As I head into week five of the fall training period, I have a joyful heart. At least right at

this particular moment which is all I have anyway. (Regardless of what my shamelessly

busy mind thinks, it is totally convinced I have a future and tries endlessly to predict it-

but that is another story.)

This week, I am reflecting on the power and function of the training period schedule.

Tenshin Roshi likes to tell us about a conversation he had with his teacher Maezumi

Roshi many years ago, about a training period schedule. He told Maezumi Roshi that he

felt somewhat daunted facing the schedule with all he had on his plate. He was told

succinctly, “Let the schedule be your teacher”.

What did he mean by that? How can the schedule be my teacher, I wondered? No matter

where we are, we always have some schedule or other, even on vacation, we’re going to

have meals at certain times, try to do some activities at particular times. We have a work

schedule. We have our kid’s school schedule. So what is different about this schedule?

I think in part it comes down to what Roshi calls voluntary restriction. Life here is pretty

simple (if we let it be). There aren’t a lot of choices. We wake up; we go to the Buddha

Hall. We might decide to have a cup of coffee or tea first, but that’s about as complex as

it gets. We sit, we walk, we sit, we participate in the morning service, and then we have

breakfast. We eat what is served.

A good deal of our time is accounted for with formal or informal practice. I like that!

In my work outside the Zen Center, I have many complex decisions to make, choices that

may have great impact on other people’s health, and well being. I have financial

decisions and social decisions. Since I am mostly self-employed, I am constantly

assessing priorities also. Here, I have the opportunity to let this go for a while and as

Master Dogen says, “Take the backward Step and turn the light inward.”

Last week, I had a particularly challenging sit, as I was experiencing quite an intense

level of physical pain. It is a condition I have been dealing with since a surgery seven

years ago. Over these years, I have tried many strategies and healing modalities with

varying degrees of success. I have also had to accept that it is not going away, and find a

way to live peacefully with it. My practice has made this possible. But often when I am

having a really bad day like this one, I might use distraction, like television or staying

busy. The schedule asked me to sit with it. Of course I could have gotten up, gone to my

room and lay down or even, yes watch a movie. No one would have judged me, or

criticized me; they would just make sure I was OK. (I don’t watch TV or movies here by

the way, my choice). But I decided to “let the schedule be my teacher” and sit with it,

bringing curiosity to it. I let my attention go right into it without the usual low grade

resistance, or “techniques” such as, “maybe if I move just a little or try breathing our

really slowly, it will give me some relief”. I gave up on manipulating my experience.

Something in me said, “Joshi if you are ever going to really find peace and freedom, you

are going to find it right now, right here. It is not somewhere else”. And with this

determination, I stayed with it. And I did experience peace, which later gave me

confidence. The pain didn’t change, but my relationship, not just to it, but to reality,

changed. This was a deep taste of freedom.

When I shared this experience with Tenshin Roshi he said, “That is the function of the

schedule, it’s like the title of the Pema Chodron book;”The Wisdom of no Escape". The

schedule can offer us this wisdom if we fully embrace it.”