a piss and a moan

First, a disclaimer: I am PMSing, and I am sleep-deprived. Ergo, I am crabby.

I am beginning to think it was a mistake to come to the ZC. I'm attending a class on Monday nights to study the Six Paramitas with ZC Co-Abbot Paul Haller -- the paramitas are the theme of the Fall Practice Period, so they're what I'm here to learn. Haller's Saturday morning dharma lectures have been great; he seems an upright, sensistive, tuned-in-to-a-greater-reality kind of guy. The experience of his Monday night class, however, has left me confused, irritated, and thoroughly unenlightened.

Here are my greivances:
- overreliance on sanskrit words I don't know (ex: nirmankaya, viyasa, and a bunch of others I don't remember)
- "homework" that includes self-examination of "what gets in your way of awakening." Last time I checked, I had not made any promises to uphold any code of moral conduct, even nice ones. So indoctrination is in the air. Bleck.
- reading list: turns out the 5 books are optional texts and will not be referred to during lecture. Goodbye, $40!
- readings: these are handed out in class. Not in advance of class, so you have a shot at understanding the sanskrit words (see above) or the Big Concepts. When they do hand them out they don't make enough copies for everyone, so many of us have to go download the docs from the Web site and print them. This wouldn't be difficult if I were at home, with my own printer. But here at ZC, they don't keep the printer stocked with papger. So you need to go get some of that. Oh, and the docs aren't always posted to the Web site in a timely way. So there's that, too. Let's say you succeeded in printing out, only for some reason the paper you're using contains someone's idea of paper art and you lose a page. Well, don't fear. You can read the electronic version, only you'll have to cock your head at a 90-degree angle, because the PDFs are not saved in a landscape format. Why not just buy the book the copies came from? You bought all the other ones. Well, you can't, because it's out of print. Fun!
- class discussion: evidently Paul is really busy because he relies a lot on discussion for the format of the class. There are about 40 people in the class, although I've now heard a count as high as 70 for folks participating in the practice period, so maybe it's that many. It's pretty hard to have a discussion among 40 people, but that doesn't stop some people from trying. There are ample opportunities to share personal experiences, and we've got some big sharers. So I get to learn a lot about the personal lives of people in my class. And their names. I am not told where they live, however, so I really can't do anything to improve the situation.

Here's my takeaway from all this aggravation: It's hard to get off the angry bus. Once pissed off by the lousy class, it was a small step to really getting steamed about the lack of decent shower facilities in the women's third-floor bathroom, which leaves 15 of us battling for shower time at 4:45am. There are two other showers there: one is full of supplies and the other sports a water-saving head that's so aggressive it's like trying to bathe with a plant spray bottle.

So what did I do? I skipped kinhin, the second sitting, soji, and service. I sat with a cup of coffee and tried to calm down. The sunrise was beautiful, the building smelled like waffles. Trouble was, there weren't actually any waffles in the building. So I contemplated the smell, which was wonderful, and the reality, which was millet.

Pema Chodron wrote a book called The Wisdom of No Escape. I've got it upstairs, in my shared room, on my new bookshelf. Help, Pema, help! What do I do now?