Various positions

Sunday I went into the office to write, and I managed to write about 450 words to kick off chapter 15 of my novel. After that I was stuck. I spent the rest of the time looking at the outline and not being very focused. But it's progressing.... slowly....

Last week after zazen on Wednesday or Thursday, Jim Briggs was chatting with someone else saying there would be a new "beauty contest contestant" in Hartford Street's continuing search for a new practice leader. (This harked back to the confusion at the sesshin at the beginning of March when someone they had invited to lead the sesshin got pissed off by something at the very first and buggered off.) The new person is named Kokai Roberts (not the reporter Cokie Roberts, ha ha) and is from SFZC. She showed up today: a short slightly round woman with short, but not shaved, hair. At the end of zazen she left the zendo and went upstairs, as the doshi often does; but then she came back down after a few minutes and said hello.

After sitting seiza style on a cushion-and-a-half two or three times last week and finding it a little unstable, I decided to sit only on a cushion this morning. It was more stable, but also more painful for my feet toward the end. It was only bad for ten minutes at the end, though, not twenty, and I was able to go almost the whole forty-minute period before moving. And then I only moved a little.

I try not to get upset by all these attempts in various directions; I tell myself that the important thing is to be there and to try "sincerely," that eventually I'll find a good position if I just stick with it. I'm also mindful of an article I read by someone who had been sitting for twenty years; she wrote that she still finds herself changing her position as her body changes. So there's no final arrival, I guess.

I'm not even trying lotus or even half lotus. I would have done half lotus up to about 34 years old, maybe. After that I don't think I would have been flexible enough. It still doesn't make me want to start doing yoga, though, even though SFZC has someone who specifically teaches yoga to people to help them sit better.