I grabbed my packed bag and headed north. An hour into the drive, anxiety fluttered my chest, followed by hot flashes running up my neck and back, forcing me to pull off the highway. I’d done enough practice to know that the lurking fears I tried to keep hidden eventually had to be faced; sitting on the meditation cushion was as good a place as any for that. The Roshi and other monks had helped me to see the futility of my strategies to sidestep fear, especially the Big One—the childhood claustrophobia driving me to avoid situations that closed in on me. Unless I allowed my concealed fear to arise, willing to sit with it until it lost its hold, I knew my world would shrink with each calculated evasion. I also knew that I could easily end up spending the ten days circling around minor-league fears, but that would be one more avoidance. There might be a few rough moments on the cushion, but that was true for anyone who wanted to follow a path with heart. All retreatants were expected to stick with the entire program. No matter what. I was ready. To meditate, to still the mind, to engage the Inner Critic’s torment with courage and come out the other side. Once and for all, I would tame the dragons that were the creation of my own mind. Or so I tried to convince myself, my chest still fluttering.
I exited the freeway at the familiar rural exit, drove up a winding narrow road, and then navigated a precipitously scary dirt track ending at a locked farm gate. I fumbled a few times with the combination that had been included in the registration packet, sighed in defeat, then rifled through the glove box for a pair of reading glasses. The moment I closed the gate and entered the monastery property, the butterflies in my stomach did a 360 like you’d see in snowboard competitions. I turned off my iPhone and put it in the glove box in obedience to the directive to bring no books, no computer, or anything else that would tempt me to have contact with the outside world.
As The Beast rattled down the wooded dirt road, I grumbled about the crappy pickup. The built-in toolboxes and over-cab lumber rack made up for the stinky diesel’s tired suspension and dead AC, but today I was embarrassed by the noisy, smoking truck disturbing the forest silence. One day I’d upgrade, but the day never seemed to arrive. I parked The Beast by the office and let my mind drift. An image of Pamela smiling in the driveway, so pleased when she’d assumed that I’d unloaded The Beast, jabbed me like a hockey stick in the ribs. I was jolted out of my daydream by the sudden appearance of the Guest Master, an older woman standing silently in front of the truck, who greeted me with an empathy in her grey eyes that bespoke of a lifetime on the meditation cushion. She bowed with palms together in Gassho—a long-honored Zen custom, a mutual recognition that her heart and my heart were one. It was an acknowledgment that all devotees of Zen were keeping alive the teachings of Buddha—the Dharma— which could only thrive with their whole-hearted dedication. It also was a reminder that all participants were here to pay attention to how their constant inner monologue was limiting the spacious—and quiet—expanse of Zen practice.
I grabbed my bag when she motioned to put it in the back of an ancient electric golf cart. Before climbing in herself, the Guest Master gestured making a phone call. I went to my truck, opened the glove box and surrendered my cell phone. She mimed turning on the ignition. I handed her my keys. Raising her eyebrows, she typed on an imaginary keyboard. I shook my head, bowed, and folded my stiff frame into the cart for the ride to my hermitage.
After opening the recycled door, the Guest Master bowed again, started to leave, then turned around and whispered, “We now have hot showers in an unheated shed. Three-minute time limit. It’s marked on a map in the dining hall. Please don’t be late for dinner.”
The kitchen had previously served up good vegetarian staples of grains and veggies, but when I entered the dining area, I noticed a new sign on the message board: We no longer offer coffee.
“What the fuck?” I protested louder than I’d meant to. A dozen heads turned, my voice violating the strict vow of total silence unless in a group discussion with Roshi. Not even close to resigning myself to cold turkey, I searched the kitchen shelves, despairing the absence of black tea to help with caffeine withdrawal. The personal delights of a stiff back, constipation, crippling knee pain, and shivering in an unheated, uninsulated hermitage during my last retreat came rushing back into memory. Then I heard a voice in my head:
Don’t Think. Expect Nothing. Let Go.
Twenty retreat participants stood in line, taking their turn to be served a simple meal. Lentils, onions, and celery in the soup bowl were accepted as the most generous blessing. I sat on a wooden bench, my food on a table in front of a blank white wall, and mindfully placed my spoon by the side of the bowl after each mouthful. When the kitchen bell rang to signal the start of the evening meditation in ten minutes, I washed bowl and spoon, and then joined the group heading to the chilly zendo. The meditation period ended with three strikes on a large Japanese gong and all the retreatants were sent to their cabins, each to write in their journal, at a tiny wooden shelf, with only a battery lamp to see by. My stiff fingers gripped a ballpoint, I wrote about the ways I unconsciously participated in keeping my ego in the driver’s seat:
I see the inner battle between my willingness to wake up and to end suffering, but at the same time my ego creates new and fresh ways to keep my current misery in place.
I scribbled another page, yawned, put down the pen, shaking my head at the impossible dilemma, and crawled into the Subzero sleeping bag.
I bowed before entering the frosty zendo meditation hall at seven a.m. I’d been trained many times in the basics of Zen meditation: Follow the breath. Sit as still as possible. Avoid scratching your nose or wiggling to get comfortable. Basically, forty minutes of struggle until the meditator slowly settled himself in quietude. Heavenly Buddha, please may the gong ring soon, I prayed.
Breakfast was served five minutes after the sitting meditation concluded, a hearty reward for the brave retreatants. I warmed my hands on a bowl of hot oatmeal and prunes, then a cup of mint tea, wishing every other second that it was a strong cup of coffee. My colon had been raised to expect a morning jolt to kick-start the daily movement. Three days later, I had a textbook case of hemorrhoids from straining in the outhouse to drop a stubborn pellet before getting my frozen bare ass covered as quickly as possible.
On the fourth night, it snowed, making the forest trails a fairyland—until I slipped and jarred a bad shoulder. Fucking hell! . . . Oh, I almost forgot: No complaints.
Twice a day, the visitors met for Dharma discourse—the teachings of the Buddha’s wisdom—practical instruction by the Roshi as he presented a precise guide to inquiry. It was also described as a hands-on, how-to coaching session on paying close attention to the slippery terrain of the mind.
I took dismal comfort in the fact that I wasn’t the only one suffering. The egocentric voice commonly known as the Inner Critic, skilled in an endless variety of inventive cunning, zeroing in on its favorite target—namely, one’s self-esteem—preyed on everyone. After a few days of earnest denial—this can’t really be happening to me—I sensed that no one in the zendo was spared a direct experience of how the unconscious negative commentary dominated his or her field of awareness. This usually took the form of self-talk that was anything but positive. I cringed at the running monologue in my own head: Man, who are you kidding? What’s the use? You can’t do this. Give it up and get real.
During the next week, the men and women of various ages and backgrounds were training to pay closer attention to their inner conversations. They practiced keeping a lookout for infinite variations on these subtle, abusive narratives, also called Self-Hate. During group discussion every person shivering on their Zen cushion discovered that they were an unwitting partner in their own undoing. After a week’s investigation, every man and woman in the hall had made a personal admission that there is something wrong with me.
“Roshi?” A tall, trim woman whose manner reminded me of a lawyer I used to know, shot up her hand.
“Yes?” Roshi, somewhere in his seventies, not rotund but surprisingly filled out on a low-carb vegetarian diet, was the quintessential grandfather, available to respond to any question with his penetrating insight. I had initially been surprised by the close-cropped white hair rather than the traditional shaved head of a monk, but had instantly warmed to his sky-blue eyes that couldn’t hide a bent for goodhearted mischief and a smile that inspired any person seeking clarification to find their courage and trust the process.
“I’ve been thinking about this something-is-wrong-with-me thing, and I can’t really buy it.” The questioner hesitated, then continued with a briskness that sounded more like bravado than a sincere inquiry. “I mean, I’m published, I travel as a business consultant, and I own a fabulous house near San Diego. What could possibly be wrong with that?”
“Why are you here sitting so long on a cushion in the cold if everything is okay in your world? Do you like the Puritan ideal of pain so much?” Roshi asked. His smile was an encouragement for her to look deeper. The woman wrinkled her forehead, searching the ceiling for answers. Roshi waited a full minute, and then added,
“Even if you have enjoyed success in a career or have stashed away wealth, it doesn’t deliver the fantasy of lasting happiness. At least in my experience.”
The woman closed her eyes, started to weep silently then bowed reverently, receding back into a disheartened silence. Roshi then nodded to a man close to my age.
“Roshi, I feel like I’m a good husband and a great father. I give everything for my family. But I’m not feeling the glow I think I should. No matter what I do, it never seems to be enough.”
The Roshi waited for the man’s words to have their various effects on all the listeners, then responded. “What I have found is that until the Inner Critic’s beatings stop, true spiritual work cannot happen. The Buddha taught that we are not to take anyone’s word as gospel. But don’t believe even me. You have to find out for yourself what is actually true.”
“What does that have to do with my disappointment?”
“Your mind perhaps still believes the fantasy that if you do all the right things, there will be a happily-ever-after glow. When we find that the fantasy, or maybe myth is a better word, doesn’t actually deliver on the promise, we think we did something wrong or that there is something wrong with us.”
The man’s bald head reddened. Slouching forward on his cushion, he said, “I hate to admit it, but maybe what you are saying is true.”
I wondered if anyone there might have caught on to my secret, still carefully kept hidden from the group. My guard had been up to keep it buried, but I finally conceded with a stark lucidity that I was no different from anyone else in that room: there’s something wrong with me, too. No wonder the Inner Critic had been on my case.
During the sitting period on the ninth and last afternoon, my churning mind slowed. A quietude opened, my field of attention expanded, a broad relief from the constant chatter. The silence made every arctic minute I’d sat on the cushion a fair exchange. My mind’s nonstop evaluating, judging, comparing, criticizing and interpreting everyone, everything—and especially my own mind’s fabrication of who I took myself to be—simply stopped. The conversation in my head was as quiet as the zendo hall. Only this spacious moment. Sitting was simply happening. Spending sixty hours squirming in meditation seemed a high price to pay for a little taste of nirvana. But the insight, opening me to a deep relaxation, lured me to promise myself to keep at it when back home.
The final bell gonged. The retreat was over. The others in the zendo hall plumped up their cushion for the next meditation session. They put their palms together, bowed to the wall and one another in Gassho, then single-filed out the zendo door in stocking feet. I didn’t leave. The sounds of soup bowls being dished up in the kitchen made my stomach growl, but the white wall in front of me had become a comfort, the hardness of the black cushion now a support. I continued to investigate the feelings I had avoided about what had gone wrong with Pamela and how to get her back. There was more to see, but after twenty minutes of inquiry, my bladder had other ideas. After lunch, I ambled over to the plywood cabin to pack my belongings, but instead of plowing into the task in my usual hurry to get the next thing done, I packed with uncharacteristic attention to placing each item in my bag. The birds filled the woods with full-throated hallelujahs as the sun broke through the gray sky. Spring was a long way off, but a preview buzzed the forest. I closed the door behind me in a new-found gentleness. A swell of gratitude lit my heart for the shelter that the hermitage had provided. I walked deliberately, slowly, up the slope toward my pickup. No rush to get back to life. What life? I groaned. No work, no woman, and no fun.
A voice of wisdom whispered with a kindness I rarely experienced in my inner world: Don’t Think. Let Go . . .
I climbed into the truck and cranked open the driver’s window to let the dank air escape the cab. A flash of understanding interrupted my normal everyday thinking: every breath presented a fresh moment of decision—I could live in either a bright place, a simple joy, or a negative one. It was up to me to choose. A belly-roll guffaw exploded, then settled into a series of chuckles as I started the engine. The cold diesel clanked and clattered like a bolt had come loose, flying around the engine—but that’s just the way an old Cummins sounds till it warms up. The truck rumbled up the winding driveway. As I crested the hill just past the gate, I took my hands off the wheel, and bowed in Gassho—the expression of thanksgiving, gratefulness and humility all rolled into one simple gesture.
RICO PROVASOLI 