{"id":143,"date":"2009-10-03T12:31:14","date_gmt":"2009-10-03T20:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenjones.bravoecho.net\/?p=143"},"modified":"2009-10-03T12:31:14","modified_gmt":"2009-10-03T20:31:14","slug":"first-day-of-practice-period-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenjones.bravoecho.net\/?p=143","title":{"rendered":"First day of practice period 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-145 alignleft\" title=\"stormy\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/stormy-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"stormy\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/>My expectation was that I&#8217;d be all zen-like, present, and with a little Buddha smile on. My overall practice concentration is thought-labeling, to help me be aware of my gap, which I consider to be my unwillingness to sit with fear. I revert to anger, and that has never done me any good.<\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t been zen-like today. I&#8217;ve been cranky and defensive and suspicious and many other un-zen behaviors. I try to be aware, but you know? Self-righteousness is a lot more fun.<\/p>\n<p>Last night I explained our practice&#8217;s thoughts about fear, starting with Ezra&#8217;s great article in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tricycle.com\/insights\/the-three-things-we-fear-most\" target=\"_blank\">Tricycle<\/a>, to my husband. He is not a \u00c2\u00a0Zen practitioner, but he is a good listener. Certainly when I was done I felt like I had it all goin&#8217; on. I understood how my conditioned fears transformed into thoughts and sensations which made me uncomfortable, so I got mad, and blamed him. It seemed so obvious, so easy to be aware of.<\/p>\n<p>But by this morning I was all wound up again. He said some innocuous thing which I could somehow interpret as dangerous or insulting, and I reacted with anger, and sheesh.<\/p>\n<p>So now I am practice with guilt and self-judgement. There&#8217;s always something useful for practice. Period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My expectation was that I&#8217;d be all zen-like, present, and with a little Buddha smile on. My overall practice concentration is thought-labeling, to help me be aware of my gap, which I consider to be my unwillingness to sit with fear. I revert to anger, and that has never done me any good. I haven&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anger","category-fear","category-practice-period"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenjones.bravoecho.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenjones.bravoecho.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenjones.bravoecho.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenjones.bravoecho.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenjones.bravoecho.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenjones.bravoecho.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenjones.bravoecho.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenjones.bravoecho.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenjones.bravoecho.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}