Traveling Zazen

We made it to our first destination in California on Sunday evening, went to work on our tasks and socialized on Monday, and hopefully we'll complete our tasks here and socialize some more this evening then set off for our next destination. 

How do you practice zazen on the road like this, doing so many necessary things and socializing with friends and relations you haven't seen for a while? Where's the time to squeeze in a little meditation or just sitting in a whirlwind schedule like we've been keeping?

Right now there is a morning sit at the Zen center which I have accessed online, and I spent at least four minutes sitting before I started composing and writing this post. That's probably not enough of a sit, and I'll probably squeeze in a little more time later in the day, but it was enough to let me change my frame of mind and calm a little of the nerves that get me all agitated when I'm agitated in the city, with all the traffic and people and noise around. It's overstimulation for me. I need the relative calm tranquility of the country.

And yet no. I need the tranquility of where I live when I'm there, but here I am in the city in California, skies filled with smoke from the fires burning in the Sierras, I'm sitting in a motel room next to a rushing freeway the sounds of which are not masked much by the a/c blowing modestly cooled air. 

And this is what I need, because this is where I am. And so it will be through the rest of the day and through the days to come. We'll be in very, very different environments, strange locales, meeting with people here and there, on the road a lot, staying in small hotels and large, paying fortunes for gasoline, and so forth. Along the route, we'll encounter opportunities to witness, to view, to appreciate, and sometimes to sit. 

This is the Fall Practice Period and there is a fairly rigid schedule that we can't and don't keep to on the road. But it's there, and I can touch it and check in whenever we have the opportunity, need and desire.

I may only practice zazen a few scattered minutes a day. I may study the text only a few minutes before I fall asleep. But they're there -- the opportunities to sit and to study -- even as we are amid furious activity in the city, sitting beside the ocean at Big Sur, wandering a path through the redwoods, or sampling some Danish food treats in Solvang. 

Every moment of every day is Practice if we let it be.