What is it?

I survived the day with 15 hours of meditation (and other sundry activities). The best part, besides the incredibly Ōryōki meals cooked by the Austin Zen Center's tenzo, Koji, was spending 5 minutes in dokusan (private meeting) with the the visiting teacher, Shinge Roko Sherry Chayat Roshi. I told her a bunch of stuff, not too unlike what I have been writing about. She was compassionate about the stuff that hurt... but then said, "putting all that aside, what is it?" What a great question to work on for the rest of my life. Perhaps I ought to start a new blog?

I googled the question and found nothing of interest. So back to the drawing board. 


And now, two days later, I remembered that I got the question wrong. It is: what is this?