[Previous entry: "Consumer Demands"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Please..."]

11/26/2002 Archived Entry: "Whack!"

In my first experience with zen meditation I picked a koan that was suggested to me by a friend and sat on the edge of my bed to study it. Not knowing what I was doing, I thought as hard as I could about it, eventually settling on an approach that set the koan 'behind my eyes'. I have no idea how long I sat, but really it wasn't long.

The koan was something like: 'do not call it a stick, for if you do, you affirm it; do not refuse its name, for if you do, you negate it'.

The only way I can describe what happened was that some part of my mind gave a snap like a bubblegum bubble and I felt shaken but clear-headed. I felt an urge to go take a shower, and when the warm water touched me I felt the stick wash over me.

Some things in my life don't need a name or even to be conceptualized, nor do they need me to feel a specific way about them, nor fail to have any feelings about them.

Sometimes when I travel through my daily life the crowds of occurences or lack of happenings wash over me in the form of a non-stick/stick. I can't and can't not call those good days.