Transition Practice
Stayed home and rested much of the weekend. I still feel like my energy just deserts me at times, but the head/ear pain has subsided. I'm feeling a bit gloomy that I have 5 more doses of the antibiotics. They're working but they make me feel a bit nauseated and leave my mouth tasting as though I have a handful of pennies in it.
I taught a class on Sunday that ended up with many adjustments, to such a degree that it was good practice to stay with compassion even while I felt frustration arise. When I finally gave space, silence to it I am able to see that frustration really arises out of the fear that my students will feel like I don't give individual attention fairly and that I worry some students may need assistance but I am often asked to help a very stiff, over-achieving student.
Today I took a big step in my teaching. I've started to contact friends who are also yoga teachers to see if any of them want to take over my classes at Dishman at the beginning of the year. Right now I have the luxury of working out details to offer a class at my Zen center. I see it more of a way to enrich my practice of teaching by letting it become even more deeply co-rooted to the Dharma. I'm also checking around at other studios to see about teaching a class somewhere else.
I think I am finally being able to let go of the "guaranteed money" of teaching at the community center. I have these two classes, I'm always on the schedule, and I get paid regularly. Not a lot, but for the past 4 years it has become something of my personal fund for books, a couple of my tattoos, and clothing. Once I could start to let go of that I could start to approach people I'd really like to take over my class.
I have a big soft spot in my heart for these classes. I've learned so much in teaching them and I want to leave them feeling as though I've done everything I can to support those classes continuation. I believe at least one student will follow me when I move to the Dharma center, so perhaps I'll get to experience that connection to my first teaching practice as I move into new waters of teaching.
And I've been having fun working on two "Artist Trading Cards". Autumn themed and I've been playing around with pressing leaves then decoupaging them down. On one I've drawn a very simple tree in pastels against a grey, about-to-rain sky. Another has three leaves on muted, smeared oranges and yellows.
The Autumn rain awoke me early this morning, before the alarm, and I snuggled down a bit with a cat while listening to it on the roof (I love that my bedroom is under the attic so I can hear the rain on the roof). The day that ended with an orange-y sunset peeking through dark grey clouds. All that in mind, a haiku for the rain.
Autumn Downpour
Dawn and hard rain sound,
Thrum of water on my roof.
Autumn serenade.
30 Poems – Day 5
Thursdays make for a long day for me. Work and zazen; usually I get home around 10PM. Today I met CK and DT for dinner at Laughing Planet on SE Belmont in between the two things, making for no real break at all. I'd realized that they would be the hard days to come up with a new poem! Mindful of that, the walk home from the bus stop inspired a new haiku:
Spring's Impatience
“Snow’s cold novelty
Has entirely worn off.”
Say Spring’s first blossoms.
Words
CK commented the other day I was prolific, maybe I've already mentioned this. I wasn't sure at first if this was OK, if my wordy-ness was a bother. There's a bit of a laugh in it since so often I feel like I am at a loss for words. I have tried to make writing be part of my practice in order to help me sort out words from the cacophony of competing voices or find the way out in moments of fear.
Next month some members of my Sangha have proposed a challenge -- 30 poems in 30 days. Seems like both another outlet for writing practice as well as a way to reconnect with writing poetry. In the past few years the occasional haiku has been about it. Since it was the first type of poetry I learned about it feels like I've gone back to my roots somehow.
I don't have any of those first haiku poems I wrote. I wonder now what they were like -- full of all the earnestness, curiosity and silliness of my nine year-old self. 31 years later and I'm still fascinated by the rhythm of haiku, the way the handful of words shift around until they settle down.
On that note, one came to me last night when CK asked if I'd posted something to test a blog she's started for the Sangha Poem Challenge. I didn't have anything new to post there and couldn't think of anything at that moment, I didn't have any words handy.
And then words arrived.
Finding Words
Sometimes the words come
Slowly - like finding agates
Scattered on the shore.
Walking Meditation
This arose out of a comment made by one of the Zen priests in my community during kinhin, or walking meditation, last night at the Dharma Center. He remarked upon the deliciousness of the sounds of kinhin in the zendo. Later that night CK remarked that kinhin at the Monastery, with the beautiful bamboo floors, that it sounds like a heartbeat.
And thus haiku arrises...
The sounds of kinhin --
Footsteps moving in rhythm.
The zendo's heartbeat.
A little autumn haiku
What my mind came up with when I was trying to settle it into the silence of zazen at Great Vow Zen Monastery on Sunday, November 9, 2008.
Geese flying overhead.
Wild messengers calling out,
"Winter comes, prepare!"