Yesterday evening as we were setting up for the Zen group, I was in the large room we use for storage just outside the parish hall. I’d bent over to pull a pile of zabutons, the large square cushions used as a base for Zen meditation, out from under a steel and glass desk.
It had until a month or so ago been in my office, part of the furniture I’d inherited from a previous minister of the church. After hating it for a year I replaced it with some old missionesque furniture I owned and had been my home office when we lived up in the Boston area.
Anyway as I grabbed three of the cushions and began to drag them out, the desk reached out and bit me, and hard. I now have an inch long gouge running across the back of my right hand. At first I was genuinely fearful that I’d damaged a tendon. After that and washing away the blood my worries subsided down to wondering if this was going to be a new scar. Ah, aging…
The plus was showing off my wound to people and explaining how the desk had attacked me.
While I was kidding, well, mostly; it later occurred to me how we really do this sort of thing all the time. Well, I do.
Blame someone.
That is someone else…
I wouldn’t have been inattentive enough to hurt myself badly enough to actually draw blood while preparing for Zen meditation.
No sir.
Then, damn it, I sat down for zazen.
Stitting on the pillow, and watching my mind, sadly, suggests otherwise.
So, I guess, the point here is, the take away:
If you want to be able to blame others or other things for your ills, don’t do zazen…
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