Sh*tty Meditation

I fasted yesterday. I also road my bike in to Chinatown to teach my Kung Fu class, and I think I forgot to drink enough water. I still had a great day yesterday. I ran into a friend, I got some exercise in, but long story short, I skipped a poo day and today I had what is known in our household as rabbit poo.

Each poo by my child is examined by me and my children. In fact, Jonah gets pretty pissed if I flush before he can look at it. So I am used to seeing Rabbit poos, which means I need to give the kids laxative. But I'm not use to seeing my poo be rabbit poo.



                            
Basically i was constipated.

Taking so long to poo I thought about a lot of things. I realized that pooing is not anything like giving birth but still you are a living thing and something is coming out of you. We tend to think of this as gross, but if you close your eyes and meditate and think about the waste products of a star, which turns out to be the elements other than Hydrogen and Helium, because at first that's all we had, and that these "waste" products are what allow us to have planets like earth, with life.... well that's not so gross. And our poo is pretty amazing too. It can be fertilizer and be the fuel for new life as well.

When Pooing, there is no need to keep your eyes open. You really can meditate. And if you don't have time to meditate, that is like saying you don't have time to poo, which even if you don't, you still have to find the time too other wise you will shit your pants.

So shitty meditation is actually a useful way to get meditation in once a day.

Unless you fasted and skipped a day.

Has anyone ever gained enlightenment with Shitty Meditation?

A fellow student of mine who was so smart he dropped out of High school to go to Harvard instead told me he did some of his best thinking while shitting.

Also a story comes to mind of a Japanese Zen monk who had to shit in the middle of the night. Somehow in the story one of the poos misses it's mark and he is disgusted by the fact that he has to wipe it off of the seat (they have squat toilets so I'm not sure of the design of said toilet and where the poo is) In any case he begins looking for something to wipe the poo into the hole with.

Then he thinks, "How can I be so grossed out by this when my mother birthed me along with shit and that was the beginning of my life. To be so grossed out is disrespectful to my mother."
He then wipes the poo with his hand, which he cleans later. But in that moment of understanding that the sacred and the profane are one in the same, he has a Zen moment of enlightenment.

It's a real Zen story. I'm not sure where it is from. I was paging through books in the library more then ten years ago when I read it and replaced the book on the shelf and still I remember it, not word for word, but the essence is there.

So Shitty Meditation is a real thing. Perhaps my name is not so good though.

Perhaps Poodhist Meditation is better.