...got a lot going on in my personal life, I'm on some kind of karmic journey... sorry I haven't blogged much this week, please have fun chit-chatting in comments, I will be around again soon...
The Seat of Infinity
A pillow sits on the wood floor of my office. It's an ordinary meditation pillow - maroon and pink, circular, short, embroidered with cascading triangles and filled with dried buckwheat. Some people call my pillow a "zafu." I call her The Seat of Infinity.
I bought the pillow at a yard sale when I was twenty years old. I forked over fifty-cents to a middle-aged woman. She wore tight Jordache jeans and an oversized navy-blue sweatshirt cut around the neck like a television dancer. Heavy silver rope earrings dangled near her neck, and I noticed the line of her back reached from her feet to a spot just above her head, as if someone pulled an invisible string through her spinal cord toward central heaven. I hugged the pillow to my belly, swollen with my oldest son, and I turned to walk home, my toddler daughter's hand pulling me in random directions.
"Hey, miss? Miss? Do you know what that is?" Jordache Woman pointed to my purchase and I shrugged my shoulders.
"Yeah. It's a floor pillow." My daughter's hand slid from mine and she ran behind a heavy oak. I watched her body cast bent shadows along the grass as she collected acorns in her tiny fists.
"Yes. It is. It is also an invitation to not think."
I pictured her grin as I walked home, one hand holding the pillow, the other a leash of exhaustion and sunshine spasm. My daughter didn't notice the pillow, but my unborn son kicked it, meridian over nerve, until my belly became a soft practiced drumstick.
I gave birth to my son, my daughter learned the alphabet, and I learned my marriage wouldn't last, was empty and painful, wistful and exhausted, like my womb. I took a walk one morning, left my husband sitting the children, sitting the negative words he uttered that morning, found myself across the street from a place called a "zendo." I didn't know what it meant, only knew strange people with the scent of incense and quiet walked the steps each morning as the birds called, and each night as the street lights flickered to life.
"Hello! Miss! Are you here to learn about your floor pillow?" I smiled at Jordache Woman, this time dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt. She carried a small basket covered with a woven cotton towel, and I smelled cinnamon and vanilla.
"You use those pillows here?" I raised my eyebrows in surprise and disbelief, but Jordache nodded her head carefully, looked straight at my belly as if she wondered why it looked different.
"Yes. We use those pillows here. Do you have a free morning? Please come sit with us." She didn't wait to hear my response. She slowly walked to a double door carved with delicate Japanese designs. I followed her, felt something leap inside my belly thought it was empty and tired.
I watched a small group of eight pull floor pillows like mine off a mahogany shelf. Tall sticks of incense sparked in each cardinal corner of the room.
What is this place? I wondered. It smells like the sky, like a place I used to know. I grabbed a pillow and arranged my legs to match the cross-legged position of the others. A woman dressed in a gray kimono with pajama pants walked to the center of the room. She didn't speak, didn't move, stood and waited, and I heard the breath of eight people roll around the corners of the room, reaching the incense, making it burn brighter, higher, sending some kind of secret message to the stars.
I made it a habit, this butt-on-pillow-stuff at the simple stick structure they called a zendo. They called it sitting, called it zazen, called it meditation, called it quiet. I called it impossible, felt arms and neck and head and legs and belly fall asleep, raise some kind of primal alarm, felt my thoughts race through a mind muddied with disappointment and fear. No one gave me direction. No one helped. It's not zen, they said, when I asked for assistance. Just sit, they said. That's zen. You sit.
"I feel like I'm dying!" I cried to the pajama leader, a women they called Sensei, and I asked her to help me understand, asked her to tell me why I sat in a practice called zazen even though I didn't know what I was doing, even though I didn't take buddhist vows.
"Maybe it's time you take those vows," she said. She didn't say more, let me cry, let me hate it, the unknowing, the coldness of it, the decision I made to take Boddhisatva vows.
I promised the universe I would stay on my pillow until the last of the last reached Nirvana. Even if it takes a million million lifetimes, I said, and I meant it with my heart, thought my mind told me it was ridiculous, untraceable, a myth.
"You took those vows for something other than yourself," the Sensei said after the ceremony. "You will take them again someday, when you are truly ready."
I hated her for saying this, hated the sitting, the first day that turned into a month turned into a year, turned into decade that saw the Sensei die. My marriage died too, I moved, and another Sensei took her place. I saw him transferred to a monastery, saw another decade disappear, another failed relationship, moves at my new zendo, a man with cherry hair and soft brown skin.
"Birdie, let's talk." He cornered me after zazen one day. I set my pillow on the zendo table, grabbed a cookie and took a bite. I smiled at Sensei, wondered what I did wrong this time. Did I look like I was sleeping? I was. Did I look bored, tired of sitting? I was. I finished the cookie and took another. He continued to look at me, at the place between my eyes, didn't flinch or stutter, let his eyes tell me a story, then he spoke.
"I think you have made a decision to leave the zendo."
I dropped the cookie to the table in surprise. "How did you know? I haven't told anyone."
"Birdie, it's in your posture. You aren't present in the practice."
I knew he wanted me to tell him I would be more present, I would work at my detachment. But I left the cookie on the counter, waved goodbye, carried my pillow home.
He doesn't get me. He doesn't understand that I sat zazen for sixteen years. Sixteen years! I am thirty-six years old, and I have sat zazen for almost half my life. I left my pillow in a closet and sent it dirty looks every now and then. Damn pillow. Damn Sensei. I was getting somewhere! I was going to get enlightenment. Damn them.
I pulled the pillow from the closet one morning after a bad phone call, a fight with a man, a goodbye. I placed it in the center of my living room, lit a stick of Japanese incense, bowed in the way I was taught, and chanted a verse from an ancient text. I sat. I sat for three hours, then four, my children with my sister, my mind forgotten. I sat without thought, let the images of past talk and regret pass through my skin, my heart, my bones, my blood, let them pass. I let them pass. Let them pass. I don't know how I did this, only knew I recognized something new, something simple and funny. I let them pass.
A gate opened. A mind gate, a gate of perception of love. I felt the rush of the universe pour into my mind, my heart, felt at one with sand and otters and aloes and chain-link-fences, felt the atoms crusting my body carry the rhythm of the stars, the moon. Samadhi. The "one" moment. It only lasted as long as the recognition.
I stood, looked at my pillow, gave her a name, The Seat of Infinity, and I strode to the kitchen to finish washing the dishes.
8:44:51 PM 
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