"Throat sore, body tired. I wake up late still grumbling about the darkness of daylight savings time. I'm grumbling about most everything this morning.
"I don't like this tiredness.
"What's that weird feeling in my ear?
"The theme of the last two days — in individual meetings in Zen, in coaching, and now in my life — has been being with what we don't want to be with. This reminds me of the Buddha's first teaching of the fact of suffering and the second teaching that this suffering comes from our opinion about how things should be.
"Again and again, I find myself encountering something that I am quite certain should not be the way it is — a tiredness, a difficulty, a discomfort. This certainty arises so quickly that I hardly notice it as opinion and I continue on my not-so-merry way in the unconscious certainty that 'This couldn't be my one true life.' It doesn't even occur to voice this out loud, because it seems so manifestly and obviously true.
"So I try to fix it, move away from it, or just space out.
"But as I begin to notice this experience of wanting it to be different, to become aware of my opinion that it 'should' be different, something shifts — a space arises — an interruption of the inertia of delusion.
"And in this space, right where I am, I find something new and unnamable.
"This morning, my great vow is to be with what is arising — the sore throat and the tiredness as well as my opinion that it should be otherwise. Even the grumbling is redeemed when I remember to look here."
