I do love sesshin.
Although when I step back for a moment, there seems little logic to it.
Basically, for the duration (in this case five days) one gets up early and does lots and lots of zazen. In most cases somewhere between eight and ten hours a day.
Now, at this point in my practice, and because it is informed by the discipline of koan introspection, I spend much, most of it in the interview room working with people as they engage the arcana of this practice that lives at the core of my heart.
Sometimes a waltz. Sometimes slamming…
Always interesting.
And the attention that is required is full and unrelenting. And the pain of holding still for such long periods of time can be the subject of books.
And there is never enough sleep. Although it was major way mitigated by this sesshin in Toledo where the convention is to start at six in the morning – a major sleep in from my more usual schedule at other Boundless Way sesshin, which start the first day at five and then move to four am for the balance….
Rinsen & Do’on have grown quite a dance out there at Toledo. And some strange and wondrous creatures have thrown their lot in with them in this party we’ve give our lives to.
And then at the end ten of our number went completely out of their minds and took the Buddha way precepts.
My head whirls…
And my heart…
Did I mention how sore my knees are? Pain memory, of course, has a quick half life.
And my goodness
The practice opens the heart wide.
And that is a dangerous thing.
But it is also something so beautiful I wish I had the words to describe it accurately instead of the great dance around I’m forced to here…
It is a dance.
to the beauty.
It is the dance.
to the panic.
It is a dance.
A dance to the end of love
In every possible meaning of that phrase…
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