Continuing from last week: A glimmer of truth, a talk with one of my poetry heroes, a fifteen-minute silent zazen and an invitation to a live connection.
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The final week of our monthlong practice period is called sesshin, seven to eight hours of sitting over the course of a day, facing the wall. Stay with me here, something profound happens when it’s just you and your mind, listening to it releasing thoughts moment after moment like a toddler asking, “But why? But why?” Hundreds of times a day.
Mind.
Katie Rodgers, Desert Haze, 2024.
Outside of zazen, no personality. Which basically means no eye contact or connection unless communicating the needful—we’re going in.
Sesshin loosely translates to joining heart-mind, or merging with universal mind. Which requires remembering one’s motivation to be facing this wall in the first place: To unfurl and peel off layers of personality, to self-destruct. To uncover what’s underneath the external construct.
Takes me one lifetime plus several silent days to realize how personality scaffolds and supports my slumbering unconsciousness and lack of self-trust.
Between sits, I’m serving food, cleaning, resting, opening hips, fortifying legs and back in order to uphold a dignified posture for many hours. By day five, I find myself crawling out of my skin. I’ve done this before; why is this happening? Layers of persona are crumbling, cracking.
Each time I practice not looking up when someone passes me by, personality longs to connect. Eyes down, focused inwardly, I can literally hear my personality, “Hi! I’m over here, do you see me?” Or, “Hey, how are you? You okay? Don’t you need me?”
During one sit I suddenly hear my grandmother Belle’s voice asking the most random, consistent question she always asks. “Laina, do you have enough money to survive in New York this month?”
Last time she asked this was more than two decades ago—she’s long gone. Is this real? Why am I hearing this, now, today, staring at this wall? Is this somehow what I’m meant to address right now?
Fresh, warm tears roll down my cheeks into my hands. I realize this question’s been driving me for more years than I can fathom. Image flashes again: Sitting on my meticulously-made bed in my tiny studio apartment on 20th and 3rd, hearing her voice on my flip phone, learning that when I’m earning money I receive her approval. Earning money makes her feel safe, this child of war, of parents escaping, this child of the Great Depression. It’s about her, yet it’s somehow become my catalyst. Classic. All of this driving my life right now, facing this wall. I’m stunned into recognition of how much I’ve created based on her one old question.
The teachers remind us to stay attuned to our real motivation, to see how potentially incongruous our real motivation is with our overarching intention. Could this misalignment be why I don’t trust myself sometimes? How do I possibly reconcile the two?
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