Bluer Skies

The low feeling which had been weighing on me has moved on, thankfully. I have been reflecting on how it might have been partly caused by a couple of deadlines: my monthly Core recordings and the talk on the Precepts that I was due to give to the group in Hebden Bridge. Whenever I have a task to do that relates to expressing the dharma, I tend to prevaricate and procrastinate a lot, not because I doubt my ability to come up with something, but I hold myself to a high standard, and want the expression to be meaningful. And at the same time, I find it hard to focus any creative energy on anything unrelated, so I would look at my to-do list and not want to do any of it. I was being greatly entertained by the women’s World Cup, but nothing productive was happening.

When I do sit down on the dharma seat these days, it feels like the most natural place for me to be; the day before the talk, I was leading the Zen Center Thursday sitting group, and enjoyed spontaneously talking about the monthly Suzuki Roshi memorial ceremonies after Dan had mentioned that he was about to attend the evening one. On Friday, I felt very prepared and relaxed giving the talk, and getting into the discussion afterwards (I don’t include those on the recordings to protect people’s ability to speak freely – but you can hear the talk itself on the audio page).

My next engagement in the dharma realm is one of the regular Within Meditation teacher discussions, which will be on Friday at 10:00am Pacific. Tessa, Hannah and I will be talking about relaxation, and I can report that I am very relaxed about the prospect.

The sun has burst through after more periods of total fog, which also helps my mood no end. I had a long ride on Sunday as I try to keep building up my mileage, and we had a sunny roam over the weekend as well; this week I used a free afternoon to go and look at the dahlias in the park, and then scout some trails on Mount Sutro: one I thought might be closed was open, but several of the ones I epxected to be open were closed!

Not settling down to read was another symptom of the malaise, so I have made a point this week of catching up with my backlog of New Yorkers, which always feels like a worthwhile thing to do.