It’s now Day 4 of the Silent Retreat. We sit with the blinds open on Long Quan Monastery and its simple gardens. There are birds chirping in another morning. Rain falls dimly over the flowers and rooftops and walks of the yard, and all is empty anyway, so be glad of moments like this.
I feel a great deal of promise today. While yesterday I meditated three stubborn hours through the morning, today I am in tip-top mood and have not felt this happy yet in China.
There’s a mud slide in the road outside the diamond-clear window. The monks put a walkway of splintered boards across the way. My shoes got muddy as I ferried laundry above the boards. My clothes are soaking wet after two days on a rainy line. The air is fog or smoggy water that dries nothing.
It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day. We did taiji in the drizzle at 5:30. My favorite move is the one punch in our sequence. Breathing through my dong tien (in Japanese, hara) has built my immune system into a stronger beast, in the sulfurous dew of the mornings. My acupuncturist friend, Rob, diagnosed me with low yang energy, and this subtle condition makes it hard to thrive in damp places, like Seattle. This tradition Chinese diagnosis was a loaded bowl of greens I hit every day and will continue on. More to come once meditation’s done.
Night has come. 8 hours in meditations today. Another profound morning, as I sat 2hrs 30 min. Feeling the good chi rolling in my hara as I prep for dinner.
It was a tough day. As many or all of them are here. I carry a great contradiction in me. In one part, a burgeoning zen pirate who’s bound to love every robin that lays an egg, and gorge on the sunset over rum. In another port, a pious layman, nonchalant and anonymous, contemplating the dharma with his jasmine tea. In yet a third, further round the bay, a monk of flesh and bone, who travels the road west transmuting jing into all the higher faculties while meditating his winters away. It is but all three in me. Or not, for who is me, you cry on a rooftop in Taiyuan.
what we are stepping into 