Hospital Rohatsu

At the Rohatsu sesshin in Worcester, one of the participants an old hand had a heart problem which led to paramedics and a move for his practice from zendo to hospital. I was told as he was being wheeled out he yelled out to the participants “practice hard!”

Well, Rohatsu for Jan & me was also of the hospital kind. Although for us it was accompanying our auntie, who has lived with us for the past twenty years, who had to have an exploratory surgery to look at a mass on her spine as well as to try & figure out why a lung is filling with fluid.

For us it’s been about eight or nine hours a day, first in the ER and then in a regular room.

(The surgeon says eyeball and what can be done in the surgery suggests the tumor is “benign,” which is a good thing. We’re still waiting on the official nod from the microscopes, etc. Thanks for worrying…)

Auntie hasn’t been healing at the rate they like, so after five days of she’ll be released tomorrow, today we’re expecting her to be transferred to a rehab facility.

Probably. Maybe. Something in that ballpark…

Of course Jan & I were able to put the time in at the hospital because we’d already been scheduled not to be at our work places, including my not being in the pulpit on Sunday (I hear the Brown student and active member of our congregation who preached, did a first rate job of it!). But that small luxury is over. Jan is in Watertown today back at Perkins, and while I’m writing this from the hospital, at some point I have to get into the office. Many things going on.

The turning point will be when auntie is transferred. I hope. So far the scheduling nurse hasn’t shown up. Of course it is relatively early.

So, the thought that rises for me here is where is the practice.

Rohatsu is a time when normally I’d be sitting long hours in formal zazen.

Here the practice has taken another shape.

Letting go, even of forms…

Here I find myself thinking of the great Pure Land teacher Shinran Shonin, who in the words of his student (a few generations later) the scholar priest Alfred Bloom, was how Shinran “shifted attention away from practices to attitude.”

Now, I’m a big fan of formal practices.

And, sometimes all you got is what you’ve got.

Sitting here in the corner of the hospital room, paying attention to this moment is what I’ve got.

And who knows?

This might even be enough to fully honor our great teacher’s awakening…