How To Enter a Zendo
It matters how we enter a zendo. It isn’t a concert hall. It’s not a job. It doesn’t go anywhere.
Here we are — three words meaning the same thing. Before we settle, before we sit down, when the cushion is still over there, after we’ve taken off our shoes, there’s an imaginary doorway. It is both imaginary and a doorway.
This doorway has been going on for some time now. It’s a kind of dance step. We transition from the dance of everyday to the dance of releasing. We can do that here. We do that here.
There were some questions about Zen, which I’ve forgotten. Back then, there was something I’d decided to do, and it’s led to this.
My legs know how to sit. Creation knows how to sound, how to look, how to smell, how to feel. The earth is large but it doesn’t crush me. We adhere easily.
We walk to the other shore and sit and stand and walk back and turnstyle at the imaginary door, put our things on and leave through the real one. The room is not dark, the room is not quiet. Our memories of it become dark and quiet. Our memories dream about a room that never exists.
I was taught to enter the zendo to the left. To stop, place my hands together, bow, then go in. At home I drop a mat on the floor and stand facing it. I bow and chant some and sit and that’s good enough. Last year I took a train ride and sat zazen in my seat on the train those days.
While we’re gone the zendo wears off, so it has to be put back on every time. Once it’s put back, we bow because it’s there to bow to.
All this started a very long time ago, the bowing and the hands and the sitting, certainly the chanting. Because we do it, it will outlast us. We’re just carrying it around awhile.
Let go, do as little as possible. Sit up straight and pay attention. It’s that simple. Just being our posture, from the doorway in. What could be easier?
Image: Creative Commons via Pixabay