First Day of Osesshin
Feb. 15th, 2003 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
riot_nrrrdI received keisaku1 twice today. Twice, when I once vowed to myself that I would not receive it once during my entire stay. It used to be that I thought of keisaku as a punishment, a beating one received with due justice for falling asleep in the zendo. That view fell through the window, though, when I realized that nobody received keisaku involuntarily. Sure, you may receive a tap on the shoulder if you're not sitting up straight, but people only get the real keisaku-- the full four blows on each shoulder-- if they ask for it.2
Then I thought of keisaku as a form of atonement. It took on dirty Catholic connotations to me; a sort of Bless-me-Father-(or roshi)-for-I-have-sinned-in-my-failure-to-be-vigilant-punish-me-please. I figured the keisaku would hold a special significance for westerners. But what happened to me wasn't like that at all.
The first keisaku I received was probably about 6:30 in the morning. I was falling asleep (obviously, at that hour), and I had no repentance in mind, just the thought that if someone hit me on the back, I might wake the fuck up. So while I didn't feel particularly cleansed by the whole experience, as Pat, our Canadian, 20-something supervisor/helper monk observed yesterday, it did loosen up my shoulders and wake me up. For all of ten minutes.
The second keisaku was during our afternoon/evening zazen fest, probably around 6. I love zazen in the afternoon. The weather is beautiful, the world is calm, and you can actually concentrate on meditating instead of being constantly distracted by thoughts like it's so cold, or I'm so tired, or of course the favored compound of the two, I'm so tired but I can't sleep because it's too damn cold. Anyway, I was doing zazen, and for once I was able to concentrate on zazen and not be constantly distracted by other thoughts. I felt my body expand and contract with my breath, and I used some of the visualization techniques Teresa told me to remove a pain in the small of my back.
That's when my hip started to hurt me. Really hurt me. It had hurt before, but I'm talking so excruciating that I seriously thought I was going to pull my leg out of my socket. I kept hearing the sound of blows in the background, and as I looked up I realized that the roshi was making keisaku rounds, and everybody was receiving keisaku from him. People are not supposed to change positions at all in the 30-minute intervals that make up zazen during an osseshin, so I sat there, while the roshi made his slow rounds, trying to make it, my hip on fire.
I don't know what it was. The pain in my hip, the humility in the roshi's bow, the fact that during kitchen duty today I started singing "Me and a Gun" by Tori Amos and the chorus made me want to cry. The roshi hit me in a different, tender part of my shoulder, and I wasn't angry, but it hurt, and I guess his striking me broke a dam in me somehow, because I started to cry, right there in the zendo. And I felt horrible, and I felt so much better, and things made sense and my hip stopped hurting. It touched me beyond what I can describe in this tired state, and from that point on, I discovered things. Things came to me whether I wanted them to or not.
An hour or two later, I was just sitting. I had decided I'd had enough for the day, that I didn't want to learn more, when out of my distraction I realized I had a small, dense ball of ki3 in my hands. I decided to concentrate on it, play with it, try to make it grow and maybe heal the aching parts of my body with it. I didn't manage the healing, but I remember feeling it expand, waver, and contract, and how solid it felt, and I closed my eyes to concentrate on it and when I opened them, the floor seemed to glow red and waver like a pond reflecting clouds. And I peered into the pond to see what I could see, but then I began to think: I am having a vision. This is my vision. and the pond shimmered and went away.
I think I understand ego now, and why I need to transcend it. Ego is the "I" that thinks of itself as separate from others, as disconnected, as the focus of all things, the thing that claims. I never saw what was in the pond because I began to think of the vision of mine, because not until afterwards did I realize that the vision may be shown to me, but it didn't belong to me; I did not own it. This, then, is the lesson: not detachment, but the relinquishment of ownership. Not detachment, but ultimate attachment, such that "I" and all things which aren't "I" are not separate, but infinitely connected. To see my life as not "mine," but belonging to and part of every other life. As the Indigo Girls once sang, "A distant nation my community, and a street person my responsibility."
It occurs to me that I misjudged the people here. They are not necessarily here because they know what zen is and want to find it. They are here because they don't know what zen is, and they want to find out. Me, I'm looking for something much more nebulous, but to set myself up as not-zen and to pass judgment on the people here based on my notions of zen was wrong. I will forge my own path with this, but I will not snub the trail they are showing me.
1. keisaku: Ritual striking of a person's shoulders-- four times on each shoulder-- with a wooden stick, used during zazen. Meant primarily to help people overcome fatigue and continue meditating, but can be employed in other ways.
2. I later found out that this view was erroneous, when I was involuntarily given keisaku-- more than once, even-- for falling asleep during zazen.
3. ki: Life energy; more commonly known by its Chinese pinyin spellings: chi or qi.
Then I thought of keisaku as a form of atonement. It took on dirty Catholic connotations to me; a sort of Bless-me-Father-(or roshi)-for-I-have-sinned-in-my-failure-to-be-vigilant-punish-me-please. I figured the keisaku would hold a special significance for westerners. But what happened to me wasn't like that at all.
The first keisaku I received was probably about 6:30 in the morning. I was falling asleep (obviously, at that hour), and I had no repentance in mind, just the thought that if someone hit me on the back, I might wake the fuck up. So while I didn't feel particularly cleansed by the whole experience, as Pat, our Canadian, 20-something supervisor/helper monk observed yesterday, it did loosen up my shoulders and wake me up. For all of ten minutes.
The second keisaku was during our afternoon/evening zazen fest, probably around 6. I love zazen in the afternoon. The weather is beautiful, the world is calm, and you can actually concentrate on meditating instead of being constantly distracted by thoughts like it's so cold, or I'm so tired, or of course the favored compound of the two, I'm so tired but I can't sleep because it's too damn cold. Anyway, I was doing zazen, and for once I was able to concentrate on zazen and not be constantly distracted by other thoughts. I felt my body expand and contract with my breath, and I used some of the visualization techniques Teresa told me to remove a pain in the small of my back.
That's when my hip started to hurt me. Really hurt me. It had hurt before, but I'm talking so excruciating that I seriously thought I was going to pull my leg out of my socket. I kept hearing the sound of blows in the background, and as I looked up I realized that the roshi was making keisaku rounds, and everybody was receiving keisaku from him. People are not supposed to change positions at all in the 30-minute intervals that make up zazen during an osseshin, so I sat there, while the roshi made his slow rounds, trying to make it, my hip on fire.
I don't know what it was. The pain in my hip, the humility in the roshi's bow, the fact that during kitchen duty today I started singing "Me and a Gun" by Tori Amos and the chorus made me want to cry. The roshi hit me in a different, tender part of my shoulder, and I wasn't angry, but it hurt, and I guess his striking me broke a dam in me somehow, because I started to cry, right there in the zendo. And I felt horrible, and I felt so much better, and things made sense and my hip stopped hurting. It touched me beyond what I can describe in this tired state, and from that point on, I discovered things. Things came to me whether I wanted them to or not.
An hour or two later, I was just sitting. I had decided I'd had enough for the day, that I didn't want to learn more, when out of my distraction I realized I had a small, dense ball of ki3 in my hands. I decided to concentrate on it, play with it, try to make it grow and maybe heal the aching parts of my body with it. I didn't manage the healing, but I remember feeling it expand, waver, and contract, and how solid it felt, and I closed my eyes to concentrate on it and when I opened them, the floor seemed to glow red and waver like a pond reflecting clouds. And I peered into the pond to see what I could see, but then I began to think: I am having a vision. This is my vision. and the pond shimmered and went away.
I think I understand ego now, and why I need to transcend it. Ego is the "I" that thinks of itself as separate from others, as disconnected, as the focus of all things, the thing that claims. I never saw what was in the pond because I began to think of the vision of mine, because not until afterwards did I realize that the vision may be shown to me, but it didn't belong to me; I did not own it. This, then, is the lesson: not detachment, but the relinquishment of ownership. Not detachment, but ultimate attachment, such that "I" and all things which aren't "I" are not separate, but infinitely connected. To see my life as not "mine," but belonging to and part of every other life. As the Indigo Girls once sang, "A distant nation my community, and a street person my responsibility."
It occurs to me that I misjudged the people here. They are not necessarily here because they know what zen is and want to find it. They are here because they don't know what zen is, and they want to find out. Me, I'm looking for something much more nebulous, but to set myself up as not-zen and to pass judgment on the people here based on my notions of zen was wrong. I will forge my own path with this, but I will not snub the trail they are showing me.
1. keisaku: Ritual striking of a person's shoulders-- four times on each shoulder-- with a wooden stick, used during zazen. Meant primarily to help people overcome fatigue and continue meditating, but can be employed in other ways.
2. I later found out that this view was erroneous, when I was involuntarily given keisaku-- more than once, even-- for falling asleep during zazen.
3. ki: Life energy; more commonly known by its Chinese pinyin spellings: chi or qi.
