On Mondays I stare into woodgrain for an hour. My unfocused downward gaze penetrates the planks of hardwood flooring until it melts the lines into patterns and pictures: wolves, lions, eagles — the strength I think I’m lacking coming forth to greet me and show me the ways of release, non-attachment, and surrender. 

This, they say, is Zen.

Since last summer I’ve engaged in a communal Zen meditation practice at a local sangha each week. I began with strangers. Now, with relief, I see familiar faces greet me. 

The bell rings. We begin.

—Click. The sound of the refrigerator in the nearby room, reliably acting like the machinery it is, without consciousness to think it could even be a distraction. I can’t let it deter me. 

I consider the ways this seemingly small thing, this brief practice, which takes up only one to a few of my 168 hours each week, has begun to shape me in a new way. I’ve always known silence and silent prayer as the only prayer that made sense, a boundless container I could encounter the unknown within, but something new of the same material has emerged in this 1/168th of my week, something inexplicable. The silence, it seems, is a releasing place, but also a gestational place, a birthing place, and foundational. 

—Buzz. The fly finds my ear. I shake my head slightly, encouraging it to find a new home. It all belongs here, each interruption.  

“How great it is to be faithful to a little thing,” I remember contemplative psychotherapist Jim Finley reminding me when my phone again randomly selected a track on a walk earlier in the day: “It’s not measurable. And a lot of the contemplative path has to do with being aware of and sensitive to and faithful to things like this.” 

—Itch. I remove myself from the trance to scratch the place where the itch consumes my attention. Ten seconds, I remind myself, Count to ten before you move to see if the need remains. 

In Jim Finley’s discussion of faithfulness to little things, he’s speaking of a nun in a monastic community who had a rose garden. She tended to this garden every day until her death. The grief in her community was immense and tethered to her faithfulness to the community’s rose garden. When Jim visited the year of her death, he sat in her garden and reflected on her faithfulness: “Love sees that there’s no such thing as a little thing,” he says. 

—Drip. A memory hits, transports me, and tears of salt water silently float down my face in the rapids of recollection. I swallow hard, as if to take in the water I’m losing. Bleary-eyed, my vision sinks back into the wood grain. Blurs. Sparkles. Until nothingness is there to take me away once again.

What are the rose gardens of my life, I wonder? To whom or what does my faithfulness matter? Call it devotion, commitment, practice, call it whatever fits, but it seems this faithfulness to the small things reflects my values, my presence, what I care about most deeply. The commitment to the small things is in fact a commitment to all of life’s big things. The rose gardens I tend to impact everything and everyone around me, but the tending first transforms me. This silly little rose garden question, it turns out,  is much bigger than I thought. 

—Crack. I subconsciously roll back my shoulders recognizing my imperfect posture taking over. I correct myself until my body slowly rolls back into its comfort slouch.

This practice of a silent sit (though its moments of true inner-silence are far and few between) – is one of my rose gardens, I think to myself. It is small and when I tend to it daily–unclenching and releasing, opening and detaching, surrendering and accepting– it gives me a renewed tenderness and compassion, a deeper awe, and perhaps those nearby also enjoy the blooming it sometimes yields.

—Flash. I catch my periphery’s distraction of the neon red digital clock in the corner then sense the two flanks of silence nearby. Mark and usually Paul, though today Paul isn’t here and I don’t know who the other person is, nor does it matter. I usually sit by Mark, someone I’ve naturally sat by for almost a year. That choice, in some way, has become a part of the practice. 

The room is filled with silent witnesses surrounding each other’s pains and surrenders. All around me, statues of silence, bookending my own experience and heeding their own individual calls into this starting block of love. I am opened up unto my nothingness, while basking in the garnered confidence of stillness. 

—Ding. The bell rings. We bow, honoring one another’s practice, but I always sense this moment as something more. In reverence, I am filled with pride that we accomplished another sit. In my bowing, I honor the suffering they’ve brought, respect the surrenders of their own lives, the attachments they’ve silently released. This moment moves me each week. 

As I take myself home, the rhythm continues. And in a language-less reverie, I arrive back to see all my thoughts, problems, needs, and wants arise again. Only now, for this moment, they feel more distant, like the TV show I’m bound to turn on before bed. Desire and ignorance are the roots of all suffering, Buddhism teaches. I laugh to myself and am still grateful for whatever release and foundation that hour brought. Whatever rose garden tending that may show up in life’s blooms.

–Sigh. I feel myself soften more, playfully resting in the moments where paradox brings clarity. 

The day comes to an end, my life continues, and I am 1/168th different than I was yesterday, or maybe I’m exactly the same. 

–Tap. I set my alarm on my phone, rest it on the charger and walk towards my bedroom, wondering how I can tend to my rose gardens of tonight, tomorrow, and into the next day.

“It’s not measurable,” I remember Finley reminding me. And yet, “Love sees that there’s no such thing as a little thing,” I remember. 

I guess that’s the measurement of my life, I think to myself: Love.

–Love. May it always be the loudest distraction.

This, they say, is Zen.

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NOTES:

Not only has this been a spiritual practice for me, but also a health practice. Neuroscience studies show a variety of forms of meditation can positively impact brain structure and activity — increasing grey matter, the ability to better regulate emotions, increased attention and cognitive functioning. The study includes meditation practices which are guided, i.e. audio recordings. A specific study can be found here, and here.

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