As I was wrapping up my sit this morning and putting everything away, I startled the cat with an involuntary laugh because I had a sudden flash of how much of a weirdo I've gradually become over the years.
The first priest I was able to find to study with and receive the precepts from without traveling hundreds of miles was of a Chinese Linji lineage that did things a little differently than the usual Soto routines I was more used to. One of these differences was that when we recited the refuges, we did them in Pali. Not sure why, never asked him. It was kind of cool to know that we were making approximately the same sounds* as have been disturbing the air for more than a couple thousand years-- a sense of connection to the past, and a bringing of the past into the present.
That got me interested in other Pali recitations, so I added a few to my usual pre- and post-sit routines. Like either the five or eight precepts from early Buddhism in addition to the usual Mahayana ten. (The collection of eight I use isn't the one with the high beds and such, but the one that breaks down the trainings regarding speech into three instead of one.)
There are lots more little things that have been added to my little cobbled-together system, like admixtures of Soto and Rinzai methods, but I don't want to burden my instance's server with one of my usual walls of text. 😉 On the rare occasions when I have an opportunity to sit with other people, I get a little unsettled because I feel like I'm skipping stuff I should be doing. OH NO I'M DOING IT WRONG. 🙄
*I later discovered that the pronounciations were a bit off, especially the dotted-m sound, but close enough. 🙂
