goofy out loud

“Conceal your practice, function in secret, seem for all the world like a fool or an idiot.” – Dongshan

I try to pay good attention to this advice, and leave what I call ‘my Zen practice’ separate from the weekly comings and goings here in Couch Surfing. Too esoteric, too non-sensicle, too wacky…..boring. And yet it’s not, and frankly, saying, “Just make yourself master of every situation, and wherever you stand is the true place” is no different than me saying it’s been a hard rain falling, or I’d love the surf-green telecaster, or my rent is high. Just another way to talk about how it is. Even so, I’ve done my darndest to keep that out of this.

But Sunday morning I had the thought that intentionally trying to leave any of my ‘practice’ out of what I compose and share here is like trying to keep my right-handedness out of writing my Morning Pages. Everything is woven together. So it feels, here this Monday, that there may be coming, as honoring, a week or so of leaning more directly into what I’m forever leaning out from.

By the way, all this is no other than difficult times last week.

And, as we used to say in Somerville, Massachusetts – “There’s still time to get to another meeting.”