stuck on stillness, still stuck

"Because I could not stop for death,

He kindly stopped for me," she said.

Last couple of episodes zazen the stillness issue has been arising. A passing suggestion, hint of wisteria perhaps: "...if only you were still enough, the task would be complete...." that kinda' thing-being.

Yes, Dosho, very spot on, stinkiness already with the godliness. No place to hang our holy hats. Standing on the threshold, hat in hand, that's what we say of the pitiful supplicant, the beggar at the door.

I practiced, as a young man, and fairly diligently, Islam. Not the new-age sufi stuff so common here in the '70's (nothing against it, mind you, not now), but the "real thing" the orthodox Islam, we called it, sunni version. For five years, very devout, prayer five times a day in the prescribed form, learning Arabic, memorizing the Qur'an.

On the sixth year, I revolted and fled back to my hippie peers. But that five years of practice still affects me some thirty-odd-years later. I still hear Allah echoing through my inner spaces, I see the calligraphy of Islam when I am in full prostration, forehead on the ground.

All this to say I don't know what, but that our practice does form us, overtly and quietly in that big inward chasm. I read again Dogen-zenji's words this morning after practicing the mind-in-the-mudra sitting. While sections remain stubbornly obtuse, there were those moments of clarity and compassion. Clarity like the sun at dawn, glimpsed through the corners of the eye. Compassion that Dogen was right there then and speaks to us right here now.

Allah be Praised!