“Nothing comes from outside your mind.” Shunru Suzuki
A couple of mornings ago, I got up around five or so, for my morning, grey-lighted trip to the loo. Time wise, that’s about the best I can do these days and I’m OK with it, as if I have a choice anyway. It’s where this story begins.
I have always found that my pre-dawn return to bed is one that is prime time for mental mischief. Often, there are recurring themes, impossible to deal with, while being held captive by the covers. Minutiae reigns supreme and until the body finally gets busy, pushing the gnawing thoughts aside, I am at the mercy of my mind and all those small thoughts hammer out their syncopated rhythm of worry. “I have to get coffee in no more than two days time, ground or whole bean? I have a project due in a month and how will I ever be able to pull it off?” “Why am I worrying? Now, that’s something worry about!”
Eventually, shadows enter the room and a world on the other side of the windows comes into view. For years now, that has been my cue to roll out of bed, in exactly the same choreographed series of moves each morning. Like most everything in our lives, habits are terrific constructs, but can easily become handcuffs when over done. I am definitely a border line case, because I have always taken a particular joy in my routines, not thinking as much as possible, the gift of habit.
I walk over to the kitchen, fill the water in my electric water heater, push the button and head to my cushion. I sit down, cross my legs, face the altar I have been looking at forever and set the timer for 25 minutes. Maybe around five months ago, I turned my inhalation into stomach crunches, imagining my naval gently touching my spine, a vanity exercise. The water stops boiling, with a click, turning the rumbling bubbles to silence. After a while, I stop the crunches and just gently breathe. I confess to sometimes checking the timer, an admission that would send me to Zen hell, if I gave a shit.
A delicate chime signals the end of my sit. I bring my palms together, say a couple of prayers in Japanese and then close with the Four Vows, which are really wonderful. They are a source of a kind of humility that I don’t have words for, because there are none and there aren’t supposed to be any, anyway.
I reboil the water, which takes no time, because of my ritual pre-boil, something that took me years to discover. I patiently drip my coffee, take the filled cup in my left hand and the seconds ago activated iPhone in my right. I walk over to Baby Hal, for my everyday entry into the Big World.
A little over six months ago, I decided to do a podcast, its substance morphing with time, as I became more acclimated to the medium. I don’t remember when I started religiously reading all sorts of news, allowing me to be conversant in an incredible range of material. I was the consummate generalist, a compendium of divergent happenings. After a couple of months of experimentation with the podcast, I decided to cover the news of the past week, an homage to my news mania, recording every Thursday. It has become an intensely personal process for me. Everyday, I cut and paste stories, ending up with 50 pages of material or more.
On Wednesday evening, I painstakingly select the stories that I feel a personal connection with, creating my own flow by shuffling the order in a way that makes sense to me. It ends up becoming a loosely, assembled script, with space for me to respond in a free style manner, occasionally even crying, which is just unavoidable sometimes. There are now recurring themes that matter a lot to me, things like the climate catastrophe, the criminal disparity between the rich and everyone else, equality for women, healthcare, the refugee calamity, etc. I don’t know what I am going to say until the mic starts silently listening. One way or another, we are all defined by what we care about.
So, before I even leave the house, I have experienced life’s wonderful bookends. Under the cover of morning’s renewal, my insides seep outside into my consciousness, physically captive, unable to address them. My Zen sit is like the fulcrum, my spiritual pivot, putting the worries that accompany dusk to rest and readying me for the world outside, with these cushioned moments of the breath’s rhythm. Then, with my coffee at the ready, I explore the world and decide what to keep with me, as the new day and I embrace each other. It is my every morning see saw.
When I record these podcasts, it is the moment when the small and the BIG come together, making me feel inseparable from who I am in this world I am privileged to be visiting. In the midst of recording this last time, I imagined my grandson listening to these in 2085, when he will have managed to get to my age. Whether through my writing, my podcast or my Youtube channel, Foster and Feinstein, I want to be as timeless as possible. I am looking for the universal themes of my humanness, which I think could be symptomatic of my dotage.
When we disappear from this place, what we leave behind matters, at least that’s what I tell myself. Years ago, when I began this private, creative odyssey of mine, looking to leave my footprints on the path of life, it was only for my grandson’s eyes and ears and still is. He will have his own dance between the small and the Big and hopefully, when he gets to my chronological, vantage point, we will finally be able to truly see each other.
Check out my podcast: Mind and the Motorcycle
Watch Foster and Feinstein on Youtube