Japa has a boundary condition
Morning japa on the streetcar: 108 beads, 'Om Shri Matre Namah' on each one, mala tucked in my coat pocket because it's already minus two and I value my fingers.
Something my amma taught me that I love: when you reach the meru, the larger guru bead, you don't cross over it. You turn the mala around and go back the way you came.
As a software tester, I find this deeply satisfying. It's a boundary condition. You never run off the end of the array. Devi has excellent error handling.
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.
Ten-hour break outside Thunder Bay, rain on the roof of the cab. Before I sleep I do simran: just Waheguru, quietly, over and over, the beads of my mala moving under my thumb. Wahe on the in-breath, guru on the out.
People ask if I get lonely out here. Truthfully, when the Name is going, the cab feels as full as the gurdwara on Gurpurab. Then I sleep like a baby, and the alarm goes at 3:30 for Japji Sahib.
Safe roads to everyone driving through the night.
Standing like a tree in the rain
Tai chi in the park this morning with the regulars: four aunties and Mr. Huang, who is ninety-one and still has the straightest spine in the whole park.
It drizzled, so we skipped the form and did zhan zhuang, standing post. Knees soft, arms rounded like you're hugging a big ball, and then nothing. Just standing, twenty minutes.
My grandmother used to say the tree doesn't fight the rain. It lets the water run down to its roots. I thought about that with rain running down my sleeves and into my armpits, which was less poetic, but I think still the point.
Ten minutes, and I lasted about four
Tried meditating for the first time. Set a timer for ten minutes, sat on the floor, and by minute four I had mentally reorganized my entire kitchen and drafted an email to my landlord.
Is that... normal? I don't have a religion, so I wasn't praying to anyone or repeating anything sacred, just trying to notice my breathing. Is there a version of this that doesn't belong to a particular tradition, or am I borrowing something that isn't mine?
Genuinely asking. Everyone here has been so kind about the beginner questions.
Same oak, same root, same muddy patch on the seat of my waterproof trousers. Forty weeks now of sitting here every Sunday for twenty minutes, counting birdsong.
Today: robin, wren, two jackdaws arguing, a buzzard mewing far off, and a thin high song I didn't know until the app named it a goldcrest, which made me unreasonably happy.
At the end I intone the awen three times, quietly, because there's a dog walker who already thinks I'm odd. I don't sit to get anything. I sit so the wood gets used to me. I think it's starting to.
The choir tune that won't leave
Centering prayer is meant to be simple. Twenty minutes, one sacred word, and when you notice you've drifted into thoughts, you return ever so gently to the word. Thoughts are boats going down a river; you don't have to climb aboard.
This week every single boat has been the alto line of the Advent anthem we're rehearsing. Twenty minutes, roughly forty returns, and I could sing you bars 12 to 30 in my sleep.
Julian of Norwich would tell me this is fine. All shall be well, and all manner of descant shall be well. I return to the word. The altos return to bar 12. We carry on.
The twins had a fight this morning over which of them 'owns' the blue cup. We have two blue cups.
In the car I did what I've started doing on hard mornings: the loving-kindness phrases. May you be safe. May you be at peace. First for me (hardest). Then for each twin (easier, they were finally quiet). Then for the dad in the silver SUV who honked at me in the drop-off loop (hardest again, round three).
By the end I was laughing a little. He was probably late too. His kids probably also own the same cup. Nam mô A Di Đà Phật, and may we all make it through this week.
The facilitator who couldn't lie still
Confession: I hold sound baths for other people two nights a week, and until recently I could not get through one myself. Lie down, close my eyes, and immediately start answering emails in my head.
What finally helped wasn't a fancier bowl. It was permission. A friend led me through one and said at the start, 'You don't have to relax. You just have to stay.'
So I stayed. Fidgeted, planned, stayed. Somewhere in the long hum of the last bowl my jaw unclenched for what felt like the first time in weeks.
Resting without guilt is still a practice for me, not an achievement. But I'm staying.
Right palm up, left palm down
When the semazen turns, the right palm faces up to receive from heaven and the left faces down to pass it on to the earth. Nothing is kept. The whole teaching, in two hands.
I don't whirl much anymore; my knees vote no. But after the evening prayer I sit with my hands like that on my knees and breathe with a phrase a Naqshbandi friend gave me: hush dar dam, awareness in the breath. Every breath in, received. Every breath out, given away.
Ten minutes. Then the tea goes on, as always.
Watching the divo
We Zoroastrians don't really have 'meditation' the way my yoga friends mean it. But we do have fire, and we do have quiet.
In the evenings I light the divo: a little glass of water with a layer of oil floating on top and a cotton wick in a tin float. It sits on a steel thali on the kitchen shelf, nowhere near the curtains, and I never leave the room while it's lit. The cat has been informed.
Then I simply sit and look at it while my tea cools. For us, fire is a symbol of Ahura Mazda's light and of asha, truth and right order. Ten minutes with the flame and I remember which side I'm trying to be on.
Brother Anselm gives me the bread every Tuesday now, which is either an honour or a penance depending on how it rises.
I've been reading The Cloud of Unknowing with my novice master. The anonymous author says we can't reach God by thinking, only by love, and that we should 'beat upon that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love.' I've loved that line since I first read it, and I've also had no idea how to actually do it.
On Tuesday I was kneading, eight loaves' worth, and somewhere around minute six my mind did its usual thing. Lists. Latin vocabulary. Whether my mother is sleeping well. And then, for a short while, it stopped. Not emptied, exactly. Just the push and fold, the heel of my hand, the dough growing smoother and warmer. One small word kept returning with each push. I won't say which word; the Cloud suggests keeping it to a single syllable, and keeping it to yourself.
When I told my novice master, I expected him to say that was only concentration, not prayer. He thought for a long time, as he does, and said, 'The author was a monk. He probably made bread too.'
The loaves were a bit dense. Brother Anselm said they tasted prayerful, which I have decided to take as a compliment.
One breath at the door before every patient's room. In: I'm here. Out: you're not alone. Twelve rooms today, twelve breaths. Some days that's my whole practice, and it's enough.
Day nine of sitting for five minutes before I open my laptop. I'm not good at it. My mind still wanders off by second ten. But this morning I noticed I've stopped dreading the five minutes, which feels like news.
Someone asked what Quakers do in all that silence. Mostly we wait, and not for anything in particular. Some weeks the waiting is the answer.
Sit still. Write down every twitch.
Working through the asana exercise in Liber E this month. The instruction is simple to the point of insult: choose a posture, hold it, and record in your diary every time you move.
Week one: 3 minutes 40 seconds before my left eyebrow made an independent decision. Week three: 11 minutes, interrupted by the neighbour's leaf blower and my own impatience, in that order.
What nobody tells you is how revealing the diary becomes. Every twitch has a thought attached to it, and most of mine, it turns out, are about whether I'm doing it right. Discipline, not costume. The robe stays in the closet for this one.