Meditation, disability, and identity.

Since we are all Crips in one way or another, it is well worth learning the truth of what must befall us some day, even if it hasn't already started (it has). After all, when all identities are finally included, there will be no identity. Lennard Davis, Bending Over Backwards [C]lassifications should be recognized as the significant site of political and ethical work that they are. They should be reclassified.. .. There is no simple unraveling of the built information landscape, or, pace Zen practice, of unsettling our habits at every waking moment. Bowker and Star, Sorting Things Out I have practiced Zen meditation for a number of years now. Maybe that is why, when I noticed that a number of disabled people have taken up meditation and written narratives about it, I became interested in what meditation has to teach us about disability (and vice-versa). Seated meditation, or zazen, involves learning to " think not-thinking, " according to Zen Master Dogen. 1 Zazen consists of the moment-to-moment encounter with what is: the thoughts that flow through the mind; the feelings that pass through the body; and the occurrences in one's surroundings as they come into being, and fade away. An examination of three narratives written by disabled meditators reveals how Zen meditation might illuminate the relationship between disability and identity, as well as what Buddhism might learn from the experience of disability. Lorenzo Milam writes CripZen: A Manual for Survival from the perspective of a postpolio paraplegic. 2 Joan Tollifson,