zen is ordinary blog
i've thought about trying to turn this space into something like a meditation journal, but so many ways of realizing that idea are in tension with my meditation practice in itself.
do i write about what my meditation session was "about", or what thoughts happened to pass through my head while i was meditating? surely not; i don't want to go into meditation expecting some output from it that can be expressed in language and packaged for context-free consumption.
do i write about the particular forms of meditation practice i'm engaging in? a little bit better, for sure, but that feels dangerously close to me trying to "teach" zen practices, despite me being woefully unqualified and despite this being such a miserable medium for learning such things. besides, i don't know how many times i really want to write that "today, i breathed in while aware that i was breathing in, and i breathed out while aware that i was breathing out", and i don't know how many times you want to read it.
i keep coming to the conclusion that any meditation journal i would write would inevitably be about just about everything except the meditation itself. today i ate very plain oats and very spicy noodles. i had a modest amount of coffee and then a little more than that. i read things that i knew would upset and worry me, and i became worried and upset as a result. i reached out to various people who want to continue to know me. i showered, and in so doing i realized how long it'd been since i'd last showered. i finished and submitted a funding application whose contents don't matter and whose precise text will never be read. i craved and i paced around and i did the dishes. and somewhere between all these things, i meditated three times.