Mindfulness Journal — random entry 2 –2020/05/10 Mothers’ Day
Begin journaling thoughts related to or arising from daily practice of mindfulness meditation on Zoom with a small group. Actually Zen meditation, or zazen. We have been doing this practice for about 40 days now. I found that one of the main ways my mind would wander in early days of practice was about the practice itself, spiraling out into an intricate thought process until I would — as instructed — acknowledge the thought and let it go. Sometimes they would refuse to go for long. I decided this insistence meant I should write them down, and the reason I kept getting them was that I was intending to write them down, but not following through! Classic goofing off, right?
So this is actually the second one I wrote down, but the first was on a different platform originally (Slack.) We recently changed the time of our practice from 7:00 pm CDT every day to 8:00 pm weekdays and 10:00 am weekends. I surprised myself by making it to both Saturday and Sunday, because I frequently don’t even hear my phone alarm and sleep until an average of 11:00 am. (I’m retired, so I can sort of do that.) These thoughts arose from today’s (Sunday’s) session.
Our facilitator J has been reading from Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind before we start our “formal” practice time. He re-read, this morning, Suzuki’s Prologue, which…