What is it about head colds that zap brain cells? I haven't taken any medication that would make me groggy, but all I've been able to do for the past half hour is stare at the monitor and wish I were taking a nap.

With the caveat that I'm not exactly on top of things today -- please do read the post "Authentic Practice" at Wild Fox Zen. Koun Franz writes that authentic practice has two components:

1. "Authentic practice is radically, emphatically impersonal."
2. "Authentic practice is expressed physically, moment by moment; that is, it is not purely internal or mental."

That first component might be surprising to some of you. If it is, let's discuss.

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Here's a question that came up in the comments to the last post:

One aspect of Zen meditation I could not yet understand is why there is no metta meditation. In the Triratna tradition - and I suppose in most other Tibetan meditation traditions also- amongst other things there is like mindfulness of the breath meditation also the metta bhavana; a practice I have done on some occassions and also found it helpful to develop compassion. Why does the meditation and chanting practice found in the Metta Sutra and Brahmaviharas not form part of the Zen liturgy or canon? It appears in the Vietnamese Zen (Thien) tradition the Metta Bhavana might be practiced?

In the two major schools of Zen, known in Japanese as Soto and Rinzai, there are two kinds of meditation. In the koan contemplation of Rinzai, students work on and resolve hundreds of koans. I would argue that some of those koans amount to something like metta meditation, although you can't tell that by reading them.

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I hope to focus on dhyana paramita, the perfection of meditation, a bit this week. But many of you already are experienced meditators, so I'm not sure what to say about meditation that would be helpful.

Here's one way you could help me. All of my experience in Buddhism has been in the Zen tradition, so I may be qualified to write about Zen meditation.  But I have no personal experience with the meditation practices of other traditions.

So, those of you who are not-Zen Buddhist meditators -- if there's a website or book you can recommend that does a good job explaining or describing your meditation practice, please let me know!  Also, if you have any meditation-related questions, let me know that, too, and I'll attempt to address them.

Following up on the last post on the role of debate in Buddhism -- this brings to mind one of my favorite women of Buddhist history -- Liu Tiemo (ca. 780-859), also called the "Iron Grindstone."

Liu Tiemo was born into a family of farm workers in north central China. It was a hard life. It's said that one day, while she was still an adolescent, she simply put her tools down and walked away. I imagine her taking to the road, alone, bristling with teenage attitude.

She took shelter in convents, and eventually she was ordained a nun. She learned to read, and then she learned to debate. Her reputation as a fierce debater spread, and monks came to challenger her. She earned the nickname "Iron Grindstone" because she relentlessly ground her debate opponents into bits.

She studied witha renowned male teacher, Guishan Lingyou (771-854), and became one of his dharma heirs. Liu Tiemo's name is still listed on many of the the lineage charts displayed in Zen monasteries today. The larger point here is that challenging the understanding of another student is a tradition that goes way back.