practice, go to consulting interviews, and ask more (and more insistent) questions. If there’s one thing I’d go back and tell my younger self–if there’s one thing I’d tell the folks living and practicing at the Zen Center now who don’t think they “need” to go to interviews–it would be this: practice as much as you can while you can. Unlike a certain gasoline sign in Cambridge, your Current Condition isn’t a protected historic monument: instead, you never know when your Current Condition will change, you’ll move away, and your easy access to a thriving practice community will become much more complicated. If you knew that the picture-perfect conditions of Today were going to change Tomorrow, would you make a point to do all the things you’ve been putting off? Impermanence surrounds us, protected landmarks notwithstanding. If we don’t take pictures, go to practice, or ask questions now, what exactly are we waiting for?