Originally Posted by
AlanLa
Thank you and gassho, because reading the new posts, I thought of another one:
4. Before you can just keep sitting you have to just start sitting. Lots of times we get the advice to "just sit with it" whatever "it" is that is bothering us. What's that mean? I always wondered. Sounds too simple, I always exclaimed. Really, how do you "just sit with" restlessness? I mean, if I could just sit with "it" then it wouldn't be bothering me in the first place, right? The other thing that bothered me about "just sit with it" was that it seemed like I would have to do this sitting for a very long time. Intellectually I know there is no time standard in the phrase, but it just feels like a long time being with something that was troublesome to me in the first place, which meant that I didn't want to spend any time with at all. And the result of all this deluded thinking was that I would just NOT sit with "it." But what I am now finally learning is that I have to just start sitting with it. At first I may only be able to sit with it for a couple seconds before succumbing, and then after a while I find I can sit with it for a couple minutes before succumbing, and then after a while I can sit with it for a short time and actually drop it. Poof, it goes away... at least briefly... and then it comes back, so I start the process of just sitting with it again. A moment of zazen with "it" is better than all the time in your/my past alone with "it", so just start sitting and move on from there.