Small Moments, Many Times

I have been rereading Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal talks on Zen meditation and practice, by Shunryu Suzuki, the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center. It looks like I read this book formerly in May, 2010. I remember finding it largely incomprehensible. This time around, after having studied at a Zen center for the past two years, it makes considerably more sense.

This was particularly helpful: “When you are sitting in the middle of your own problem, which is more real to you: your problem or you yourself? The awareness that you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact.”

He also points out that there is no Nirvana outside our practice, our practice being to not be lost in thought. He likens it to traveling along a set of train tracks with no beginning and no end. We will never arrive anywhere. The whole point is simply to keep rolling along the tracks.

I thought about Howie periodically saying, perhaps quoting someone else, “Small moments, many times.” It would be great to be constantly aware of one of the six sense doors (in Buddhism, the mind counts as one of the senses), but impossible. Feeling one’s foot on the ground for one second: entirely doable, and a little but real break from whatever the problem is.

It also made me think of Paul Haller of the San Francisco Zen Center advocating taking a pause as often as possible. I don’t mean to sound dimwitted, but for the longest, I was like, “Pause what?” What is it that ceases during a pause? Life doesn’t. Breathing doesn’t. Input at the six sense doors doesn’t. What is it that we are trying to stop? Well, duh, of course it is being lost in thought.

So my practice these days is to feel my feet on the floor, count to three, and really appreciate how my problem fades away. I can do this as many times a day as I want! I do feel an uptick in general equanimity.

I have five chaplain colleagues who are also applying for board certification this year, all at my same hospital. We had a meeting to check in about how it’s going. I vented thoroughly. I would like to have one person who is in charge of listening to all my complaints, but there isn’t one, so everyone everywhere has to listen to my complaints. My colleagues graciously did, and empathized, as well. I pointed out that the backdrop to all this stress is the giant fact of Hammett having cancer.

Within minutes of making my whole team listen to every detail of my problems, I got an email saying an issue with my undergraduate college transcripts had been cleared up and that they were in the mail, and another from HR saying per diems are not paid for jury duty, which was good news (I incorrectly assumed at the time). This seemed to prove that it pays to complain.

A couple of days later, I got one of the hours signoff letters mentioned in the previous post, and one of the recommendation letters, so it was all in fact falling into place. I also met with my boss about the two verbatims I am going to submit with my application, and she thought one was excellent and that the other would also be fine. She pointed out several aspects of both that would never have occurred to me, so it was a very helpful meeting.

On Ash Wednesday, a fun day for chaplains, I was requested to return to all three of our campuses at night to impose ashes for patients. However, this was per three voice mails that had come in much earlier, which I normally check constantly. Either I blew it on this chaotic day, or there was some sort of glitch. I called one of the campuses to ask the nurse to ask the patient if she really, really wanted me to come in, given that I’d be coming from home. (I know. I am a bad chaplain.) The patient kindly said it would be perfectly fine if I did not, which made me feel so guilty that I went. I also went to one of the other hospitals, and it turned out my boss was working late at the third, and she went and imposed the ashes herself, which she said she enjoyed.

One of my cab drivers that evening said, “Your hair is very short! It looks nice! Maybe I’ll see you later!”