night in California

It got dark – I was taking a walk with an Italian lady, her name is Andreana, she is sitting in the seshin, meditating most of these days. She is a very funny person. I really enjoy to hear her stories because to hear them in her native Italian language adds a certain “fire” – a special expression to everything she says. To hear her in English gets rather boring. She is an English teacher in Italy. She came to meditate here in California – it’s her vacations. She is having some troubles with food so that she asked me to get her some corn cake and bread. Nobody should know about this “food dealing”- as if we were drug dealers hiding from the police. She is only supposed to eat what is served in the zendo. I get fun that way. They are not supposed to talk either. So we walked away and she smoked a cigarette and talked to me (almost whispering). ” you know” she said “when we are in the meditation hall, and we have the meal, I have “J” right in front of me and she has a certain posture, as if she is looking down on me. Arrogant.

meditation day 1

here I am working at the kitchen of the Zen Center, and watching all the guests (monks or lay people) in the zendo right beside my room sitting in their zafus hours and more hours!!! We kitchen crew are supposed to be “practicing the way” too. That’s to say, meditating in a way too. But in fact, I don’t do it. I’m just thinking about the clock and the end of my work for today. Then I could rest. I feel tired and sleepy. I didn’t feel so sleepy the weeks before… There are quite a lot of pretty and interesting women as guests, but I could not talk to them because they should be silent most of the time. I don’t want to be appointed as a bad guy for trying to approach women in retreat. Really, nobody wants to be singled out from the crowd and be appointed with an accusative finger. Me neither. I didn’t do anything wrong!!!!

Or maybe I shouldn’t even look at them! Just with the corner of the eye maybe… They don’t exist. They are not there. We work in silence in the kitchen. These are the orders. So, I chop quietly my vegetables. I don’t even look at other people’s work. But this entails a certain uneasiness. A certain tension. This happens at the table in the dinning room too. I don’t like it. It should be taken easy and not with so much stiffness. I’d like to be making and hearing jokes, to laugh at somebody’s stupidities. That’s a way of laughing of ourselves, and not taking us so serious.

Uffffh!!! my work for today is done. Everything is useless (that’s how I feel) and meaningless. I know it would eventually change, but it lets me exhausted to think about the eternal struggle for the $$. This critical view of mine has its origin in my mind, I know. I know that actually, everything is perfect as the Universe itself. The stars are almost eternal, the atoms inside matter are almost eternal… They might be short as a breath for God, but for us it is as if they will last forever. We might see one or two of them (stars) die, not more.

For me God is not that image we are used to imagine. It’s something implicit in matter, but not explicit anywhere else. He does not rest on a cloud. It can be a thought or the big Thought. The mind and the big Mind.

gay wedding

Yesterday we had something extraordinary here. A couple of gay guys got married here at the zendo. For me it was something rare to see, because I am from a time when nobody married like that. For me a gay marriage would be more of an accident. Something like – figure – a collision between two comets head on in the middle of space. Something so strange that you could not expect to see. Not only that, but also choosing a Buddhist ceremony. But here it’s California, so nobody here at the Zen Center seemed to be surprised. It was a quiet ceremony, very “traditional”, with the monks wearing their dark robes (not always black). The two guys kneeling in front of the table, making their vows. That’s ok for me, and as someone said: “every kind of love is valid”.

Soon I’ll be going to my meditation. We have 2 meditation periods – one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The afternoon is shorter, and also the service is shorter, with only one chant from the book, and less dedications. There is a longer meditation of one week called “seshin” but I’m not in it. I’ll be in the kitchen chopping vegetables and washing pots (whaaaaal!). That’s called Buddhist non-attachment. Then, my traveling back to New Jersey. Kendall told me about this WordPress, she has a blog here and I just put a link to it on this page. Her page is cool, and she has many insights on this place called Green Gulch Zen Center. I can write about it too, since I was here about 2 months working and living without leaving the place. I feel a bit like in an experiment set by a mad scientist. Just that I am both the scientist and the poor mouse. Just because I don’t feel like going anywhere. I feel just lazy, and I don’t have any curiosity about the life that runs outside this valley. Go back to my work, to my previous life? No. I feel that something is missing, naturally. Sex in the first place. A woman close to me. I remember how “romantic love” was important for me before. I still feel it – but somehow now I feel that the dream of a perfect relationship like in a wonderful movie is just that: a dream.

In any case, romantic love is something for teenagers to dream about. And this love has no way of comparison with the feeling one must get when in deep relationship with the whole Universe. So, choosing between love for the Universe, and love for a woman, I prefer to have it for the whole Universe. Of course we are idealistic, and like to imagine our lover as a perfect being, body and soul – an image that crumbles down when it comes to the wordly facts of daily life.