Reset

Small turnout on this chilly night - two regulars and one first-timer. The first-timer was a college student "on assignment" for his religion class (we get a lot of those - four yesterday). One of the regulars regularly leaves after the first of the two periods, and he stayed true to form tonight. The other regular stayed the course, and he and the first-timer hung out for the full service and the discussion period afterwords.

It was a particularly frantic day at work today, featuring a (without fear of exaggeration) four-hour conference call. The other four hours were all playing catch-up with what I had missed during the call. So as hectic as the day was, it was refreshing to just sit one-on-one with the first-timer and explain the practice - how to sit, how to breathe, how to manage the mind, etc. - with total concentration and focus, not worrying about the crazy schedule. And to sit in zazen and just let all of those myriad things drop away (I couldn't have done anything about them at that time anyway, even if I had wanted to). A nice way to hit the "reset" button in the mind.

Small turnout but a good night.