Run With Mu

Up at 4:30 a.m. this morning for a 1.5 hour run before heading into work. There is rarely a more spectacular everyday example of the riverlike quality of our existence than to witness the last scattered stars still fading slowly as the eastern horizon begins to glow. As I glanced at the sky today, I was grateful to have been aware of it.

I’ve been reading several commentaries on the Heart Sutra, and seeing the dawn and evening at the same moment is a beautifully simple example of how form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. Without the day, there could be no night. Without night, no day. Without neither, both. So much of Zen often sounds like an amusing paradox, the relentlessly frustrating peeling of an onion with no center, but those paradoxes once again reconciled themselves to me this morning.

What a gift running is!

I’m pleased with how training is going so far. It’s still early days, but I’m feeling a level of strength and resolve that I haven’t felt since my first 100-miler last February. I think it essentially took me almost a year to fully recover from my first 100, at least mentally. Fortunately, as some famous runner said (I think it was Frank Shorter, but I’m not sure), it’s usually long enough between our major race efforts that we forget how the last one felt — or otherwise we might not ever climb on the back of that particular bronco again.

As part of my irregular personal reading on the foundational classics of Zen Buddhism, I’m starting to dissect the Heart Sutra, which has been called “Buddhism in a nutshell.” I have three commentaries to work from: a somewhat scholarly but highly readable effort by the estimable Red Pine (Bill Porter), a more general practitioner’s look by Thich Nhat Hanh, and an odd, slim little volume by Mu Soeng that apparently approaches it largely from the viewpoint of modern physics. If I realize any running-related insights as I read, I’ll post them here.

Oh, and if you’re in the Dallas area tonight and jonesing for some zazen, join us at St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church at 7:30 Central for an hour and a half of non-thinkingness, as part of our sangha’s Central Dallas outreach. I monitor the sit (meaning I’m the bell ringer/timekeeper, not that I’m taking names of the noisy), and Ruben Habito, our lead teacher, will be offering dokusan for the first time on Thursday nights. Join us if you can!

Two of the major running shoe manufacturers used “Just Do It” and “Run Happy” as their advertising taglines. Who knew that the free market economy could be so philosophical? I can understand how people might think these are not only competing taglines but competing viewpoints, although I tend to feel they’re complementary. But here’s a running koan: which came first, the doing or the happy? If you try to run happy, you’re merely adding something else to your running and just making more work. Which won’t make you happy. If you just do it, fully experiencing the run and accepting it for what it is, you’ll be better than happy, since “happy” comes and goes. But how many of us just do it? Do you feel your lungs work, your heart pound, the earth’s rise and fall under your rushing feet, the breeze tickling your eyelids, the burn in your calves as you crest that hill? Or is your your run just a series of anxious glances at some device parsing out your passing moments in minutes and seconds? Just do it, and run happy.