It was back to work this morning after two weeks of vacation, and I got up at 5:30 to run outside in the freezing cold. This was the best way for me to jump whole-heartedly back into the working day: a preliminary run through the darkened streets, still trailing sleepiness behind me, as the cold wind struck my face over and over. Wake up! I returned home after 40 minutes or so not merely awake, but alive and exhilarated. Even now, shortly after lunch, I can still feel the traces from the morning’s run in my lungs and legs — a faint, pleasant afterburn.
Tonight is Zazen Monday for me at the zendo, and it will be cold there as well. The heat is kept off inside the zendo unless it’s being used, and we Monday nighters tend to show up in the final minutes before zazen begins. That makes the first of the evening’s three sits more than a little chilly, and it feels colder because you’re just sitting there with literally nothing to do – not running around, moving your body and generating more heat.
But as I sit on my cushion double-wrapped in a sweatshirt pulled over a t-shirt, the furnace labors noisily to produce heat through the meditation hall, and my body and mind labor to adjust to the continual changes of sound and temperature. Eventually, usually just a few minutes before the bell rings to signal the end of the final sit for the evening, my body and mind get tired of laboring to keep up and just accept the way things are. That is always so liberating.
Gradually adjusting on your own, slapped to awareness by the wind … however it happens, waking up is worth the effort. Here’s to less time asleep in 2010.
