Wednesday was the kind of day where, looking ahead to it, my schedule seemed very full. I had an hour-long presentation on mindfulness to a corporate group, through Within, at 9:00am; I had my weekly Within sit at noon, another short meditation at four, with a nice group from company I have been sitting with for a couple of months, and my Zen Center talk at 7:30.
As is often the case though, once I got into it, there was still a lot of time and space in the day, and no cause to be stressed about what needed to be done. Seeing how early I normally get up, I had a pretty leisurely morning, even accounting for setting up a second screen to be able to manage my presentation better; time for coffee and elevenses before the noon sit; a chance to watch a replay of France-Portugal at the Euros in the afternoon, as well as sitting out in the sun at the back door, running over my talk a couple of times to make sure it held together; and dinner and a bath before giving the talk – as usual, I had several good ideas in the bath, which helped illuminate the points I was hoping to make.
I was thinking a lot about Willow Creek, burning again this week. Kim had alerted me to the fire at the end of last week, and I was able to track the hotspots on Monterey County’s topographical map – and thinking about the contrast with 2008, where Bryan and I would run up the Tony Trail to scout to see for ourselves what the latest was. The fire seems now to be burning slowly – as it did for a few weeks in 2008, until suddenly it was not slow at all.
Overall I felt fairly happy with how the talk went; it was lovely to see familiar faces from my years of practice at Zen Center in attendance, and to field questions from Tim and Miguel after I had given the talk. I will listen to it again when I have a chance, and post a link to it once I have edited it for the Zen Center website.
Next Wednesday, I have three meditation sessions before 9:00 am, but I feel confident things will be okay.
Shundo David Haye 