Practice isn't just sitting; nor is it just form.
Practice is what happens in your head while you're out living.
This truth may be a little more accessible to hermits, who seldom congregate for zazen, and whose indulgence in other forms is necessarily spare and simplified. But the stuff you do at Zen centre, while valuable and worthwhile, is only a rehearsal for practice.
The actual practice begins when you leave the zendo.
Or the cushion, for free-range monks like me.
(Photo courtesy of Petr Sidorov and Unsplash.com.)
Zazen doesn't solve anything; it just makes things possible.
(Photo courtesy of Gerald Ford and Wikimedia Commons.)
I had a lot of fun building this structure, which is about a foot and a half long by a little less wide. It encloses an electrical riser at the zendo. Any Old Settler will instantly know it for a split shack, also known as a slab (or slap) shack, or shotgun shack. It's what we lived in before there were trailers.
At its most elemental, the split shack is pole-framed, eight feet by ten, and sided in "splits," rough cedar boards froed directly off the log without benefit of saw. These were free for the taking, especially if you lived on the bay. Where nails were scarce you could knock it up with whittled pegs and an auger, or notch the splits and sew it together with rope, First Nations style. (This is basically just a hillbilly longhouse, anyway.)
Because splits come away thicker at the bottom than the top they impose slightly asymmetrical lines on the whole, for a touch of whimsy, as if brownies lived inside, or maybe hobbits.
Cabins of this lineage also usually had at least one window, in front, opposite the front door. If there was no glass, it was "glazed" with greased rawhide or paper and protected by a wooden shutter. Even glass windows were as likely to be bottle bottoms as plate.
I believe the various names originally referred to different cabins, though they're used interchangeably now. The derivation of "split shack" is obvious, but "slabs" were the round sides of logs ripped off by the head saw as they were squared for milling. As a waste product, slabs were cheap or free; in my day, it was common for families to order up a truckload from the local mill and make one of the kids (I'll call him "Robin") buck them for firewood. I'd bet even money that a true "slab shack" was sided with those instead of splits, and that the term "slap shack," as in something just "slapped up", is just a mutation.
As for "shotgun shack," I know why it's called that (because the front and back door are sited in such a way that you can fire a shotgun straight through without hitting anything), but I have no idea why it's a selling point. Seems a better plan would be not to shoot at the house in the first place.
By the way, the gravel this enclosure is bedded on came from the very beach I grew up on. By purest coincidence, there was a bucketful of this in the house, left over from a large philodendron my grandparents brought with them from the bay. This finally died during the years the house was locked up, and when I liquidated the remains, I kept the gravel the pot was lined with, just in case. The decision to put the two together made itself.
And it really wants a stove pipe. The oversight just glares. But the thing's supposed to be unobtrusive, and not attract attention to itself, so I didn't put one on. But it took all my determination.
Because it ain't home until it has one.
I was out to the zendo a few weeks back, doing some grounds work on a beautiful spring day with no-one around but the warm sun and the cold wind. The place was alive with waking wildlife, and when I'd finished my task, I took a stroll in the woods. Near an old stump I watched a knot of electric-blue garter snakes, shiny-clean and freshly painted, untangle like a film run backwards and glide off in all directions.
By the time I got back from the truck with my camera they'd melted to untraceable rustlings, but as I searched, the groggy girl in the photo fell from a cedar onto the trail at my feet.
Meet Pseudacris regilla, the Pacific tree frog. At an inch and change, this is a big one. In this instance she was cedar green, but her race possess the ability to shift shades, and even whole colours, so she may be avocado or vibrant beryl or even tan or grey by now. But her signature mask, somewhat hard to see in this light, will remain black.
Also slightly discernible are her "garden gloves", the adhesive toe pads that allow her to climb and cling just about anywhere. I've found her ilk under my tent fly on summer mornings; stuck to my glass door at midnight, gobbing insects drawn to the light; and tucked almond-shaped between the sod and foundation of the primary school I attended. Inveterate hobos, Pacific tree frogs have been collared as far afield as Guam, having stowed away in shipments of Christmas trees.
This particular individual was well aware the place was literally crawling with her most rapacious predator, hungry and hunting after a long winter fast, and scrambled desperately up a nearby maple the instant her belly smacked the ground. I took her in hand to further ensure her survival, though as you can see from her expression, she hadn't requested assistance and was uncertain she needed any.
I grew up between a big bog and a larger lake, where each April the Biblical roar of these little prophets foretold a new millenium. (Thus their other common name, the Pacific chorus frog.) The bog has since "developed" into the Alder Terrace Mountain Valley Sherwood Forest Tree Frog Manor Kitchen Sink Estates, and with most of the lakeshore similarly McManaged, the kids in those houses know nothing of the primal thrill of a hundred thousand tiny war cries, raised in unbroken, night-filling forewarning to Grup Nation that school is about to end, love it or lump it. And in fact, the whole tribe were recently knighted Washington's official amphibian, following a petition by students at my nephew's own elementary, most of whom live in still-rural, not-yet-redeemed country.
I kept a few of these frogs on my desk for a time when I was a boy. They were fun to feed, being lively and unparticular, but their habit of croaking in chorus at sunrise elicited yawning grumbles from the family. For such morsels of mortality they can really belt it out, especially when you're in the same room. On the other hand I've had few alarm clocks as charming.
So I was glad this one lived to sing another day.
Practice isn't just sitting; nor is it just form.
