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Focusing Your Mind

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Zen Swim

The sky, beach and tops of the white caps all turned pink as the fireball dipped below the trees. The long crash of the waves intermingled with the howling of the wind and the storm music was strong and compelling. I’m so burnt out I have less love to give and my heart is paper-thin but the sorrows of my heart vanish when I swim. I plunged into the water and was turned sideways, first by the undercurrent and then by the incoming wave. All the force of the slow moving hurricane seemed to be concentrated in the last fifty feet of the surf. The wave held the power of a thousand miles and a billion tons of Atlantic Ocean behind it so swimming to it was hitting a wall of liquid force. The only recourse was to dive to the sand, hold my breath as the weight of the wave hit, and advance a few feet at a time. Once I got out past the first few breakers the sea was manageable but rough and sandy. The storm was moving away. The ancient mariners’ adage was true. Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. Satoru

If you let cloudy water settle, it will become clear. If you let your upset mind settle, your course will also become clear.

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Zen Hurricane Swim

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Unless it is too dangerous I will swim in Sandy the Hurricane tomorrow. The last time I swam in a hurricane was in Manhattan Beach Brooklyn. The waves during that storm thundered in and although they were only twelve feet they were the most brutish force I ever encountered. The wave undertow pulled me out into the breakers and then slammed me down pinning me against the sand. I could not move until the crush of the water flowed over and past me. Then, I kicked to the surface and took a deep breath before the next wave crashed over holding me against the bottom with tons of seawater pressing down. I could move in or out of the sea a few feet at a time as long as I didn’t fight the undertow. It was an exciting Zen game for a swimmer and I enjoyed the experience. There is nothing that makes you feel more alive than engaging in a high-risk activity and at the same time utterly focusing your mind. I didn’t know what the reaction of these Bahamian waves was going to be. The Brooklyn experience was in a relatively enclosed huge bay and in northern waters. This hurricane was in the open sea in the Bahamas. I’d have to test the water and especially the crosscurrents carefully, less I be pulled out to sea off the island. Tomorrow will be an engaging day.

Satoru

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Transformation

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I set out to fish and work the reefs on the north narrows side of the island. There was usually no one else on the beach at four o’clock and the feeling of having this three-mile beach almost to myself was expansive. Just to stand alone and turn my back on civilization, forced to stop thinking by the vastness of the ocean view, pretending that this was the last block on the edge of the world, was unrestrained and invigorating. But my mind would not let go of the self-judgements and dichotomies that dove in and out of my consciousness. I want to be a better Zen Buddhist. I must be the change that I wish to see in the world. The unity of our existence consists of perpetual change. All things change. Hold on to nothing. Satoru

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Change and Failure

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“If you do what you’ve always done, your going to get what you’ve always gotten. Never let what you have never done stop you from doing something different.”
Kirbyjon Caldwell.

Thomas Edison, when working to perfect his light bulb, tried and experimented with over six thousand different materials to use for his filament before using carbonized thread.  “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Thomas Edison

Do not regard failure as an embarrassment but as a learning process toward production.
Satoru

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Bushido

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I am meditating on a deck above the beach looking east into the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean. My beach shack is on a tiny island a few hundred miles from the mainland. The wind off the sea is a strong twenty knots and the salt spray floats across the waters and settles on everything a salty mist. The churning waters are a milky blue opaque and the whitecaps run clear to the horizon. Swimming in the chop with only a mask and snorkel is like a sensory deprivation tank. You cannot see anything but the milky water, which acts as a mirror reflecting your thoughts, and there is nothing but the vast sea surrounding you with neutral buoyancy. Breathe deeply and inhale fresh clean air. There is life in every breath. This is the life of a Zen Buddhist. This is bushido the life of the warrior. So breathe deep and be grateful for the gift of life and all it entails as the sunset turns blood red.

Satoru

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