If You See the Buddha at Target, Buy Him!

The farther I get from my zafu, the more complicated life becomes. If I could just stay there, breathing, things might have a chance of staying simple.
I don't actually have a zafu. I have two blue and white chintz throw pillows from my first apartment with the stuffing coming out that I stack. I've eschewed the zafu because I think it's pretentious. I finally bought a buddha from Target last year. There was some discussion in the magazine, Shambala Sun decrying the wide availability of discount buddhas, but I think this is okay. I think, the more buddhas hanging around the better. And buddhas used to be so expensive! Why should I have to pay 50 bucks or more for a 4 inch high statue of the buddha? My buddha was on sale at Target for $10, because he had a little chip. In spite of being mass produced, he has a very beautiful expression on his face. Thurman--I forget his first name--Uma's dad, said it's very important to have beautiful buddhas and mine fits the bill. I went without one for 21 years. Then I turned 40 and said, "what the hell, I'm going to buy a buddha." I think the distaste for mass produced buddhas is elitist--a knot of the ego. Careful of your own traps! If we are all buddhas, it doesn't matter. If the buddha is inside, the buddha is outside, and just because it rolls off the factory belt, it's still the same stuff--all made out of you. So careful, fellow travelers, don't be so precious.Thanks to a suggestion from Thich Naht Hahn I have room in my basement that I've set aside--a futon, a buddha and a packet of incense and matches with an abalone shell to catch the ash from the incense are its only furnishings. We call it the peace room. The peace room has a unique status in our house. Sometimes, my teenagers fight with each other and me and one of us, believe it or not, can become totally irrational. What has happened now that we have the peace room, is that the family member who is doing most of the screaming will at some point yell, "Leave me alone! I hate you! I'm going to the peace room!" And then they'll stomp off and go inside and slam and lock the door.
I've been sitting for 22 years now. I haven't made any progress at all, I sit on that damn cushion for 30 minutes most mornings and think about the same shit in this order: 1)Am I failing my children? 2)Will I ever get married? 3)Is this still helping my wrinkles? 4)Should I be cleaning instead? 4)Imaginary interviews with Oprah Winfrey 5)Patients. I briefly return to my breath between each flight of thought. "Oh," I think anxiously, "I'm supposed to be breathing! Breathe, damn you, breathe! Focus." Then I think, "that's not what I'm supposed to think." And then I think "what is 'should' what does that mean?" Then I worry about whether all the incense I've been breathing in every day for the last 22 years is going to give me emphysema. Then the alarm goes off, thank god, and I'm done with the whole damn thing. The reason I keep doing it is because when I don't, people notice. And it does help with wrinkles. A lot.
When the children are out of town and I'm not in bed snuggling with my boyfriend (he lives on a farm in the county and I stay over when my kids are gone), I go to Seido's house. He's a college professor and a monk in the Rinzai tradition--which is not the tradition I came up in. I came up in Soto and if anyone ever reads this blog who cares about these sorts of things, they'll say there's a big difference, but, honestly, there isn't. The heart of it is still the same: waking up. But the Rinzai's are a little more hard-assed then the Soto's, suits our aging working class Boston boy, Seido, the poet son of a plumber. I always forget the damn form--who bows first, how many times. I think my brain only had room for one set of ritual instructions: those of the Anglican church. Nothing else sticks. Seido always glares at me, then hisses instructions "you're supposed to bow after me..." "you're late" And then I sit and the only way my meditation at hokkukuan differs from mine at home is this: "Can Seido tell what sort of useless crap I'm thinking? Is it obvious?"
When I was doing my mental health clinicals at our State Hospital for the criminally insane (they don't do them there anymore--one of the students was attacked, or thought she was being attacked. She wasn't. She was just being an idiot.) we had to teach a group of inmates to do something, and I taught my group how to meditate. None of the other students had many people show up, but my lesson was packed. The staff was worried because the small room had too many people, and they weren't sure how to control it. We also had to turn the lights off, which was a battle with the powers that be. "Just five minutes," I begged. Candles were out, of course. They also forbade me to let people take their shoes off. I agreed, but then, when everyone was in there, told them to go ahead and do it. Sitting on the floor had to be negotiated, too. But we did it. I told them a little about Zen and practice and showed them a mudra and how to sit. I told them they would think about all sorts of things--tv, friends, enemies imaginary things, friendly things, scary things, but told them to just keep breathing through it. Then we all did it together. 5 minutes of silence, sitting and breathing. And for once, my inner monologue stopped, I was just thinking about my breath and how I had to keep breathing for the people around me. This great giddy wave of delight swept through me. I almost started giggling. I felt so happy. When I was five, a butterfly flew into my nightgown when I went outside one morning. I felt like that. Then the chime rang, 5 minutes. The lights came back on, we bowed to each other and the inmates filed out.
"that went really well," one of the guards said. "I didn't think that was going to work at all."
Me either.