So, this is winter. First a good, solid layer of ice, followed by waves of snow, followed by temperatures in the sub-zeroes. I don't like it. Not a bit. I like looking at it for about half an hour, and then I want the snow to--presto!--melt! Even the Buddha in my back yard looks put off and put out, underneath his new bib. Stillness sounds lovely when it is optional. But when forced upon me by dangerous roads and fierce weather, it just makes me irritable. Such impotence is mine.
As long as I fight it, that is.
If I would just give in to it, submit, surrender, use this quiet, no-traffic-noise time
to Sit and Meditate. These are the moments when the Teaching hits the tarmac, and
one goes No-Where.
Stillness, in my case, is not delivered, but must be won. I have to fight my way through some kind of cosmic plastic bag, through the internal tantrum that spins up like a sand devil when I don't get to choose my environment. And so, one more time, I learn why "begin" and "again" so often come together in one sentence. I hear them and think, not for the first time (and, I'm sure, not for the last),
"Perhaps I can. Begin. Again."
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