Our True Home - by Nonin Chowaney

Gesshu Soko wrote this poem shortly before he died. It speaks to me more about life, however, than about death, about finding our true home right in the middle of what's happening now, whether it be living or dying, moving forward or moving back, coming or going.

When we are fully in accord with things as they are, we meet the circumstances of our lives like two arrows shot from different directions coming together point-to-point in mid-air. Breathing in or breathing out, we live our lives as they are, not as we want them to be or as they once were.

This moment, then, is our true home. The road that goes directly to our true home is the road that leads to this moment. For me, that road is zazen, and it doesn't go anywhere. It doubles back on itself and leads to this moment as it is. 

Walking the road of this moment can be very difficult when we don't like where it leads -- when this moment means intense pain when a love relationship turns sour, or intense disappointment and regret when things at work go badly, or deep grief when we lose someone we care about. We are happy to live in the true home of this moment when it's comfortable and peaceful but are ready to vacate whenever it becomes uncomfortable and unpleasant.

Whenever I'm troubled about something, when I'm sad and discouraged about a relationship that isn't working out or when I'm angry and can't seem to let it go, my first impulse is to hop into the car and go for a long drive or to take a strenuous hike, anything to avoid the anguish. However, because our life is our only true home, this is not possible, for no matter how hard we try, we can't escape; our life is with us wherever we go.

Once, shortly after I had fallen in love, I found out that the person I loved was seeing someone else, and I fell into a bad state of mind the day before a sesshin. I dreaded having to sit. But there was no escape. I was leading the retreat and couldn't not sit. So I sat, and not long into morning zazen, I learned a lesson I've had to learn over and over again. When I'm troubled and caught in a negative state of mind, the best thing to do is to sit down right in the middle of whatever is going on and let it happen. Let things come up, experience them, and let them go, and then, let them come up again, experience them, and let them go again. In this way, we live things fully.

Letting go, or non-attachment, is very important. All forms of Buddhist practice emphasize it. However, we sometimes forget the middle step: to fully live what comes up. We want to push aside negative states of mind, or throw them away. This is denial. Until we fully accept and live through all that comes up for us, positive states of mind as well as negative, they keep coming up.
Until we accept and live them, we cannot let go, and until we let go, we cannot move on. How to do this without denial and without clinging and getting stuck is the central issue of zazen, and of human life itself.

When I was a boy, there was a carousel near the lake outside my home town. It was inside a beautiful wooden building protecting it from the elements. On the inside wall of the building, a long wooden arm was attached, and it extended to within three or four feet of the stationary horses on the outside row of the carousel. The arm held metal rings that fed out one at a time, and we would sit on the horses and try to reach out and grab a ring as we rode by. Most of the rings were iron, but a few were brass. If you grabbed the brass ring, you got the next ride free. Every once in a while, the rings would stick, and if you didn't let go, you'd get jerked off your horse. This happened to a friend of mine once. The stuck ring was brass, and he was determined to jerk it out of there, but it jerked him, and he ended up on the concrete floor, bruised and embarrassed.

On the carousel of life, it's better to let go as soon as possible and flow with the process. But sometimes, the letting go takes a while, and we get stuck, or worse, jerked off the horse. Whenever I get stuck, I try to remember these words by Zen Master Dogen: "No matter how bad a state of mind you get into, if you hold out over the long run, the clouds will disappear and the autumn winds will cease. That is a fact."

This "long run" can take a while, however. A few years ago, a woman came to sit a sesshin with us. Her face and demeanor projected a lot of pain. When speaking with her privately, I found out that her teenage son had committed suicide. She was deeply troubled. She talked to me about how it was still difficult to get through even half a day without falling into tearful despair, and she asked if I had any advice on how she could deal with things better. I asked her how long ago this had happened, and she said, "six months." My response was, "That's such a short time ago; no wonder you feel the way you do." I felt that she was responding exactly as she should in the face of such tragic circumstances. The practice of letting go is the way to the end of suffering, but sometimes, the pain is so deep it takes what seems like forever to live it through. Even though it is very difficult, this is how we learn who we are and what human life is all about.

We talked for a long time, and she looked carefully at her life over the past six months. She realized that the tearful episodes were gradually getting farther and farther apart, and that there actually were times during the day when she was able to function at work and at home and not be overcome with pain. All I could tell her was that in the face of such deep suffering, she couldn't expect any "miracle cure" that would make it go away. All she could do is let it happen, let it come up and experience it fully, moment by moment, time after time, day after day.

I can't imagine what it is like to be a mother and lose a child in this way. But I have lost people I have deeply loved, and I know how long it can take to live such things through. My father died unexpectedly of a massive heart attack thirty years ago. We were not close at the time, for there were many unresolved issues between us. The biggest one for me was not being able to tell him I loved him before he died. Over the years, he kept appearing in my dreams, and in one of them, I told him. I woke up feeling relieved and at peace.    

Twenty-five years ago, I was involved in a long-term passionate and stormy love affair that ended badly and abruptly. She left me and got married within a year. There was no opportunity to mutually resolve things, and it took five years for me to be able to think of her without anger, resentment, and pain. For five years more, she would appear from time to time in my dreams, and I would wake up angry and resentful. Then, I had a different kind of dream, and wrote this poem about it:

Over the past twenty years, through the practice of zazen, letting go has become easier because that is what zazen cultivates. However, daily sitting coupled with studying with many teachers has helped me learn also that we cannot avoid suffering as long as we are involved in human relationships; this is the nature of our existence. Even though we can learn to let go, suffering can keep coming back; it's re-occurrence and duration depend on the depth of involvement. We cannot always expect immediate and lasting relief. We want our lives to be peaceful, quiet, and pleasant, and sometimes, they are. But they also can be unpleasant, disturbing, and painful. That's just the way it is. We have to learn to accept it all, live it all, and let go as soon as we can without cultivating more suffering by wallowing in it. Although Buddhism promises an "end to suffering," the way to this end leads through it, not around it, and this "end" is not something we experience once. As long as we live, we will suffer, so we must deal with it as it comes up and follow the process through each time until we become adept at it. As my teacher, Dainin Katagiri was fond of saying, "You're suffering? That's a sure sign you're alive."            

When I first got involved with Zen practice twenty years ago, I thought that if I practiced long enough and hard enough, I would be able to live in such a way that nothing would bother me. Life would be totally peaceful and serene. I also had a lot of romantic notions based on old Zen stories about people like Han Shan and Shih Te, two ancient semi-mythological Chinese Zen wanderers who roamed the mountains living on nuts and berries and scribbling poems on rock walls. I thought, "What a great way to live, carefree and unencumbered. I could handle that."

Later on, I was taking care of maintenance at Tassajara Monastery in California, and during a break from lugging around and setting up fifty-gallon drums of kerosene, I asked Tenshin Reb Anderson, one of the teachers there at the time, when we got to roam the mountains and scribble poems on rock walls. He looked at me as if I were nuts.

Escape not what Zen practice is all about. Also, the seemingly romantic, carefree life has its dark side. We can see this in the poetry of Ryokan, the famous Japanese Zen monk who lived as a hermit in the mountains for many, many years. His work deals not only with the joy found in the solitary life of a spiritual wanderer but also with the pain of loneliness and regret, the hardships brought on by illness, and the many tears shed over the loss of old friends left behind. Here's a poem by Ryokan that deals with this side of the wanderer's life:

Here's another one:

So, over the years, I've come to realize that my true home is my life as it is, not as I want it to be, or as it used to be, or as it should be according to some romantic notion, but as it is. Sometimes it is messy, badly in need of repairs, or unpleasant, but whatever it is, it's my home nonetheless; I can only live this life, even if I don't particularly like it right now.

A few years back, while in the midst of a love relationship that not only was complicated and painful but also was keeping me from doing something Katagiri-roshi wanted me to do, I called him long distance from California, poured my heart out to him on the phone, and shed a few tears. Then I asked him: "Do you still fall in love?" He replied, "Yes . . . . It causes me a lot of pain."
Boy, did that hit me. Love can mean pain, even for a Zen Master who'd been practicing for forty years. I expected him to tell me how to get through without the pain. I thought that if I practiced hard enough, I could avoid the bad stuff, take all the good stuff, and get through without the pain, with perfect equanimity, in perfect tranquility.  What a mistake. If you're in love, you will feel not only the joy that springs from it, but also the pain, no matter what your spiritual credentials. This is not only the nature of love relationships but also of all other human relationships.

It might seem that the obvious solution to this problem would be to suppress our feelings or distance ourselves and stay out of human relationships, but avoidance, escape, and denial are not what our practice is about either. This is illustrated by the following ancient Japanese story:

An old woman allowed a young Zen monk to live in a hut on her property. When he had been there a couple of years, she started to wonder about his practice and decided to test him. She asked her beautiful granddaughter to test him by going to his hut, cuddling up to him seductively, and asking him how it feels.

The granddaughter was reluctant, but finally agreed to do as her grandmother asked. When the young girl asked the monk how he felt, he replied, "I feel like a dead tree next to a cold rock in the middle of winter."

When the girl reported this response, her grandmother exclaimed, "That worthless fellow! He hasn't learned a thing about Zen!" She then threw him out and burned down the hut.

In the poem we began with, Gesshu Soko writes:

This about covers our life. Like two arrows meeting point-to-point in mid-flight, we need to meet our lives totally and fully in each moment. This is our true home. We must live here, for it is only there that we are fully alive. Accept the moment, live it, and let it go.