Zazen Logistics

[Jundo]

I've had an opposite experience. However, my situation is likely due to my shiftwork. I rarely have the house to myself and often have distractions. About the time I think I have a schedule or routine, something changes. This came very clear to me while sitting this morning. Toward the end of my sit, the boys came home making a lot of noise. This is fine. It is a lesson in impermanence. I realize that it is better to do Zazen with distractions than to wait or hope for the ideal situation. Also came to mind that a local sangha that I have sat with meets near a busy street. Is it better to find a quieter place? Maybe. But maybe it is just as well to sit whenever possible. For the most part, I've given up trying to schedule Zazen. Again, this is only my situation.
Gassho

I feel this is a good time to repost on Suzuki Roshi distinction of "sound" and "noise" . Yes, noise or anything is not really a "disturbance" without the mind to be "disturbed". If the mind is not "disturbed", then what "disturbance"? This is not merely about kids during Zazen, but all the moments in life which come to "bother" "interrupt" "ruin" etc. etc. our life.

Here is the video with Suzuki Roshi in which he distinguishes "sound" from "noise", and points out that "inside" and "outside" us is not a clear border ...

At our Zendo in Tsukuba, for our Saturday morning Zazenkai, birds can usually be heard chirping prettily in the surrounding trees ...

... but also, a truck or cars will frequently be heard rushing down the nearby road, carpenters banging fixing a neighbors roof, or a military helicopter passing overhead (I do not know why, but our house must be on some route they use to one of the nearby bases).

It has become one of the most powerful teaching tools I have for new students. I tell them that it is not to think "Oh, the birds are very lovely and peaceful ... but the trucks and helicopters disturb my nice Zazen". Rather, "the birds are singing as birds ... the trucks are trucks ... the copter just copters. Do not think one pleasant but the other ugly or detracting from the atmosphere. Then, there is a certain quiet and stillness that one can come hear behind and sounding right through all the sounds and noise."

I learned this sitting many a morning at Nishijima Roshi's old Zendo ... located right next to a NOISY child's playground and a highway.

Suzuki Roshi has a lovely little talk (one of his few video talks) on the mind's making "sound vs. noise". If I recall, his birds in the talk were not as pretty sounding as ours!

Gassho, Jundo (a really annoying guy, depending on how you hear me! )

PS - I was not sure why Suzuki Roshi found the Blue Jay's cry so intrusive, so I found this ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwImsK2Ggjc

[Shinyo]

Sound vs. noise. Yes. Thank you.
_/|\_

[delphizealot]

What amazes me is my capacity to make noise out of what would otherwise be silent. I tend to 'live inside my head' as it were and it gets rather noisy in there. Often I don't even hear the sounds of the birds because I'm too busy contemplating what they sound like. I even think about what my thinking is like and then write it down here for others to read and ponder, thus perpetuating these perceptions by stirring the imagination.

Sometimes, though, when it gets very quiet and even the sound ceases to make noise, the lack of thunder is deafening. Zazen is really rather anticlimactic.

[Jundo]

What amazes me is my capacity to make noise out of what would otherwise be silent. I tend to 'live inside my head' as it were and it gets rather noisy in there. Often I don't even hear the sounds of the birds because I'm too busy contemplating what they sound like. I even think about what my thinking is like and then write it down here for others to read and ponder, thus perpetuating these perceptions by stirring the imagination.

Sometimes, though, when it gets very quiet and even the sound ceases to make noise, the lack of thunder is deafening. Zazen is really rather anticlimactic.

[Byokan]

"Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin."
- Alan Watts

Gassho
Lisa

[Jinyo]

"Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin."
- Alan Watts

Gassho
Lisa

I like that quote Lisa - thank you.



Willow

[Stacy]

Hello Dan,

I see that a few of the suggestions consist of drinking something before zazen. I often like to eat some breakfast first myself, usually a bowl of cereal.

Gassho,
Stacy

[Meikyo]

Hi.

Thank you all for a nice thread!

Gassho.