Don’t know really what I’m getting into with soon publishing this online course. The whole thing feels like an undertaking I’ve mindlessly bumbled into. What started, by dint of lockdown, as this compulsion to leave behind at least some more systematic presentation of the work of meditation, has bloomed (metastasized?) into a hydra-headed Godzillasatva which might challenge my life in so many unknowable ways. From here on out. Let’s hope that my best intentions are enough to carry me through, and help to contribute some small benefit to others.

But entering this anonymized or click-bait driven digital world to “teach”? A fool’s errand, destined for noise. A Zen practitioner, not even a decent monk, throwing my poor spiritual expressions and subtle vanities out into the “like”/“dislike”/“friend”/“unfriend” ether of the Internet? It’s like entering “the ocean of suffering” (고해) again. “Like boiling sand and expecting to get rice.” Creating such a brash, presumptuous role for myself really doesn’t sound like a path towards integrating clarity, stability, sobriety, or natural solitude. And then, by requesting a course fee for this! “Oy veyyyyy,” my Manhattan-born mother would have said, with a roll of the eyes.

Pure idiocy. I hope it works. Don’t bring up the meditation app. This is all like a fentanyl for what remains of solitude — the relaxant that might likely kill it. Chances are.

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