The Mad Albino, 47th Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Deneb): The psychiatrist Oliver Sachs once wrote about a man who had lost the ability to form new memories, like the protagonist of the movie, Memento. However, his patient had been a concert pianist before his affliction, and could still play long classical sonatas on the piano solely from his earlier memory. 

When not playing, he was constantly afflicted with a disorienting sensation like just awakening from a deep, deep sleep ("Where am I? Why am I here? What am I doing?"), but when playing the piano, he could always tell exactly where in the composition he was - say, an early, mid-, or late passage - and he found that sense of place comforting, even if he couldn't remember sitting down to start the piece to begin with. The length of the composition was longer than his memory, so playing music served as a sort of prosthesis to compensate for what his memory lacked. He couldn't remember playing the intro sequence, but he knew that he'd been at that piano playing Bach for at least a half hour, based on his knowledge of the piece, and he knew he'd be there for another 10 minutes until the end.

But that's not what I want to talk about. Imagine yourself a sailor on board one of the ships in Columbus' first fleet. You're heading for a distant shore that you think exists but you're not completely sure (some on board say it's not real), and no one has any idea how far away it is.

You stand on the deck and for all 360° around you, you can see the sky meeting the ocean on the horizon. Not a speck of land anywhere to be seen, and you don't know if it's going to be another two days, two weeks, two months, or ever, that land appears to the west. On the other hand, as soon as the next wave crests, land might appear on the horizon. You have no idea. All you can do is watch and wait.

Sitting for long periods of meditation over many intervals sometimes feels like that. The umpteenth sitting period is in progress, and although there were regular kinhin intervals between the periods, all that sitting starts to bleed together. Soon after the echo of the starting bell fades away, you can't tell if you've been sitting there for 5 minutes or 25 minutes. Or maybe longer. You're lost in time just like that sailor lost in the endless sea. The ending bell might not ring for another twenty minutes, or it might ring . . . right . . . now. All you can do is sit and wait. 

When you're lost in time in that quiet space, any external distraction is like a marker. Somebody coughs, a noisy car passes by on the street, or a dog barks, and for at least a short while you know it's been one minute, then two, then more since that little distraction. You may not know where between the start and finish bell you are, but you're pretty certain it's been about five minutes since you heard that door slam.

The trouble with music during zazen, even the most droning, ambient music, is that there are constant little markers keeping one aware of the passage of time. Even in the most structureless of ambient compositions, where there's no compositional clues as to how far along in the piece you are, you're still aware of the passing of time. There are no clues as to whether you're near the end or not, but you know it's been 10 seconds since that last little "tink" of a bell, or that rumble of bass.

Today, the fifth day of the Rohatsu practice period, I used several of Brain Eno's ambient "installation" tracks as timers for my meditation (four hours!). It was lovely, quiet, meditative music, but it nonetheless still got in the way of my sense of time dropping away. With all the constant repetition, layering, and cycling, there's no sense of progress to the music itself, but it's still right there, giving the mind something to focus on and keeping you fixed in time.

Still, while it certainly wasn't shikantaza (just sitting), it was nonetheless four hours of meditation. A day well spent. And since today is Deneb, a walking day, after I finished my sitting I went out and got in a 4.3-mile Madison, returning home just as the sun set. 

Three more days of Rohastsu practice to go, although I won't be using ambient music tracks as my timers anymore.