Hi, Sara. I landed on your newsletter after someone I follow on Twitter shared a picture of you holding the DESERT ORACLE book, which is one of my favorite things in the world. So I followed your link back to here, read your most recent piece, and I love it. It raises a question I've been pondering pretty hard lately.
You write, "I came to Zen after discovering that adopting a consistent meditation practice was doing wonderful things for my life." I've been meditating off and on for several years, and consistently now for two or three. I have floated around the fringes of adopting Zen as a "practice" but I can't say I have. I just sit. I've never sat with other people because it feels like it would be uncomfortable to me. But I wonder what even the meditation is "doing for me." I recognize that isn't even the way to look at it, especially because it's ... different. I mean, if I was doing push-ups twenty minutes every day for two years straight I'd be a beast, there would be a physical representation of all that hard effort.
So I'm curious — what were some of the tangible, "wonderful things" you could see your meditation practice manifesting in your life? I hope it isn't rude to ask. I don't interact with anyone else who has a consistent practice, I don't have a teacher, none of it. People ask ME about it, and if I may roughly quote Jim Harrison relating to his own Zen studies, I'm merely "a potato."
Hi, Sara. I landed on your newsletter after someone I follow on Twitter shared a picture of you holding the DESERT ORACLE book, which is one of my favorite things in the world. So I followed your link back to here, read your most recent piece, and I love it. It raises a question I've been pondering pretty hard lately.
You write, "I came to Zen after discovering that adopting a consistent meditation practice was doing wonderful things for my life." I've been meditating off and on for several years, and consistently now for two or three. I have floated around the fringes of adopting Zen as a "practice" but I can't say I have. I just sit. I've never sat with other people because it feels like it would be uncomfortable to me. But I wonder what even the meditation is "doing for me." I recognize that isn't even the way to look at it, especially because it's ... different. I mean, if I was doing push-ups twenty minutes every day for two years straight I'd be a beast, there would be a physical representation of all that hard effort.
So I'm curious — what were some of the tangible, "wonderful things" you could see your meditation practice manifesting in your life? I hope it isn't rude to ask. I don't interact with anyone else who has a consistent practice, I don't have a teacher, none of it. People ask ME about it, and if I may roughly quote Jim Harrison relating to his own Zen studies, I'm merely "a potato."
Anyway, thanks for writing.