I hope your healing of body continues, Krista. I am sitting for you.
Yes, Zazen is like a car. At first, it is shiny and gives much pleasure and feels good and gets one place to place. Maybe we feel that we must get some place where there is something we want.
Then it is just a car (mine in Japan is 10 years old). It just gets you place to place. It is scratched and scruffy, no longer shiny. However, maybe now we realize that every place is just that place. Here is here and there is there. It is just comfortable now, like an old pair of jeans or old favorite chair.
Then maybe we are sick or older, and cannot drive at all! Then hopefully we realize that just here is here even if our space is smaller.
I know many people who get a shiny new car every year ... and are not really happy, always trying to get to the next place.
I know some people who cannot drive at all who are okay with that (in Dogen's time or Buddha's time, there were few if any drivers
except maybe an ox cart).
Yes, sometimes we must go on faith or let it be "a little forced" that, just where we are, we are still traveling to the ends of the universe.
Zen is a kind of medicine for the consumer mentality where we always need the shiny, new, rewarding, thrilling excitement. It is where the rubber meets the road, and the destination and home is always in this every mile.
Sorry ... I wish I was a better car salesman for Zen, polishing it up better, spraying in some phony "new car smell," and throwing in a balloon.
I am glad you keep coming back, and are here for us as we are there for you. Nice sharing the drive together.
Gassho, Jundo
STLah