old dog, new day

Sitting in the zendo this morning, I looked around.

It's a good little space, one that I built 15 years ago at the age of 58.

Fifty-eight -- an age when a lot of professionals have hit their stride, found their place, or surrendered to some professional fate...and I had built "Black Moon Zendo" -- 16x12 feet and a number of scars remaining today from the adventure. At 58 I might have had a terrific stamp collection or been fabulously wealthy or an expert at darts... something more, uhh, tangible or in the swim or something.

This morning it all seemed a bit peculiar. Pleasant, but peculiar.

And now it is time to close up shop... a time when the zendo will no longer be a zendo. The vim and vigor of something called Buddhism -- something I admired and practiced with whatever ability I had -- well, there is plenty of vim and vigor elsewhere... let them run and leap and fetch and sit up and roll over. The past is the past and this morning it asserted itself like an old dog, lovingly putting its head in my lap. I suppose I might have felt sad, but instead, it simply seemed a bit peculiar. What an odd thing to do, sweating my ass off to raise these rafters that wagged their tails out of the past.

Good dog. Still affectionate but slower. The past....

This afternoon, and very much in the present, I got an email from someone who was clearly not happy with something I wrote last year ... just a little reflection on Stephen Batchelor ... written at a time when the vim and vigor of Buddhism and its missteps had my attention. The past came back to visit like another old dog:

You are a misguided person who are not practicing Buddhism and trying to influence other people away from practice the right Dharma. You are a demon dressed in "Buddhist" robes sitting on cushions...

Lord, to be a demon!

Demons have vim and vigor ... they are w-i-c-k-e-d!!!!!!!

Sometimes, they are positively e-v-i-l!!!!!!

Man, what I wouldn't give to be in company like that ... really accomplished ... a really first-class naughty person!

But I never made the grade as a demon any more than I ever made the grade with "trying to influence other people." I sit on a cushion from time to time but lack the energy to put on Buddhist robes. That takes more vim and vigor than I've got. The wishful-thinking demon puts its head in my lap ... I pat him with an honest but idle affection.

And as I thought about all this today in the zendo, it occurred to me that I had never been much good at being good and never had been much good at being bad. Here it was 15 years later in the zendo and 40-some in spiritual adventure and I was pretty mediocre, pretty plain, pretty pedestrian ... and pedestrian was OK with me. Demons and saints seem a little like poor old Tour de France champ Lance Armstrong ... a winner until the steroids are revealed.

Mediocre's more my style.

What a good ol' dog.