Zen Master Dogen once said that to drive ourselves to practice is surely delusion. That's a handy cop-out for those of us who miss a meditation period, who fail to sit through an entire sesshin, who don't even make it out of bed to even get to the zendo in the first place. "Ah, pushing myself to make it there is just delusion anyway," we tell ourselves as we roll over and go back to sleep.
Which is to say that my practice didn't make it through my self-assigned seven days of Rohatsu. I did sit every day from December 2 through 7 instead of every-other-day as was my routine, and I did gradually lengthen the sitting time from 90 to 225 minutes. But today, Rohatsu itself, which was a regularly scheduled walking day and not a sitting day, didn't see any minutes of sitting. I got up, made my coffee and took my vitals, showered, and then watched Trump's ridiculous interview on NBC, followed by all the pundits picking it apart for an hour afterwards. I took my usual 5.3-mile walk for general health reasons and then went grocery shopping as I need food to sustain my life. When I got back home, I fed the cat, it got dark outside, and I realized "it's not going to happen." I'll sit tomorrow, back on my usual bidiurnal schedule (is that a word? I think it's a word).
Zen mind is ordinary mind, and forcing myself to sit at the expense of living my actual life could be construed as "driving myself to practice." I'll take the Dogen Delusion Pass®, thank you.
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