I am writing from Ashland, Wisconsin this evening. Trying to get my mind in gear to do the 42 Annual American Birkebeiner this coming Saturday! I am hoping for a little warmer temperatures and no wind. Today’s high in Hayward was about 6 degrees fahrenheit, but there was no wind and it was not too bad. So if race day conditions are about the same, things should be good. Right? But what if it is windy or snowing? What then? Do I still race? Or go home?

Of course we all have the tendency to want to control things. Especially things that are not in our control – like the weather. This perceived lack of control takes us out of our comfort zone. Then what happens? We start to put restrictions, limits, provisos on what we can and cannot do. I think about how many times I have used the weather as a reason for not going or doing something because it took me out of my comfort zone.

I was remind of this today from a Zen Quote of the Week called:

NO EDGES, NO BOUNDARIES
We are free, every one of us. We are born free, and the bondage, restrictions, and limits that we find in our life are self-created. The edges we perceive have been placed there by the way we use our minds. There are fundamentally no edges, no boundaries. But this practice has nothing to do with believing. We don’t have Zen believers. It also has nothing to do with understanding. Understanding implies a separation between the knower and the thing that the knower knows.
It has to do with direct and intimate experience itself. Your experience. Not Shakyamuni Buddha’s, not mine – yours. Only you can make yourself free. No one can do it for you. The only one with the power to do it is you yourself. “Only a Buddha can realize a Buddha” – and it is nowhere to be found other than on top of the seat that you’re sitting on. This was excerpted from “Mountain Record of Zen Talks” by John Daido Loori – page 78.

I believe that this quote is right on target. We put the boundaries on ourselves – we create our own restrictions – how many times have we suffered horrible catastrophes – almost all of which have not come true. If you build that wall in your mind – it is just as real as the wall built in the physical world.

Well that is enough for this week – if you are interested in more Zen quotes check out: Zen Quotes @ Shambhala publications.