Chairs Permitted

Back when I was in college, I had just begun training in martial arts and I was obsessed. I trained three times a week and every day at home. I read every book I could get my hands on. I was not very skilled, but I absolutely burned up with pursuing it.

This came to a halt abruptly when I sustained a knee injury. Luckily, it was not anything serious, but the doctor did tell me in no uncertain terms that I could not train for a month. He might as well have been telling me I was barred from the dojo for all eternity.

I watched videos and read, but that did not give me my "fix." I needed to do something that felt more like actual training. I did an internet search and learned that there was a Zen center in town, so I decided I would go there instead.

The center was a rented space on the second floor of a building in downtown. The meditation hall was small and simple but tidy. A line of cushions filled with buckwheat, with larger, denser cushions atop them lined the meditation hall. The purpose of the cushions was to sit - either in simple cross-legged position, half-lotus, or full lotus while meditating. Just looking at the cushions made me wince. With my injury, cross-legged would not be comfortable.

Looking at the program, it included a 45-minute sitting meditation followed by a dharma talk. I gritted my teeth and sat down. I wanted to train and I figured I could at least train my mind. If my knee hurt a bit, it would not kill me.

Forty-five minutes is a long time for any new meditator (and most old meditators). I sat through the session with the abbot and four or five other people. Everyone closed their eyes and focused on their breath. I did that but after a few minutes, my knee started screaming at me. I gutted through the session, periodically and silently extending my injured leg and looking carefully to make sure and do it when everyone's eyes were closed.

After the meditation session ended, the abbot gave a dharma talk. On the way out, he beckoned me over.

"This isn't 'samurai zen,' young man. You could have asked for a chair."

He had a sparkle in his eye when he said it - I could tell he was trying very hard not to laugh.

I flushed. I thought I had gotten away with my subterfuge. (I still have no idea how he saw me - I swear his eyes were closed the whole time.) I felt like an idiot for not asking for something so obvious as a chair.

For years, I told that story with a sense of embarassment. The young man got so fixated on his goals he couldn't see the obvious solution in front of him. Good, simple illustration of Zen in action, right?

Looking back on it, there is more there to unpack.

I understand things a bit better now. People tend to act according to their situation. If you are at the grocery store, you act grocery store. If you go to the bank, you act bank. If you are at the Zen center, you act Zen center. Or at least what your 19 year-old mind thinks that "Zen center" is supposed to act like. (If you want to do a deep dive on this topic, Angela Duckworth's book "Situated" is a great exploration of the subject.)

My default thinking was that I had to meet whatever I perceived the standard to be for that place. In that instance, I had thought it meant sitting cross-legged even though it felt like someone doused my knee in kerosene and set it on fire. No one ever told me that is what the rule was - I just took the information in front of me and came to that conclusion.

Looking back, my default thought process when encountering adversity was always "take the hard path" or "endure the suffering." Some variation of "be tougher than the situation around you." Rarely, if ever, did I think to challenge my assumptions about a situation or ask questions. Or even worse, ask for help. That seemed like admitting weakness or ignorance - and if there is one thing a 19 year-old does not want to be, it is anything that feels weak or ignorant.

I'm grateful for the lesson I learned that day, and I'm also grateful for the deeper lesson I get looking back on it now.

Older, wiser me would have called ahead, explained my injury, and ask if the injury could have been accomodated in the session. I could have learned about the chair. But getting to that place required developing comfort with the ideas that questioning or changing my situtation were not marks of weakness. To the contrary, the ability to question and change circumstances were actually signs of strength.

The reason I bring up the chair almost two decades later is that there are still plenty of places in my life where I mirror what 19 year-old me would have done, and just grit my teeth and plow through a situation with limited information and bad assumptions. I share it here because in my experience, I'm not alone on this one. Maybe there are places in your own life where you're mutilating yourself thanks to your own unspoken rules and assumptions.

If so, I hope you adopt the mantra I've been saying to myself for more than two decades now.

"It's OK to ask for the chair."