Hinomaru

I have been Making noise on the Shakuhachi for almost a year now and I am finaly able to play my first song. I had a few Japanese people on hand to authenticate me getting the song correct. It is a short song only 28 beats, but I am very hapy to have learned to play it. Of course when I tried to play this morning without warming up, Going from low to high registers sounded badly. A lesson learned here. In my daily Zazen practice If I dont do some streaching and "warming up" before I sit I will often find I have pain in my joints or my legs fall asleep. This causes my concentration to go badly. So warm up, Than practice.

More on pain

To review what Nishijima Roshi said:

"The ultimate method to overcome pain

(1) Don't have intention to overcome pain.

(2) Don't fear pain emotionally.

(3) Accept pain as it is.

(4) Just endure pain at the present moment."

This turns out to be a litle harder than it sounds, Here is my experiance so far, I saw the Navy Corpsman who said I would not be running for about six weeks, (boo) and the pain seemed nearly unbearable. It hurt enough for me to take the Corpsmans advice and see a real Doctor that afternoon. He in turn told me that I scould not be running for about TEN DAYS. Today my legs feel much beter.
The lesson I have learned from all this it that even though I was trying not to be emotionaly involved with my pain and to accept it as it was it hurt more because of my precived inability to go out and run. Next step? More Zazen!

Pain

I am in pain.
I know how I arrived at this pain.
I am not exaggerating this pain.
This pain is making right concentration very difficult.

I always thought that when one of my marines had "shin splints" that they were full of shit and should drink some water and get over their wimpy little attitude.

I did a five mile run on Friday. Not fast, really quite slow. Over the weekend my shins were sore but the pain was tolerable. On Monday I did a three mile interval run where I would jog for two minutes and run fast for one minuet. That evening I hurt bad enough for it to be noticeable even the next day. Today I had intended to go on a medium pace three mile run and could not even finish it.

Disturbed, I went to see the Corpsman. The "Doc" said that there are two possible explanations and assured me that I was not just being a pussy. Explanation one is that there are hairline fractures on my shins. Ouch. Explanation two is that the muscles on the front part of my leg are pulling away from the bone. Boo, gross even. He also said that I should see a real doctor so I scheduled an appointment for tonight.

This reminded me of Nishijima Roshi's "Zazen, a better way of experiancing pain" So I re-read the article and am trying to not be emotionally involved with the mussel separating from bone in my leg. This is more difficult than it sounds but I think it is working for me. Except when I get up and walk. I am interested in what the Doctor will say. I will let you know.