I'm up at the San Francisco Zen Center again. This place is getting to be like a second home or something. Or I'm getting to be like an unwanted guest who keeps stopping by and will never leave. But I'm here again anyway.
Starting Wednesday I'll be sitting a five-day sesshin at the Berkeley Zen Center. That should be boring. Don't know how I got talked into that one. But my friend Greg somehow managed to. This will be my second of four multi-day sittings I'm scheduled to do this year. God, how I hate them! And I'm not even leading this one! I'm just one of the grunts on the cushions.
I don't know if I should say I hate multi-day Zen sittings. I mean, I definitely do hate them. But I also enjoy them. The first time I did one I felt like I was embarking on a great adventure. After I'd done a dozen or so of them I started viewing them as a chore, especially when I started having to lead the damned things. Now I don't know how I view them. I have no real sense of anticipation or dread with this one. It's just a thing I'm doing. I'm still waiting for the company I work for (or do I?) to get their stuff together, which is supposed to happen sometime in July. So what else do I have to do? Might as well get some Zazen in.
I highly recommend anyone who's serious about Zen practice to do at least one multi-day sesshin a year. I think a two or three-day one is fine. Somehow the ones I lead in Shizuoka, Japan each year (see the link to your left for details) got extended to four days. And that's OK. But I kinda want to bring those back down to three again.
There's a depth of practice you get into in a multi-day sitting that just doesn't happen otherwise. It's good to get into this depth. But it's also important to come back out of it. Sometimes people get the mistaken impression that the deep stuff is somehow more important than the normal day-to-day stuff. And that's not true at all. Still, try a multi-day one sometime if you can.
But before that, I get to go talk at San Quentin again. That happens this afternoon. If I can, I'll post something about the trip tomorrow. That is, unless I get kidnapped in a prison uprising or something.
See ya(?).
