Zazen with a supervisor
5:40am. Bell, bow, sit. Facing the wall, eyes half open, breath going wherever breath goes.
At 5:43 Miso, my cat, sits directly between me and the wall, fully in my field of vision, and stares. Not cute staring. Supervisor staring.
Old me would have counted that as a ruined sit. These days I think Miso is the sit. Here is a thing appearing. Here is my mind wanting it to be different. Here is breath, still going.
By 5:50 she was asleep against my knee. By 6:00 so was my foot. Both counted.
Japji Sahib at a truck stop
3:50am at a truck stop outside Moose Jaw, minus four, the engine ticking as it cools. Head covered, phone propped on the dash, I recite Japji Sahib the way my Bapu ji did on the farm in Punjab: slowly, never racing the words.
Out here it's just me, the reefer units humming, and frost on the windshield like lace. People think the road is lonely. Not at amrit vela. Waheguru is in the quiet before the diesel starts.
Then an Ardas for everyone on the highway today, the ones I'll pass and never meet. Safe roads, sangat.
Spring in Melbourne, which means the morning libation on the balcony can finally happen without a jacket. The jacarandas are thinking about it.
Same order every day. Wash hands in khernips (water, a pinch of salt). Light the little oil lamp for Hestia in its glass chimney. Pour a splash of watered wine into the libation bowl. Then the Homeric Hymn, read aloud in a terrible accent:
'Hestia, you who tend the holy house... come now into this house, and bestow grace upon my song.'
She gets the first offering and the last, always. Lamp out before I leave for work. A goddess of the hearth would not approve of me burning the flat down.