moving, and sitting

Monday I closed on the house I've been buying for weeks.

From el casa de padre

The first furniture I brought to the house was a zafu & zabuton. (The second, not pictured, is a kneeling bench.)

I've been moving things from the old house to the new one all week with considerable help from family, and expect professional movers to play a significant role in things tomorrow.

Then comes the weekend Zen workshop & sesshin, followed by two more days off from work to settle in.

Although I am planning for practice space in the house, I hope I'll cultivate a habit of practice with local sangha and more/longer practice opportunities such as sesshin.

I suspect that neither daily nor intensive practice alone lead to the results of both daily and intensive practice. Same for solo & group.

upcoming zen workshop & sesshin

Next weekend I will participate in an "INTRODUCTION TO ZEN BUDDHISM" workshop from 8:30-5:00 Saturday and half-day sesshin on Sunday at the Jackson Zen Dojo.

I have participated in several introductions to Zen in various places, all in the same tradition. They provide great opportunities to practice with and learn from a teacher in a non-intimidating way, focusing on basics of practice.

I don't know just yet what the specific sesshin schedule will be, but in a general sense I know to expect plenty of zazen, kinhin (walking zazen), and possibly some samu (mindful work practice).

For me, a typical zazen session when practicing alone means setting a meditation timer for a set period of time with a few audible reminders to return to mindfulness in case my mind wanders during the session. If I am practicing for longer than one session, I will generally choose sessions of around 25 minutes in zazen practice with kinhin between sessions.

Time is precious over the upcoming week, as I am closing on and moving into a house by my office, but I hope to practice zazen quite a bit in preparation for sesshin.

a few comments (still in Lesson One)

It gets easier.

I'd gotten out of the habit of a daily practice for quite some time, so while the material and practice are not new to me, I still experience my body and mental processes enduring some training.

The first session was the most challenging, and there was plenty enough of wanting the session to reach a timely end. This is very normal, and shouldn't discourage one from continuing the practice. Over even the first few sessions, concentration deepens and the practice becomes more natural.

Behaving in a manner that supports meditation:

Starting with the first instructional CD, one is introduced to a few behavioral suggestions intended to help with the practice. They are simple guidelines such as avoiding saying harmful things that may lead to troubled thoughts and difficulty concentrating during practice.

If you completely disregard these, I believe it's safe to say that your practice will be more difficult. If you have gotten yourself into trouble during the course of your daily life, that troubled mind will still be with you as you engage in your practice session. It's not that practice will be impossible, but the frustrations you've introduced can make it hard to relax and focus on the task at hand.

Workbook exercises:

Due to time constraints, I had been practicing the guided meditations for a few days before I made it to the exercises at the end of Lesson One in the workbook.

My impression now is that someone completely new to Insight Meditation practice may benefit from not only listening to the audio instruction for Lesson One (a few times, I'd suggest) but also read through the workbook introduction and Lesson One through the exercises before starting the guided meditations.

This might also be of value to someone looking to race through the coursework as quickly as possible for whatever reasons. (And I can think of a few perfectly good reasons one might wish to do so off-hand.)

The reason for this is that the exercises may be performed during the guided meditation sessions. The guided meditations aren't of the "Now imagine you're walking along a solitary beach..." variety, but simply a dharma teacher gently coaching you through a practice session just as would happen on retreat.

How to make my own zafu and zabuton

The following is a post I made on the 43things website when I noticed several people have set goals of making a zafu and zabuton.

"After tracking down plans and materials, it took two people a matter of hours to produce multiple zafu and zabuton sets."

How I did it: I made both zafu and zabuton several years ago as a weekend project with my mother. We found a few common designs on the internet (which can still be found easily via your preferred search engine) and compared them against the zafu and zabuton I already owned. We already had most of the fabric required, sewing machines, and a few other items. We obtained buckwheat hulls and kapok from a few different sources (not difficult to obtain at all).

As I wanted to carry my zabuton easily, one zabuton we made is a two-panel design with handles on the outer edges. I just tuck the zafu and smile cushion (made at the same time, filled with buckwheat hulls) inside. And as cotton is a local crop, and my mother grew up on a cotton farm, we obtained cotton seed hulls with plenty of cotton still attached, and made a few cushions from this material as well. But dealing with raw cotton is not for the timid, as boll weavils are a problem my mother just happened to know how to deal with.

Lessons & tips: Measure twice, and cut once.

Sit on cusions of various sizes first, if you can, so you know more about what the final product should be like.

You will probably use either kapok or buckwheat, but they are totally different experiences. Try both first if you can, so you can know what will suit you.

Resources: Your preferred search engine can provide everything you need. But we also obtained some materials through a local supplier of goods for furniture construction.

Carolina Morning Designs (zafu.net) was glad to supply the rest of the raw materials. I'm certain many other reputable vendors can be found online, as well.

It took me 2 days.

It made me quite pleased

See more progress on: Make my own zafu and zabuton

My second 45-minute sitting session for Lesson One was last night.

The individual taking the course is the ultimate decision-maker in how often to sit, for how long, at what time of day, etc.

For now, at least, I'm taking Sharon's advice of spending at least 7 days in the practice part of each lesson. I sit on a zafu and zabuton, with a couple of other small cushions to produce a seated position that works well for me.

I've been starting at or just after 9 p.m., which is convenient for me in that it allows time for local noise and other distractions to become minimal.

You can practice Vipassana in the middle of tremendous distraction, and noisy neighbors will likely factor into the equation this weekend, but at least the first two nights were characterized by Sharon's voice and the rhythmic whir of the ceiling fan above me.

To my near astonishment, the cat hasn't been pestering me during these sessions, but if he begins to do so, I'll do my best to roll with it.

first comments on the course

The course arrived Tuesday morning, and I spent a good bit of the evening ripping the lessons to my Zune, as I'm on the go a lot and also wanted the most convenient possible way to play the guided meditation parts.

Everything from the box itself to the workbook and discs were surprisingly professional in appearance and composition. That's always a plus, although I'd have been content with something just cheaply slapped together, to be honest.

I've played the Lesson 1 audio material a few times now, mainly during my drive to/from work, and sat with the Lesson 1 guided meditation session on mindfulness of breathing and hearing last night (a 45-minute sitting session, which I understand to be the norm for this series).

Initially, I'm digging the approach to both the lessons (supplemented in the workbook) and the guided meditation. I don't have to watch a clock or remember to set a meditation timer with these, as you're informed when it's done just as though you were in a dharma center. In fact, with eyes closed and Sharon's voice in my Zune headphones, the sitting session was essentially indistinguishable from one in a dharma center.

The lesson content sounds a lot like a planned dharma talk from a Vipassana teacher, so the whole experience really is very much like sitting with sangha.

Insight Meditation: An In-Depth Correspondence Course

I was first introduced to Insight Meditation (aka Vipassana) in the mid-1990s shortly after completing my Bachelor's in Psychology.

It really fit me quite well, and I learned a fair little bit about Insight, Zen, and related areas of study & practice.

Over the next several weeks I will be moving and settling into a new home, and decided to mark the transition by working through Insight Meditation: An In-Depth Correspondence Course by Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein.

A more detailed breakdown of the lessons is found at Tools for Wellness (with which I'm not personally familiar as a vendor).

My basic understanding is that the course takes at least about three months to complete, but may be completed over a longer period of time based on personal pace.

One can be introduced to the basics of Insight in a variety of ways, ranging from 10-day bootcamp-like retreats to series of lessons in a group environment. I've never participated in a multiple day retreat before, although I have participated in a number of day-long retreats.

The approach I'll be taking here will be, to some extent, a return to familiar territory. But I won't be surprised if I find I'm introduced to newer or deeper experience with Vipassana in the process.

I intend to share some comments in this blog as I progress through the series, and I hope someone finds a bit of something worthwhile here.