air conditioning

Across the street this morning, my Christian neighbors Joe and Pat came out of the house all scrubbed and clean and nicely dressed. They climbed into their red, air conditioned Honda and headed off I don't know where ... don't know where, but imagined it was to their church, which, I further imagine, is air conditioned.

I was jealous. Later, I will go out to the zendo and do a bit of zazen. The zendo is not air conditioned and I am too old to be much impressed with those who did or do their Zen practice through all sorts of extreme heat and cold.

If testing the harsh realities of climate or posture or mind were sine qua non's of spiritual endeavor, how could anyone expect to make a bit of progress? I can enunciate the spiffy answers and demurrers, but the best I can come up with is the old encouragement:

The hard stuff is easy. It's the easy stuff that's hard.