At the end June I joined a sesshin with the Toledo Zen Center, leaving early to see my oldets daughter in a gymnastics performance.
For the month of July, I was in residence at Zen Mountain Monastery.
In August we had a flood in our basement that means replacing drywall, painting it, getting new carpet and replacing some contents. Evelyn got her braces, and both girls just keep on growing. I tore a muscle in my calf that does not seem to be healing properly, and I went on another sesshin with TZC.
As active as things have been, it has been a fairly calm month. Learning to live this life and play it with some skill, I seem to be more in stride right now. It invigorates my life and my practice. It energizes my loving and my prayer. I look into the eyes of my children and know them as best I ever have. (However, I'll admit that working with the insurance company frays my nerves considerably)
This comes through some effort. There are a lot of troubles in the world. There are a lot of difficult people who make my path less smooth than it could be. Much of this work is keeping the focus on my own thoughts and actions first. Seeing where I judge, hate and ignore. It is being able to stop or delay the tendency to react out of my condition or my story about who I am or how things should be.
Why would I wear away my ego? Why would I shelve my story? In some ways I don't. This practice (for me) is not about destroying the self as musch as it is being able to put it to the side, to see past it, and not let the story I tell about who I am take up the entire lense of reality.
What's left? I don't know what to call it, but THIS is what sees so deeply into my daughter's eyes.
This too is human nature.
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