Five Second Zazen (or Please Just Stop the Car)

I’ll get to the point in a  second but I have to explain a couple of things…

Zazen, if you haven’t heard the term before, is simply sitting in meditation together with others. You may have never thought about meditating WITH other people but it’s a wonderful experience. In the beginning, I used to sit away from other sitters when I walked into the room, thinking I didn’t want to bother them. But our teacher explained that we should sit next to one another. It is a totally different experience to feel as though you are being welcomed into that environment. That you can truly “be” with other people and be present with them noticing their breath and their peaceful presence.

When I was a little girl, there were no devices, only three black and white channels from about 6 a.m. to about midnight. Now the world moves so fast and we are so over-stimulated, we are losing our connection with each other people. Back then people stopped their cars to let you pass. And people hurried as best they could to be polite and not make the driver wait any longer than was necessary.

I don’t know when it happened, but people don’t have time to stop their cars anymore and let people pass in front of them — now it’s sort of a rolling stop and sometimes they don’t even have time for that.

The guy that is shuffling slowly across your path? He’s not walking slowly because he’s old, he’s walking that way because his feet hurt. See the lady who seems distracted and disorganized? She just had her first chemo last week and now she knows how bad it is. She’s wondering how she will make it through the rest of the treatments, how will she care for her family. And what will happen to them if she doesn’t survive? And those of us getting on in years don’t hear or see that well anymore. When you are rolling your car at me, I don’t even know if you see me. I feel a lot of fear and stress crossing the street nowadays. And my fears are founded — more and more pedestrians are being hit by cars.

I heard a monk when asked what was the purpose, what had he gotten out of all that meditating. He replied without much hesitation that he had learned how to wait. I didn’t really get it at first but the more I thought about it, the more profound I found his answer. Even the bible says “this too shall pass” implying that waiting may be necessary. Maybe the ability to wait is an extremely useful skill.

Another way to look at it comes from another story I heard about an man in India who, at great expense and hardship, stopped to help a young woman in distress. When asked why he would go to such trouble when he had a family of his own to care for replied that he thought of it as incurring good karma for his daughters. That perhaps one day if his daughters ever found themselves in trouble, someone would be kind enough to stop and help them. I love that story because the implication here is that we truly are connected to each other in ways we can’t begin to comprehend.

Think of it as incurring karma for your loved ones. (How do you feel about someone barreling down on your mother or your sister or your daughter?) Think of it, not as having to wait on someone, but as a wonderful five seconds that you can use to get off the wild ride that is your life, take a deep breath, relax, be in the moment, be with the person in front of you. Take five seconds to be peaceful, to wish peace for that stranger crossing your path.

You can’t run them down, you can’t go anywhere else so just take five seconds and

STOP

THE

CAR.