Practice period starts tomorrow. But I've been thinking about this blog for several days, with excitement, anxiety, curiosity. I'm not accustomed to exposing myself this way. Email is between me and one carefully selected individual (though as some readers can attest, I've certainly been less careful, from time to time, about what I say there). And my writing life is a construct, fiction. In fact when I tried nonfiction, I discovered I hadn't the stomach for it.
Excitement: a new forum, a new form, coming clean, poking around. Wassup with just this, with just sitting, with just breathing, with the sky and the trees which witness my life through the skylight above my writing table?
Anxiety: a new forum, a new form, coming clean. Making a perfect ass of myself.
Curiosity: How's my tolerance these days for making a perfect ass of myself? How do I blog without making it about me, ass, cow, sunflower, dog (I should only be so lucky)? Because really, that's the point. How do I enlarge my vision vis a vis the bodhissatvah vows:
Beings are numberless. I vow to free them.
Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them.
Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them
The awakened way is unsurpassable. I vow to embody it.
And do I, by virtue of even mentioning them, give full expression to my own hubris?
This blog is dedicated to my teachers, to Jane Shuman, my muse, to Patty Pecararo, hand in hand, to Misha Merrill who guides us all, to Susan Jion Postal who birthed this practitioner, to Darlene Cohen and Michael Wenger, teachers with each breath, to Suzuki Roshi with endless gratitude.
See you tomorrow.
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