A Byrd's Eye View

And Now For Something Completely Boring

Yesterday morning, I volunteered for three hours at the Nike Run-hit-remix event at the Los Angeles Coliseum. Nike (the shoe company) is one of the corporate sponsors of the walking and running group which I have joined, and so when they have promotional events such a Saturday's five-mile run, the LA Leggers (my new group) shows up to support. The runners were to run a five-mile course, then meet back at the Coliseum for a concert by someone named MC Hammer. I am only 12 years from senior discounts at Dennys and am not familiar with the work of Mr. Hammer. The young people seemed excited, though.

My mission at the run was dull and nondescript. I was to write runners' numbers (assigned to them and printed on their red runner tee-shirts) on plastic bags. The runners could place their belongings in these bags, which were then placed in numerical order - thousands of them - in a special area. Finally, a use for my filing skills! On my way back to my car I got a free "burrito" from Kentucky Fried Chicken, which was basically just a fried chicken strip wrapped up in a flour tortilla. Even the food was dull.

My afternoon was equally boring, as I went to Santa Monica for the latter half of a full-day meditation "retreat" at the yoga center on Hill Street. I did my walking on the beach, and got to the retreat at about 1:00, just as the group of about 15 people was finishing their lunchtime clean-up and preparing to sit down on their zafus and zabutons for another thrilling afternoon of zazen seated meditation.

This particular meditation group is headed up by Brad Warner, the fellow whose book "Sit Down and Shut Up" I discussed in Friday's entry. I practiced zazen many years ago at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center under Joshu Sasaki Roshi, and I figured it would all come back to me. It did. Come back to me, that is. Especially the leg pain.

For some reason, I had the amazing good luck of sitting in front of an open window. Everybody else was staring at a wall. I figure this jaw-dropping special treatment by the universe is a direct result of my many years of fortune-building in the SGI (not). At any event, I was extremely lucky to get this open window, which looked out onto a vacant playground. So I sat there and sat there. At first I followed my breath, and then I tried really hard to ignore the pain in my legs, and then I tried counting the number of times the light over the playground flickered on and off.

Actually, the half-hour sessions were over more quickly than I anticipated, and I was glad to be able to get up and do some walking meditation. Slow, slow, walking. At first, ye olde feet were asleep, but I shook them out, and got in line with everybody else pretty well. A little bit of a limp at first, but after awhile OK.

Soto zen (the kind Warner practices) differs from Rinzai zen (the kind I practiced at Mt. Baldy) in that the Soto folks face the wall and the Rinzai folks face into the middle of the room. Wow. Also, Rinzai folks are generally assigned "koans" - those wacky problems you hear so much about, like what is the sound of one hand clapping, or if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. Soto (the wall-facers) don't have any of those cool problems to occupy your mind - you have to just sit there.

After the sitting and walking were over, the people sat around and talked for awhile, which was interesting. We also got some fab refreshments, such as hot tea and red bean paste cut into little blocks. The bean paste was good.

So, that was my boring day. Today, I cleaned, did laundry, and treated myself to a sushi roll.

You can wake up now.

Be mindful, be alert, be cool

Byrd in LA

Posted by wahzoh at September 16, 2007 04:49 PM