zenjones

I was anxious going into sesshin because Ezra had told me a few days earlier that I was jisha. I don’t mind that job for our own Santa Rosa sesshin, but all I could think about was how unworthy I was to do it in San Diego, and that everyone would be judging me as not being senior enough or a good enough student to have that job and would be waiting for me to screw up.

There is a bell-ringing sequence that the jisha does with the timekeeper after a teacher gives a dharma talk, and I was all stressed-out about getting this right. Barbara (timekeeper) was coaching me in the zendo, when over her shoulder I spotted the flowers on the altar. They were a lovely, ethereal arrangement of pink Gerbera daisies floating over rose-shaped succulents in a long, shallow vase, and they looked like lotus blossoms in a pond. But there were no thoughts about the flowers. I just noticed them without realizing that I was noticing them.

Later during the dharma talk, someone made a comment that made me think (somewhat contemptuously), “Well, duh!” As I labeled the judgment and started scold myself for indulging my little self, I looked towards the altar and saw the flowers again. Then I remembered how I had seen them earlier, and I seeing them again I felt something open up. I thought about how one could be full of small self pettiness and yet still be able to take in something beautiful outside the small self. I realized that not only was the small self judging others, but that my fears of being judged by others assumed that they were coming from their small selves. The flowers triggered the momentary ability to just take something in and experience it directly, so I was able to apprehend in that moment the big self that contains the small, and that in fact, it is one big self that contains all of our small ones.

I messed up the bell-ringing after that particular dharma talk, but I got it right the next time.