Return of Za Zen

No matter how good I thought zazen is for me, I haven't been sitting since I came home. Why? Probably because I'm a lazy bastard when it comes to arranging private time for personal practise (whatever that may be) if I have to do it at home. If there's a place I can go and do it, then it's not a problem - I'll just schedule it. But if I'm just doing it home, by myself - ha!

Amazing how it's always too "busy" to take 20min for zazen? How it doesn't even cross your mind, of if it does, you'll just brush it off and file it to the mental "maybe later" file. And it does bother me when I think about it. There's always a hundred things to do, and plenty of time to do them, but somehow you don't even start as you're too busy - meaning you've been staring at the same "Inbox" screen for 45min without even blinking. No, the emails don't come faster nor more often no matter how intently you stare.

I'm dulling down. The life is streaming so predictably on and on that from time to time it seems to suck all the energy out of me. I'm not sure whether it's better or worse than the continous anxiety, the jumping between total heights and total lows, but I can confidently say that at the moment, I'm bored and I don't like it. And what am I contemplating of doing to get the flame back to my life? Some more boredom in the form of zazen.

I know it's not politacally correct to say this, but for me zazen is boring as hell. Actually, I have this doubt that everyone who isn't EVER bored by zazen isn't doing it correctly (or then I'm the one getting it all wrong - that a strong possibility too) - it's a bit like the rumour that shiatsu should be relaxing, while my personal experience is that it hurts like hell (the same caveat of my assumed infallibility stands here). I don't like shiatsu, but sometimes it's what I need. I don't like eating fish oil capsules, but if I do, my knees hurt a lot less. Likewise, I might be bored to death by zazen, but I know it's good for me. Sometimes zazen even feels good while I'm doing it, but that's a rare phenomenon, and it always happened at the temple, never alone.

But even with the boredom I feel the need for it once again. And why? Because of a book. I know, books get me crazy all the time, but this one managed to be one of the better books about zen that I've read this far: Hardcore Zen by Michael Warner. It's not the perfect book about zen, but it's got attitude - and it just reminded me of something: you can make up as many reasons for not sitting down for zazen, but in the end the only one you're kidding is yourself. Just sit down and shut up, nothing else matters. I read about zen, I write about zen and I think about zen - but those are actually quite unrelated to the actual practise of zen. The former are my work, and they can't stand in for the actual practise, no matter what I try to tell myself. So, back to the zendô it is.