When I was up at San Francisco Zen Center I got to meet the legendary David Chadwick, author of Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki
and one of my all time fave books about Zen and Japan, Thank You and Ok!: An American Zen Failure in Japan
. Go buy them both. He also maintains a great website about Shunryu Suzuki called cuke.com. David was attending the cremation ceremony for Idilio, a longtime Zen Center resident. I have moved into my new home. But I am still without an Internet connection of my own. So I have to rely on cafes and libraries. Right now I'm in Whole Foods in Torrance using their kindly provided free wireless internet. I may become an expert at finding free wireless internet since my income has shrunk drastically lately. This means I have even less ability to respond to all the nice e-mails people send me than I did before.
I was sitting Zazen this morning and this thought flew by. A lot of people sit Zazen and find their brains full of noise and chatter, then they think that this stuff is a distraction to their "real" practice. No. That chatter and noise is your real practice.
I'd venture to say that about half the questions I get from book and blog readers are some variation on this problem and my answer is some variation on that answer. No matter how many times I rephrase it, though, someone always comes along with a "Yeah, but..." and I need to find a new way to say the same thing. This is fine, since it keeps me off the streets and out of trouble. And my various rephrasings of this same answer continue to sell as new books and Suicide Girls articles.
Gotta go look for new ways to make money now. Gotta eat, you know. Suggestions welcome.
Enjoy!
