Making adjustments, walking on water

Remember the thing I wrote about Hegel and the thousand ways of being unhappy and how a lot of the Phenomenology of Spirit seems to be about adjusting yourself to the way the world changes? Yeah, it was in the old blog which I'm still loath to link to--especially since I got an out-of-the-blue email from The Ex today which was conciliatory, but just so totally out of the realm of things I'm thinking about at the moment--but ANYway, the point is that I'm still trying to remind myself about that every day, and that it's Hegel as much as anything else that's pushing me towards the whole Zen thing, which if you know me at all in real life is very much not my preferred style, but maybe, just maybe....

Because I have to just keep telling myself over and over again that I will get done what needs to be done and that I will not go crazy and that it's okay to go out when I can (though probably not to bull-riding because I know I won't be able to keep control of myself) and take occasional breaks and that even when everything takes longer than it should it will still be okay. And there's a reason why, three weeks ago, right after my meeting with the committee member who should be my adviser but isn't totally in the right field, I came home and was moved almost to tears by this passage in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind:

To live in the realm of Buddha nature means to die as a small being, moment after moment. When we lose our balance, we die, but at the same time we also develop ourselves, we grow. Whatever we see is changing, losing its balance. The reason everything looks beautiful is because it is out of balance, but its background is always in perfect harmony. This is how everything exists in the realm of Buddha nature, losing its balance against a background of perfect balance. So if you see things without realizing the background of Buddha nature, everything appears to be in the form of suffering. But if you understand the background of existence, you realize that suffering itself is how we live, and how we extend our life. So in Zen we sometimes emphasize the imbalance or disorder of life.

I think I would be happier overall if I could learn how to experience being thwarted, straying from my own plans, falling short of my own to do list, struggling with my own writing, as an act of losing my balance instead. And I am hoping that this will allow me to continue to believe that this will all work somehow, that I am only behind because of the structures that I set up, that there is still time--even though I need to stay in this professional mode, which I think I am doing--and somehow I will be able to catch myself, with the nets I've been weaving for several years, trusting my own reading. And the rhythms of my own thinking--it's after 3:30; it will be stupid to keep my alarm at 7, but I can let it go off at 10 and still have time to sit zazen and eat a decent meal and get to school by around noon and work until 9 and so on and this will be okay and I will go to bed early tomorrow and then figure things out from there.

It all just might work.