Flash: Zabuton
Field far beyond form and emptiness
大衣解脱服
Dal sal ge da pu ku
Great robe of liberation
Muttering, recanting the morning chant. Vapor puffs with each vowel. The air crisp. Or so he tried.
His mind shifted.
A New Year. New goals, new problems. New loves, new quarrels, new songs, new ideas.
New, New, New, New. A year of renewal, but the same old grasping.
Sweeping, the deck of the Zen center court, his gaze collecting on the dustpan. Be now, watch the new, be new to the now he reminds himself.
Anchored in the mechanical swing of repetition. It was the fifth day of the yearly New Year seshin—sit and work, sit and work. He had just sat for two hours, his mind scraped raw by silence and vibration, now onto the morning chores, an assembly line of attention and distraction.
Foot off the break he reminded himself.
The engine of the new never halts, its grinding movement consuming and producing in one breathless cycle.
無相福田衣
Muso fuku den e
Field far beyond form and emptiness
Or so he tried to remind himself. Anchoring in the chant again.
He would take food later, after two hours of temple work. Folding sheets and bed mats, cutting carrots, peeling potatoes, boiling them—acts rendered alien and new if he direct his attention right.
Each crease, each slice, a rupture in time, infinite now beneath the surface. He pressed on, mind spilling into cracks: the dryness on his tongue, crusted eyes, the itch of invisible pressure on his scalp. A list of chores on the kitchen wall directed him. He suspected his obedience was just a convenient distraction from the now. Tasks consumed his mind, thoughts sparking like synapses in a self-perpetuating machine. New lights, new colors, new streams —new inputs and new outputs, but all equally fleeting.
Hands off the wheel he added, relax into the drive.
Every second arrives only to dissolve, from where? Here—a fragmentary glitch. Close your eyes, keep them open—it makes no difference to the now. A slow blend, now becomes new, new becomes now.
He tucked his robe and chanted a line.
披奉如来教
Hi bu nyo rai kyo
Wearing the Tathagata’s teachings
Sitting seiza, his gaze fixed a few feet forward on the white wall, his back straight like a line drawn through the fabric of the present. Small tremors rippled across his shoulders, static patterns charging the air. His breath slowed, then deviated, a rogue agent asserting its autonomy. Some sits stretched into eternity, others vanished in the blink of reverie.
Engine in neutral.
The automatic car wash of life - onto our destination without fail.
Lost for a sit imagining pies—cherry, banana cream, key lime, sour cream and peach, rhubarb—an absurd inventory of desires parading. Sandwiches, too, arising from the architectures of past memory: his father standing in a kitchen layering peanut butter, raisins, baloney, and crisp lettuce, a strange alchemy him watching from a table. Dutch crunch imagined with turkey and cranberry, his mouth salivating as he wandered deeper into the pantry of his mind.
New women, new dances, new aches to explore. New distractions, looping endlessly like corrupted code interrupting, but maybe offering insight.
A speck of dust drifted across his field of vision, hovering in the sunlight like a tiny visitor. He followed its arc until it vanished, leaving a hollow stillness behind. He felt the weight of his own resistance—him grasping at the next distraction. He exhaled deeply, his breath carrying a silent vow: now. The fleeting dominion of the present reclaimed, not by accident but by choice.
Happy new, sad new, angry new, bitter new—all new, all now, an endless churn.
Outside back in chores, trimming the hedge bush with shears, he let his gaze wander to the street beyond. He wondered if he could see the spot where the son of the famous writer, that blockbuster Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance had been stabbed years ago, in a botched robbery. The details had blurred over time, though the violence lingered casting a shadow over the center.
Another student from the center had been stabbed just weeks prior—a man with a kitchen knife had taken a wallet and left the body slumped in the street. The center had cared for the remains like before, prayers over the lifeless form. Encountering a different kind of new, he thought. The city deteriorated and bloomed with each snip of the hedge. Trash collected at curbsides, neon signs flickered in gasps, and bodies collapsed where they weren’t meant to be. Every motion carved a fleeting shape.
Ice melts, tiles crumble, nothing remains, everything is.
The Heart and Diamond Sutras echoed in his memory, he’d think about a line or two, learned through the rote chanting. Morning processions to the hall passed over creaking floorboards; incense fog blurred the line between the sacred and the sensory. Rituals channeled chaos into form—enter the hall with the left foot, then the right, bow to the Buddha, bow to the nature of Buddha within. Submission to the structure, to the machinery of order, offered refuge from the vertigo of choice.
He hit the zabutons against the railings, flakes of dead skin dispersing into the cold air, a blanket of togetherness. Cells replaced old ones in a silent churn. Winds descended from the tops; heat rose from asphalt, the city a vast ant farm. Everything blended into the new, the now—the hum of a current beneath the surface.
As he struck the zabuton, a memory floating: a girlfriend who had begged him to spank her, a former Jehovah's Witness now studying medicine in the South. The house had rattled with their shared exuberance, and over breakfast, his roommates had teased them about the sounds—heavy vibrations, squeals that broke into laughter. He recalled her perfect form, her glee, a fleeting snapshot of the past interwoven with the present motion of his hand against gripping the cushion. The memory flickered and faded, swallowed by the machine of the new.
The sutras, the chores, the moments of past distraction, the glimpses of fireworks—they were all the same: pieces of a greater engine grinding. The disciple, the beginner, the temple monks moved, swept, thought, and forgot.
He gazed down from the window, stacking the pillows, seeing a young boy waving at him. He waved back.
Sunlight touched his arm, warmth unfurling like a quiet offering. For a moment, the now held him before slipping into the new—fleeting, whole, and as natural as the breath that followed.
広度衆生
Ko do sho shu jo
Saving all beings
Dal sal ge da pu ku
Muso fuku den e
Hi bu nyo rai kyo
Ko do sho shu jo
Great robe of liberation
Field far beyond form and emptiness
Wearing the Tathagata’s teachings
Saving all beings
// Zero Strike
Audio Track: Deep Listening Band - CCCC (Cistern Chapel Chance Chants)