This year’s five day Western Zen Retreat began much as had all the others I’d attended: my mind filled with the beautiful and the painful and the mundane, the usual clutter of living in this particular world.
After a while–actually, not too long a while–my mind began to clear, thus making more than ample room for
screaming pain, great doubt and the kind of suffering you don’t want to know about.
Imagine a malnourished and consequently really pissed lion raging inside your brain, your knees and your hips.
More time, a little more, then bango! the bolt of lightening, the pealing thunder, the parting clouds and voila! Mind clutter pretty much cleared leaving nothing but the knee pain, the hip pain, a wealth of smiles and more gratitude than a man in so much knee and hip pain could ever really account for.
Ah, the good old Western Zen Retreat.
Chances are next year I’ll go back.
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Welcome! 
I know exactly how you feel. we all have our own demons. Mine is being overweight (fat). I am going for a two week visit to a fat farm in November. It is not ‘mind clutter’…but “fat clutter’.
John
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Consider that the experience of pain lets you know that you are still alive. Without it we would have nothing to bitch about.
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