This is part one of my “Zen Testimonial,” comprised of journal entries, correspondence, and poetry I wrote between 1995 and 2005 – starting just before I got involved in Zen practice and stretching over ten years. I have already told the story of my spiritual journey on the Zen Studies Podcast, but in this episode I give my 20-and-30-something self the chance to tell you directly about some of my experiences. I share because personal accounts – from anyone – can be fascinating and inspiring.
I have already told the story of my spiritual journey on the Zen Studies Podcast, in five parts: Episodes 174, 175, 176, 200, and 201. In that story, I start with my childhood and end with the completion of my ten years of monastic training.
This two-part episode, “A Zen Testimonial,” similarly covers my spiritual questions and practice, but relies as much as possible on prose and poetry I wrote between 1995 and 2005. In other words, instead of offering a description of my experience with the benefit of 20 or 30 years of hindsight, I’m giving my 20 and 30-something self the chance to tell you directly. Thankfully, I saved some writing that expresses the angst and despair I felt, as well as later writing that celebrates my successes in practice.
Journal entries and correspondence have dates, and I have interspersed poems I wrote between 1998 and 2004 wherever they seemed appropriate. I briefly mention some significant events in my life as we proceed through time if they aren’t described in the writings. Stringing together these various pieces probably fails to give you a satisfying linear narrative, especially when my writing drops off just when I start to find some peace. Each piece of writing will have to function as a little window into my mind at various stages of a long and complex journey.
I preface this offering with the same disclaimer I made about my spiritual journey episodes: I don’t think you’re interested in my story because I’m such a brilliant person. Instead, I share because I believe personal accounts can be fascinating. I hope by witnessing some of my struggles directly, you will be able to appreciate the relative peace of mind I achieved through Zen practice as a kind of “Zen Testimonial.”
Content:
March 22nd, 1995, Journal Entry
April 29th, 1995, Journal Entry
Poem: RIGHT AND WRONG
November 1995: I get involved in Zen
April 23rd, 1996, Journal Entry
July 7th, 1996, Journal Entry
From a letter to my sister, 1997
From an application for part-time residency at the Zen center, 1997
From a piece written for a friend’s zine, Sangha Jewel, 1997
August 11th, 1997, Journal Entry
October 2nd, 1997, Journal Entry after a month’s long stay at Zen Mountain Monastery
November 4th, 1997, Journal Entry (back at graduate school, separated from husband)
January 8th, 1998, Email to a friend (after deciding to finish master’s degree, even though it will take another year)
Poem: TWO CAMELLIAS
February 12th, 1998, Journal Entry
March 22nd, 1995, Journal Entry
Note: I graduated from college in 1993, got married in 1994, and was working for the US Forest Service at this time of this journal entry, which was made about six months before I got involved in Zen practice. Note that this is a particularly negative journal entry I have chosen to illustrate the depths to which I could sink emotionally. I didn’t always feel like this. Sorry for the colorful language.
I am filled with utter self-loathing. A moment ago, I was writing here a pseudo-poetic line of crap about my ego and how it feels separate from the horrid, immature child that periodically seems to overtake me and throw my body into tantrums and my mind into a stinking pit of self-reflection. Even now my lower lip trembles with self-pity. Ah, I am so angst-ridden! Poor me! Sometimes I hate myself so badly I can hardly stand it, and oh, doesn’t that make for interesting reading? I have perused old journals of mine, I know, I have been bored by myself and felt exactly as other people must feel when forced to listen to me or read the adolescent crap I shit into words with an awkward, strained effort.
Everything I write will always be shit, even when I can go back and edit it all electronically, cleaning it up so I have a chance of coming off smart. Do I believe all of this, or am I simply trying to hurt myself? That is quite likely, because many of the things I say I hope aren’t true, while I know my powerful self-hatred is a stark reality. The plain and ugly fact is that no matter how esoteric I get in my journal, open-hearted I get in my volunteer efforts for others, no matter how engrossed I get in noble subjects like learning American Sign Language, no matter how hard I work or how enterprising and successful I become at my job, no matter how in touch with nature I become or how many natural foods I eat – I am a god-damned hypocrite.
Often, I come home and abuse my partner with my ridiculous self-pity, moving him to laughter that he tries to restrain out of a sincere sense of concern. But tearing myself down gets me nowhere. I have often wished people could get a glimpse of their own stupidity, but alas it seems to do us no good. In fact, it probably only hurts, for there is nothing we can do about it.
I am sincerely embarrassed by all of this; embarrassed that I am so pathetic, embarrassed that my writing is so pretentious, embarrassed that I am embarrassed. I turn in viscous, stupid circles like a dog trying to bite its own tail.
April 29th, 1995, Journal Entry
I suffer from depression daily. Everything depresses me. Not at all the least depressing is my worry that my husband will someday ask himself whether long days of pointless misery with a psychologically disturbed woman are worth his patiently listening to endless hours of tears and apologies which come to nothing. A hint of complaint or criticism from the lover in the vicinity of his morose and abusive wife, and he sends her plummeting into another slippery vat of self-loathing.
I adorn myself with a good and energetic, capable and balanced, creative and friendly face when I mingle with the rest of the world. How revolted, saddened, pitying, and suddenly doubtful people would be if they could see my depressed and angst-ridden face! Which face is the mask? Are two people residing within me, and if so, how independent of one another are they? Both of my inner selves think they are real. One can’t look out through the eyes of the other. Possessor takes all, the other is momentarily obliterated, only a seed remains. Then, like a drop of water on the wicked witch, a touch of the crucial reagent in the right surroundings brings the dormant spirit to life, and night eats day. I do not want to be controlled in cycles like the tides!
RIGHT AND WRONG
So much wrong.
They said there were enough bombs
to destroy the whole planet, but
I had only just discovered
kangaroos. My dad held me perfectly
in a bear hug so I knew I was beautiful
and capable of anything, but
the girl who threatened me in the school bathroom
didn’t think so. My childhood was warm
and smelled of my mother’s homemade bread, but
in National Geographic
the kids had stomachs the size of
basketballs.
I didn’t know whether to fight or flee
this world, whether to take a
taste of it and let its juices stream down
all over me, or
to cut out the tongue
that might betray me with its lust
and leave me bound and obligated. So
I carried a fierce motto everywhere,
clenched in my fists, but at last
I’m too exhausted –
We still demand justice
(the kangaroos, the little kids, and I),
but I have not cut out my tongue
and my hunger binds me to the fate of the world.
November 1995: I get involved in Zen
A description of this process from something I wrote 1.5 years later (early 1997):
I started sitting every day in November of 1995. I had been reading about Buddhism, among other things, in preparation for a sight-seeing trip to India. When I read about the four Noble Truths, a chord was struck deep within me, and since that day I haven’t been able to get enough of Buddhism. Sitting immediately made a huge difference in my life, on both a simple, mundane level and on a profound level. My relationship with my husband, family, and everyone else started to improve. I became less defensive and irritable. I stopped worrying about holding on to memories and beating myself up for past mistakes. I began to feel less overwhelmed by the pain in the world and at the same time more able to feel compassionate. In short, I was hooked.
I investigated that strange jewel the sutras kept mentioning, “Sangha,” by looking through the phone book. After seeing them listed, I attended the Oregon Buddhist Church one Sunday. During a discussion after the service, sangha members were discussing why they chose to belong to the Pure Land school rather than the Zen school of Buddhism. One woman said she preferred Pure Land because she didn’t feel she was up to the discipline of Zen or an intense teacher-student relationship. My own curiosity was set on fire by the mention of such Buddhist practice. Investigating Zen in the phonebook led me to the Zen center.
March 1996: Received precepts and formally became a Zen Buddhist
April 23rd, 1996, Journal Entry
Why? Why is it so impossible for me to meditate? Things have only gotten worse and worse, despite trying, teachers, the Jukai retreat… I can only sit zazen for about 10 minutes before I fall asleep. Why? Is there some big, terrible secret waiting to arise in me that I am resisting? Am I obsessed with NOT having kensho, and thus I resist going into deep samadhi? Am I just lazy? Am I fighting sleep too hard? Am I not fighting it, but instead letting it have its way? I try not to feel bad about this, or frustrated, and most of the time I succeed. But sometimes it really makes me want to cry. Long and hard.
Zazen is nothing but being in the moment. I am not expecting any particular state, or peace, or anything as far as I can tell. I feel very open to any possibility, but still the answer to my problem does not arise. Perhaps what I lack is a sense of urgency. I tried to get away from that! I didn’t want to sit “for a reason,” whether that was improving myself, practicing zazen to get better at it, cultivating equanimity, whatever. When I, consciously and unconsciously, was aiming at achieving these things, I FELL ASLEEP during zazen. So, then I thought I got a little insight during retreat about letting go of these reasons to sit. Now perhaps I just accept everything with such blase openness, sleep creeps right in.
Another koan, I guess: Don’t become attached to effort and believe the self can achieve anything, but don’t expect to achieve anything without conscious effort. Some inspiration came to me last night as I reflected on Shunryu Suzuki’s assertion that Zen mind is beginner’s mind. I thought about what sense of urgency I might have had as a beginner that I now lacked. When I first started, every time I sat zazen was exciting. Not that I experienced transcendental states or divine insights or anything like that. I really was just sitting and observing, accepting this new and wonderful experience of being in the moment. In the beginning I understood what sitting as if your head is on fire meant. Later, too many ambitions became attached to that sense of urgency, so I dropped it. Now I need to pick it back up and realize how much I am missing during each zazen I sleep through.
July 7th, 1996, Journal Entry
I’ve just moved to Corvallis for graduate school, 90 minutes south of Portland. The pain of separation from Gyokuko, the Zen Center, and the Sangha is taking form in me. I have a feeling of being very alone, of feeling terribly daunted by the challenge of practice, of feeling I will certainly go astray. However, I also think that at last I am settled for a while and my practice – however weak – can grow roots.
From a letter to my sister, 1997
The most beautiful thing about Buddhism to me (besides the fact that there is no god in Buddhism, which I was never able to believe in) is the way you can actually apply it to your life. You don’t just go to church on Sunday and then forget about it. It helps you when you feel depressed, it gives you strength when you worry about things, it helps guide your actions when you are in trouble.
I fold my clothes every night because I am a Buddhist. I get great joy out of the little bit of good I do visiting the nursing home because I am a Buddhist. I fight with my husband less because I am a Buddhist. I have learned to accept my body more because I am a Buddhist. I like washing the dishes because I am a Buddhist. I have stopped worrying very much about terrible things happening to me or to someone I love because I am a Buddhist.
When Buddhism says to release self-attachment and selfishness and attain enlightenment, it doesn’t say, “Okay, there you go – good luck!” I think some other religions are like this; they have a wonderful message about how you’re supposed to love others as yourself and have faith, but they don’t tell you HOW. In Buddhism, you make changes in your life by meditating. It sounds weird but it’s true. When you meditate, you try to just be in the moment. You try to just be yourself. You may be angry, or unhappy, or uncomfortable, whatever, but you just keep trying over and over to accept the moment. When you first do it, you realize a lot of things about yourself. You see what a creep you are sometimes.
From an application for part-time residency at the Zen center, 1997
I want very much to be able to come and stay at the Zen Center house as often as my job and family life allow. I have already begun doing this and find that it adds a fulfilling new dimension to my practice. No longer is the official environment of practice limited to special retreats or bustling Sundays, full of planned activities. Staying over at the house allows me to cook, eat, sleep, read, get sleepy, chat, and figure out what to do with myself in an environment where practice is explicit. Yes, I do all those things at home, and practice at home is certainly of the utmost importance. But, just as Dogen realized it necessary to practice even though we are all already perfect Buddhas, I find it necessary to live at times in the presence of other Buddhists even though my life is complete just as it is. I also find part-time residency a way to form a much more personal and intense relationship with the priests. I especially appreciate feeling the peace Kyogen and Gyokuko maintain in their house, while at the same time getting to see their perfectly ordinary personalities and daily schedules.
I will probably most enjoy the chances I get to visit with, watch and learn from the priests and more senior members of the Sangha. What will be the most difficult for me is the fact that this will PART-TIME residency, not the full-time practice I crave. I hope to enter a monastery within a couple years for a two-year training – but in the meantime, I have to be patient, finish my Master’s project, and save money.
From a piece written for a friend’s zine, 1997
Like any student of Zen, I have thought a great deal about the difference between monastic and lay life. The difference, and the fact that I seemed to care so much about it, has troubled me. Is there something that could be achieved in monastic life that can’t be achieved in lay life?
One day, I asked my teacher about this. I said, “Why do people go into monasteries? Isn’t the point that this is all there is, right now? If we can’t reach enlightenment here, in our daily lives, how can we ever do it?” She reached down, picked up a pillow, threw it at me and said, “Catch the Buddha!” I caught the pillow awkwardly and she asked me, “Is that Buddha?” I could only mumble, “I don’t know.”
That pillow wasn’t Buddha to me, even though I thought it should be. This was a breakthrough for me. I began to see a monastic training period as a way to be able to appreciate this very lay, mundane, ordinary life. It’s just very difficult to practice appreciating the Here and Now sometimes, with all the other demands on my time and attention. I didn’t catch the Buddha! I want to, so much. It seems to be the most fundamental and important thing to me.
August 11th, 1997 Journal Entry
Sleep, no longer like an enemy. Rather, a key. Sleepiness, sleeping, buddha is there, unassuming. He cannot hide there – all I have to do is realize the sleepiness and there is evidence of him. Or her. Mind opening, opening. Not even a matter of letting go! Just no longer an issue. No longer it and me, duality transcended. Then I proceed to fall asleep, mustn’t let the drive go even as I hold my heart gently in my hands and rock it a lullaby, sweet thing. Yet the drive doesn’t go away any more than the sleepiness does. Both here, both ready to be realized and embraced. A spaciousness, everything OK. Everything exquisite proof that I am alive. I quietly whisper, “Who? Who? Who?” and nothing ever comes to my senses but tracks, leavings, remnants, reflections. Domyo is here, I know she is, but I feel that I shall never see her.
October 2nd, 1997, Journal Entry after a month’s long stay at Zen Mountain Monastery
Early on during sesshin when Daido told me to move on to being the breath (ah, what joy!). I stayed up late in the unbroken silence of the zendo, the unbroken silence of the universe, and dropped everything BUT the observer and then for an instant SAW the complete emptiness of that observer. I knew that if body and mind did not fall away for me during this very retreat, it was all my own fault. Not “fault” in a negative, judgmental sense; I just realized my own responsibility. And, as I had anticipated might happen, I got confused and sidetracked, but every moment of that was as precious as anything. At one point I didn’t want to accept life the way it was, to accept leaving the monastery, and I sure as hell didn’t want to set my concerns aside and just be the stupid breath. And so, I couldn’t concentrate and got sleepy. Or, I should say, I WOULDN’T concentrate.
None of this was a matter of control or discipline. There are not two of me, one to discipline and one to obey. There is only me, deciding what it is I want to do and then doing it. The falling away of body and mind, the realization of myself – I got close enough to realize that these things had nothing whatsoever to do with what is usually present in my consciousness.
During Daido-shi’s talk on Sunday, after the Dharma Combat, he was talking about the teachings of the insentient, and how they were real and concrete, and he looked around the room with his piercing gaze and at one point looked straight into my eyes, though I was probably too far away for him to actually be directing his gaze at me. At that instant, there was no separation between him and me, his message went straight through the air and called me to realize in myself what I had always suspected. I KNEW what he said was true. I KNEW the realms of human consciousness to which he was referring existed, as completely as the realm we all agree upon.
For a while I was stunned, then during the bows I began to cry uncontrollably. As soon as possible, I removed myself to the Buddha Hall and cried as deeply as I ever have for 10-15 minutes. And not at all from sadness, oh no! But not, either, from a two-dimensional joy. No, it was completely because the sheer power of the realization simply overwhelmed and surprised me. I kept thinking, “Oh, how glorious to finally know! I could have gone my whole life without knowing! What if all those people out there knew? Oh, how will I be able to hide it? How will I be able to look into anyone’s eyes and not get lost in the depths of what I know is there? They will think I’m crazy!”
At last, someone needed to set up the Buddha Hall, so I absented myself, dried my tears, and walked over to where Nenshin happened to be. I tried to engage in small talk and could barely speak. Nenshin asked what was wrong, and of course the tears started again, I struggled to be coherent. He took me inside his room, where I gradually put together my survival kit for the world again while he smiled and stroked my head from time to time.
And that was all there was to it. Nothing more, nothing less. I didn’t bother trying to analyze the experience or make more of it than there was. And, without artifice, it has transformed my life. Such motivation, such power, comes out of this tiny piece of knowing.
November 4th, 1997, Journal Entry (back at graduate school, separated from husband)
My attempt to meditate a great deal and maintain a monastic atmosphere around me has failed completely. It simply doesn’t work out here, or to get it to work would take a lifetime of trying. One’s schedule must be flexible when one is a student, and work MUST come home with you and intrude on anything you do. Busy, distracted, sitting is more like sleeping sitting up than zazen. I swear and get angry and in the very midst of such waste, noticing, noticing, noticing, I feel helpless to do anything about it. The best possible use of this human life – that’s all I can think about. It’s the only objective that makes any sense, and to achieve it, I will finish my master’s degree. And to make the best possible use of this life, I should do my master’s well, and that means little zazen. And that’s like suddenly realizing you have a molten rock sitting on your head but deciding to let it stay there for another year rather than begin the process of removing it immediately. At times, this is intolerable, even though I know it is all, all of it, delusion.
January 8th, 1998, Email to a friend (after deciding to finish master’s degree, even though it will take another year)
I feel quite awful. Funny, I immediately think of getting drunk, going out to a fancy dinner, rolling around in the mud in the back garden, sleeping for 24 hours, and quitting grad school. I haven’t had these thoughts for some time. I simply recognize the urge to RUN. Anything to relieve this psychological pain. I realize much of it is that I feel so alone. I face my own complete aloneness, the utter emptiness of everything I have ever held dear, including ideas of emptiness. Tomorrow, I may be completely better. I go through things very quickly. Moments from now, I may be able to appreciate the exquisite beauty of being completely alone. I have before. But now… it’s like I am running around with a bag over my head, in anguish because I am blind…
Others say, “only one year.” I think one year is more precious than anything else in the universe, except, of course, more than one year. I want to talk myself into complacency again. Or is it complacency? Is happiness my true state, and this inner turmoil is nothing more than a stormy condition caused by sending the sheriff’s office out this morning to serve my husband divorce papers?
TWO CAMELLIAS
Even after all the effort,
the grief is not gone.
Having tried everything,
having mastered nothing,
there is no hope even
for temporary relief. And no one else can help.
(Consumed as they are by their own struggles, or,
victorious,
their encouragements falling, echoing,
into the abyss that separates
sanity from despair.)
And yet it seems there is some shred of faith left:
on an aimless barefoot walk in the cold rain,
careless of broken glass
and unyielding pavement,
stooping to pick up two fallen camellias,
cradling pink rain-dropped petals
all the way home,
finding a shallow glass dish
and filling it with water,
setting the camellias afloat in it, poignant,
superfluous,
testimony.
February 12th, 1998, Journal Entry
Wondering, but not worrying too much, about how long this will last. Not forever, surely, but more and more stillness all the time, more and more faith in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and the Precepts. Every conscious moment, surrendering more completely, recognizing incredibly deep faith. Intuiting that living completely in the Three Treasures and the Precepts is Right, that there is no reason to hold back, that second-guessing is preserving the ego. Intuiting is not the same as believing. There is more there, pieces based on experience, authority won, Truth realized. It does not rely upon another’s experience, though another’s experience may help. Exploring stability, wanting more-than-anything-else to train, to become Gyokuko’s monk. Clear Path.
Will another month see another storm? Will stability be thrown out the window, will hedonism and short-sightedness rule the day again? Now there is only joy in being able to say that “nothing much has happened, doing fine.”
That’s it for today. I will be back soon with part 2, I hope you’ll tune in, thanks for listening.
Picture Credit
Image by Paul Edney from Pixabay
