AWOL on the Battlefield of Karma
Or How I Survived My First One-Day Sit and Lived to Tell About It
[A brief preamble: When I first began practicing Zen in 2001, I had no idea that I would: A. move to a monastery in 2008, B. live as a monk for seven years, C. ordain as a Zen priest in 2014, D. marry another monk (a woman no less!), and E: be offered Dharma transmission by my teacher (of 20 years) where she acknowledges me as a Zen teacher. As the date of this private ceremony nears, I find myself reflecting on my spiritual path and thought I’d share a few milestones of this journey with you. Thank you for reading!]
The first time I stepped a bare foot into a meditation hall I was 33-years-old and living in Austin, Texas. What brought me there was a lifetime or maybe lifetimes of suffering. I had spent many hours, many years, and many dollars sitting across from many therapists in the hopes that the battalion of unbearable emotions that plagued me my whole life would go away, but they never retreated. Nor did all the analysis muzzle the inner drill sergeant telling me that there was something fundamentally wrong with me.
When I first showed up at the Austin Zen Center in April 2001 and sat down on a zafu, I was pretty desperate. I was at the bitter end of a bitter relationship, which felt more like a reaction-ship: we’d trip each other’s trauma mines, take on karmic shrapnel, bivouac under the tangled sheets of makeup sex, and then stumble doe-eyed into no-man’s land brandishing an olive branch.
But the détente never lasted.
Fortunately for me, I was working with a psychologist at the time who was not very insightful. I’d sit across from her week after week and rehash the “greatest hits” from my dysfunctional childhood. I consider this unfortunate situation “fortunate” because an epiphanic question arose from the depths of my subconscious: How come decades of therapy did not discharge my misery and furlough me into the smooth & sweaty arms of a SNAG (Sensitive New Age Guy)? I intuited that this question was a profound one, though at the time I didn’t know it would dramatically zag my path from its current comfortably numb trajectory into the unmappable territory known as Zen.
To frame this through the lens of the Dharma (and extending the trite war metaphor), I was a pawn in the battlefield of karma. I was mired in the mud of the First Noble Truth: that in life there’s suffering, lack of ease, and distress. There are many causes and conditions that propel people onto a spiritual path, and for me, it wasn’t a calling to serve people or to connect with some higher power. I didn’t witness a miracle nor was I visited by a celestial being. It was purely selfish: a desperate desire to clamber around the mines, crawl under the barbed wire, and collapse into the outstretched arms of the Red Cross.
Turns out it wasn’t the holy symbol of my childhood faith where I found unconditional love, solace, and freedom. Rather, it was in the sweeping black endless enso of Zen where this Roaming Catholic was finally able to lay her shell-shocked body-mind down in green pastures and to sit in zazen beside still waters.
Although my boyfriend was the visible “enemy,” there was an insidious one that had shadowed me my whole life like a sniper, cloaking herself in the camouflage of ignorance, greed, and hatred—the Three Poisons. The stealthy opponent responsible for the internal scourge was my very own mind where I was both the attacker and the defender. I was, if you will, trapped behind enemy lines.
This invisible adversary would have stayed hidden in the bunker of consciousness had I not plunged into my first one-day sit at the Austin Zen Center a few months after I first arrived. In the days leading up to the sit, my blood was carbonated with anxiety. And, it was the first time that I remember the “c-word” percolating through my thoughts: control. I never considered myself a control freak, and yet, that word kept popping up. I would be out of control. I would not be able to control my circumstances. Someone else would control what I did and when I did it. Intellectually I knew that no one could force me to stay on the cushion; however, this did not alleviate the anxiety that fluttered through me when I thought about sitting still and being quiet all day.
On the short drive to the Austin Zen Center, I almost turned around several times. My mind was chattering about how stupid this was and what a waste of a beautiful Saturday, on and on ad nauseam. I psyched myself out by telling myself that I wasn’t going to the Zen center even as I kept driving there. Fortunately that voice won out over the naysayer and I finally pulled up outside AZC. I parked the car, turned off the ignition, and while troops of thoughts marched through my head warning me of untold dangers, I entered the large house, and stepped into the unknown.
Since the sit was geared toward beginners it started at 9 and ended at 5 like a typical work day. The whole day was in silence, so even during the lunch break I did not speak to anyone. I don’t recall much of the sitting except that I was physically uncomfortable but it was not unbearable. I was definitely jittering inside, if not visibly fidgeting. My mind flitted everywhere and it was impossible to stay focused on my breath—the one instruction I recalled receiving from someone. Through sheer force of will, I managed to stay on the cushion with more “ease” than I had imagined.
Until the final hour, when a fusillade of thoughts and emotions bombarded me. I was so physically uncomfortable that I felt like an earthworm wriggling on a hot sidewalk. However, since neither of my neighbors showed any sign of annoyance, I must’ve been stiller “on the outside” than I thought.
And then my mind grabbed onto one thought and began to obsess about it, turning it over and over, spinning it around and around like it was an amulet: the timekeeper was intentionally not striking the bell to spite me. Now this was a person whom I had barely spoken to, and now every fiber of my being, every flash of thought was utterly convinced that he was persecuting me. In the final hour, he became Private Enemy No. 1.
When my persecutor finally rang the bell, I was surprised that the pent-up anger and anxiety melted away faster than ice cream in the Sahara. I did a gassho bow to the wall, did my best to wipe the snot and tears from my ruddy face, stood up like a cool cucumber, slowly walked out of the living-room-cum-zendo, and high-tailed it outta there. I spoke to no one. Made eye contact with no one. I shoved my feet into my shoes and fled to the safety and freedom of my emerald green Mazda Protege.
Once inside my happy place, I lingered for a few moments with the keys dangling from the ignition ready for exfiltration. Although I had been prone to panic attacks throughout my life, this was the first time that I sat still and silent amid the roiling sensations and unbearable emotions, which I called “The Dread.” I blew my nose on my sleeve and let the residual agitated energy slink back to its bunker.
But it was too late. The sniper had been outed by the crosshairs of awareness.
As I drove home, another profound insight arose that sounded something like this: What the hell just happened, Heather? You were sitting there all day just staring at a blank beige wall and then you lost it. It’s effin’ ridiculous. You weren’t even talking to anyone all, effin’ day.
And then a wave of serenity washed through me, and I realized in some unfathomable, ineffable way that to escape the battlefield I had to hunker down in the trenches of Zen and continue to face the sniper of mind. This is what propelled me in 2008 to ditch my boyfriend (a different one!), quit my job, and elope with Zen.
After a whole lotta lifetimes as a pawn of karma, I finally found “Another Way of Living.”
AZC would be glad to have you visit....
Beautiful and beautifully written.