Song Of The Day: Downtown / Frank Sinatra
Word Of The Day: Gnathonize (Verb, 1619 -1727) To flatter

Left Boulder at 10am on Thursday morning, hugging and kissing the wife and daughter, then drove 13 hours straight through to Iowa City. Drove in silence the entire time, ear plugs in, meditating -well, modified meditation because it is necessary to keep my eyes open and remain alert enough to avoid crashing the car- but a kind of zazen nonetheless. It's definitely the way to go with driving. I've driven over a half million miles in my career, and I've really learned a lot about auto travel. People always wonder how I do it. They think it must be boring, or very hard on my body, etc. And it is, IF I don't practice meditaiton while I'm driving. For instance, on one end of the spectrum, if I do what most people would do and listen to music and let my body "stretch out" with my legs in all directions and such, it's fucking brutal. The noise of the road, the noise of the radio, and the vibration on my body accumlates in the tissue and distorts / depletes my awareness until at the end of one of those 13 hour drives I'm a freaking zombie. If I use that approach, I show up at the first gig wasted and beat. On the other hand, if I put ear plugs in, keep the radio OFF the whole time, and drive in silence with my legs held together the entire time while remaining still and simply observe my breathing, I arrive rested, energized, and virtually free of any deleterious effects on my body.

It's driving Sesshin.

This is a great example of learning to over ride the impulses of your monkey mind. Of course people get in a car and they want to turn on the radio, talk on the phone, stop and get food, flop their body all over the place to try and keep it limber, but in my experience all of that makes things much, much worse. If you really want to have the ultimate trip, use ear plugs, keep your legs together, keep the car totally silent, and follow your breathing the whole time. I am honestly blown away by how 13 hours in the car feels like 30 minutes when I arrive. An entire day just evaporates, and the most amazing interior spaces open up while I'm driving. Keeping the legs together is a tip I got from my chiropractor, and I have to say without exaggeration it has eliminated 95% of all physical pain and stiffness from these long drives. I felt as good getting out of the car in Iowa City as I did getting into it in Boulder. I drove another four hours the next day to get to Madison for the show, and same thing, felt totally fresh on arriving.

We think that "time" will pass more quickly if we keep ourselves occupied, entertain the brain, and use the long drive to "get shit done". It's total fucking bullshit. I kid you not, when I use the drive for a meditation Sesshin, I am ten times more awake, present, and positive when I arrive. The way to deal with long drives and time-intensive trips is not to entangle one self in the time factor. Attempts to occupy the mind just keep us in-time. When awareness drops-out of the time stream, it's an ultra-simple step backward. 13 hours? I can't even say it felt like 30 minutes.

I never would have taken up this approach to travel if it weren't for attending Sesshins. The same thing applies there. People wonder "how the fuck do you sit on a cushion for 10 hours a day staring at a wall without moving?". It may sound like bullshit -until you actually do it- but you're not sitting there for ten hours. You're just sitting there. In my experience the first day of a Sesshin, and sometimes other parts of a retreat, do feel long or difficult, but much of it has a bizarre non-time quality. A whole day, or several days, can pass by and it just doesn't feel like it's been any time at all. Time gets soft, like a vapor. Sometimes you can't believe -you can't BELIEVE- you've been sitting an hour and the bell rings. What? It felt like five minutes. Same thing with driving. I arrived in Iowa City after 13 hours and was like "that was unbelievable. I feel incredible. That was a BLINK of an eye."

Of course I still fuck with my buddies. I talked to Tripp on the phone while driving, and just for fun I had to play the pity card "OHHHHH I've driving for 12 HOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!" but it was a rouse. I felt incredible.

Try it, you may be amazed.