What am I DOING?

     I accidentally hit the caps lock key when typing the title... but upon review, it seemed wholly appropriate.

     I read this on my facebook news feed, posted by Sweeping Zen:

"Teachers who think they are actually teachers teaching something are to be avoided. Good teachers are people who are themselves simply working on their own practice and are willing to share their lives as best they can with others. In this sense the 'best' teachers are often the worst teachers; the more brilliant the teacher, the more exciting, the more enlightened, the worse it is for the student. The student ends up lusting after time with the teacher, hanging on her every word, and forgetting that this is about him or her, the student, not the teacher." - Zoketsu Norman Fischer

     I think what caused a tightening sensation in my abdomen upon reading this was guilt... I must confess I have approached this blog and conversations with others, and even my intent to ordain and train in buddhist ministry (and maybe even in adopting the view that there can be such a thing as buddhist ministry) with a hope to teach someone something about buddhism.  In my defense, this is not an approach I have taken all the time.  But I have taken it sometimes.*

     I have two posts in draft status right now.  For both of them, what is holding me up from working on and finishing them (apart from a schedule at nuke "a" school which leaves little personal free time) is a desire to find and perfectly express some important point about life, buddhism, practice, whatever.

     Maybe it would be better if I return to my original intention, to use this blog merely as an extension of a practice of examining what is going on with my mind, rather than trying to express some truth I mistakenly think I have discovered in an effort to bring other people to zen practice.*

     Last thought: don't bhikkus mostly want to be left alone to do their own practice?  Hopefully my next two posts will be faithful reports of the goings-on of my mind and nothing more... Any epiphanies revealed therein are wholly the product of the mind of the reader and I take no credit whatsoever.

*After reading these sentiments to myself, I do realize how absurd they are considering I only started zen practice two and a half years ago.  How grotesque!