3.2.21
Two nights ago at dinner my roommates and I were reminiscing about students at our alma mater, and the name of my friend X came up while talking about a notorious group of people who were always unstable. I mentioned that X seemed "stable" and added anecdotally that he had been for multiple years now in a small group of zen practitioners, one of whom translated some of the texts we read in our Ancient Greek seminars. A roommate replied that that didn't sound stable, and I asked her to explain, thinking that she was making a joke about the translator's quality as a translator, or something. But she said that "being in a zen practice" seemed indicative of "not being stable and wanting to do something about it," therefore X could not possibly be stable. I nodded and said "hmm," lacking the energy to enter into dialogue about how someone might desire to enter into zen practice for exactly the reason my roommate described, and then after reaching a point of stability... remain in the practice. As I nodded I felt a the "hmm" of my throat permeate the air with an invisible fog.