My Fly Is Open or my tale of Zen Instruction.

Howdy.

The first thing i need to say is that i don't know how to sit. I'm a pretty tall guy, one might say - lanky and the whole cross legged thing has always been a bit of a problem with me resulting in detentions and other repercussions from a wee age when teachers were a bit more strict and believed that a young lad in a great deal of pain could easily be confused with a troubled and fidgety child. Things haven't changed much which is a bit of a concern for my zen meditation, luckily thats only where the problem starts.

It turns out that i am not the only one who doesn't know how to sit. No one really knows how to sit. For most of us sitting is a matter of plopping your ass down on something comfortable, snatching the remote control or a newspaper or a magazine and engaging your brain or its reasonable facsimile in colorful lights or interesting thought. This isn't sitting. Go ahead and try to sit. In all probability you're sitting while you're reading this. But thats exactly the point. Sort of.

You're not sitting. You're reading. If you were to explain what you were doing right now you would probably say 'i'm reading this dumb blog from this messed up guy.' Try just sitting. Turn off the music, the tv, close the computer (this is probably boring stuff to you anyway) and just sit.

Okay. So what. Now i'm sitting. I wonder what that girl i knew in high school is doing these days? How am i going to get out of debt? Will i ever find a job? Why can't i meet any nice people? Is there someone out there for me? Why am i such a loser?

Yep. That's sitting alright.

The purpose of Zen meditation of the school i attended the other day is just sitting. Actually sitting. You don't try to quiet your mind, you don't edit the thoughts - people tend to think that mediatation is a process of cutting out all of the thoughts. You just let them come. Whatever they are, but you don't hold onto them. You just sit. Eventually, i was told, a thought will pop up and you may chase it down and engage it - as we all do with our thoughts and troubles. But you don't have to hold onto it because, well, there isn't anything to hold onto. And i guess thats the interesting thing, to me. There is nothing to hold onto. Ever. And even if there were you will never be able to hold onto it.

Lets put it this way. Years ago i had a good job. At least it was what soe people thought of as a good job. I liked the people, i hated the drive, cursed the commute, wondered why i wasn't a highly paid writer, listened to music, surfed the internet, and occasionally worked hard enough that i was getting paid fairly well by people who should have known better. I felt pretty secure - not where i wanted to be of course - but secure and i probably would have stayed at it longer than i rationally should have because it paid the bills and gave me some pocket change to buy some things for myself. Well one day i went to work, worked the whole day, laughed and joked with my bosses and coworkers, worked my files, made my phone calls etc. Ten minutes before i was to leave work my supervisor called me in and said rather flatly that i was fired. And there you go. We think we have our security but in a blink of an eye it can be gone. Things change. Always. Forever. Nothing has any real reality to it at all.

Zen is a method of internalizing and realizing how beautifully tenuous and nonexistent our connection to this life and everything in it. You may have good things but don't hold on. Just sit. You may have bad things. Just sit. You may have fear, worry, heartache, pain, love, beauty, happiness, joy, fulfillment. Just sit.

Anyway. It was a short meeting. Then i went for coffee and wrote in my journal. It was a nice place named Brewed, terrific if strong coffee. In fact, the coffee was more than just a little strong. In n o time at all i realized i had drank myself straight into an anxiety attack. After the meditation - the anxiety. And then I realized (as the coffee was passing through as it always does) that my fly had been open all morning. Quite the loveliest introduction to zen you could possibly have, really. Enlightenment and then the inevitable crashing into my own humanity. It was as though the world was saying, 'Yep. There you are.' I thanked the world for that, laughed and zipped up my fly.