The Seat of Zen

I can suffer or I can sit in chaos. I choose chaos. It’s where I take my seat in Zen while the world whirrs.

In some moment, I will be swept up. There’s no immunity nor should there be. Life is an experience. The seat of Zen keeps me in the moment I have and only there.

The drama of the storm around me swirls but I experience only the energy of the present moment.

I am not here to escape anything. I’m here to live. Pain is integral to the life experience but suffering is not. That is a choice. Suffering is not sitting in the seat of Zen for suffering is to believe a single experience will never end.

It is not the nature of the energy that animates us to aspire to a stagnant state. Pain and joy evolve, no one state stays.

When I consider my life in that context, each experience I have—pain or joy— is a visitor, sometimes an unwelcome one but a visitor offering me the unknown.

As Pema Chödrön teaches, that visitor will have its say. I must remain open, sitting in the seat of Zen, able to receive. Each experience changes me, like the ongoing cell regeneration in my body. It is not in my being to stagnate.

Zen offers me a life lens, ever adjusting for available light.

Aim for Even posts offer equanimity a dose at a time. No day or dose is ever the same, even if the aim is. You may read about the origins of Aim for Even here or on this site’s About page.