It took me a long time after I left Zen before I realized what went wrong with it. Even though I started practicing Zen meditation with great intentions to better my life, it dug me into a hole that took several years to climb out.
I first became interested in Zen meditation when I turned 30. I was unhappy in my life. I suffered from social anxiety and self-consciousness. And I wanted more friends and more fun.
I had already been searching for ways to improve myself.
In my 20s, I tried some traditional therapies. I first started with the most educated professional I could find – a psychiatrist. But all he did was put me on some drug that dried out my mouth and made me feel weird.
Next, I worked with a cognitive therapist whose method was to try and re-wire my thoughts. This helped a little bit. But when I felt nervous at a party and my hand shook while I was holding a glass of wine, it was hard to think the right thoughts to calm down.
Ultimately, I visited a counselor who simply talked with me and led me through some guided meditations. This was really helpful. I would close my eyes and he would tell me to imagine a beautiful scene in nature. I would think of myself walking through sunny fields of wildflowers interspersed with tall trees casting their shade. The path overlooked a crystal clear ocean. He told me to notice different places in my body and how they felt. I would feel a warmth and calmness in my chest.
It wasn’t that I was supposed to think of this in a moment of fear or anxiety. The meditation practices simply made me feel better in my life.
It’s funny that as I kept stepping down the education ladder (the first guy was an M.D., the second guy had a Master’s, and the third guy had a B.S.) the more help I received.
After my work with the counselor, I read a little book called “How to Meditate” by Lawrence LeShan. It had several sample meditations, and I started practicing some of them on my own. This was great for a while.
But then, I hit a wall.
One day while practicing a meditation I felt overwhelming confusion. “I don’t really know what I’m doing,” I thought. “I need a meditation teacher.”
So, I looked in the Yellow Pages. (Yes folks, this was in ancient times – 1990). I looked up “meditation.” There were two listings: The Denver Zen Center and Transcendental Meditation. I called the TM number and spoke with somebody who told me there was like a $1,000 fee to get started. I called the Denver Zen Center who told me I could get started by attending a weekend seminar for $35.
Zen it was.
How it all went wrong
Zen is a tough practice. You have to sit on a mat on the floor and not move for 25 minutes while you focus your attention on your thoughts, which are typically running and jumping around like a troop of monkeys. You then try to calm the chaos with meditation. The first practice is usually something simple like counting your breaths from 1-10.
For anyone who’s ever tried this, it’s a bear. Your legs and back get sore right away, and you have a massive desire to move. And the counting is humbling because thoughts keep popping up, causing you to lose track. For these reasons, Zen has never attracted a wide audience. It’s a precious small number of people who are willing to do this.
But apparently, I’m among that rarified group because I stuck with Zen for 12 years.
Many things happened in my practice over those years, and perhaps I’ll write about some of them later. There were some good things. But for this article, I just want to say what went wrong.
After the initial practice of counting breaths, my Zen teacher assigned me the classic beginning koan – Mu. Koans are like spiritual puzzles that can’t be solved by using the intellect. They must be grasped by a part of yourself that is beyond the intellect. And you must demonstrate your understanding to your teacher.
The koan Mu says: A monk asked the master, “Does a dog have Buddha nature?” The master said “Mu.”
After contemplating this, the Zen student will go before her teacher and try to demonstrate her understanding of this koan. Usually, after attempting a lot of answers, the student will realize that she must just concentrate all of her being on the word “Mu.”
I know. It’s inscrutable.
I wasn’t good at Zen koans at all.
My mind would try to focus all its energy on Mu, but over the years my thoughts started coagulating into one theme. “You are terrible at this.”
This cluster of thoughts included: What is wrong with you? Look at your peers here in the Zendo; they’re all moving on. You are a loser. You want enlightenment don’t you? Try to get your shit together and concentrate harder.
It is not good to spend thousands of hours thinking these kinds of thoughts.
And the sad thing is, neither I nor my teacher acknowledged these thoughts. My practice was to ignore all thoughts and concentrate on Mu. So even though I’m terrible at koans, I’m terrific at following orders. Each time a thought rose up: “You’re never going to get this,” I shoved it aside with “Mu, Mu, Mu!”
At the time I was so single-focused on Mu that I couldn’t have told you what thoughts were beating down the door in my mind.
Sadly, my teacher was also single-minded. He never asked what was going on with me all those hours on the mat. His instruction was just “sit more.”
During those years, my body became more stiff. My shoulders curved inward from sitting long hours holding my hands in my lap. I developed a sharp pain in my middle back along the right side of my spine. And my demeanor became more rigid as well from all those hours, sitting with a tight jaw and a grim determination to achieve bliss.
There’s a saying in Zen that sometimes “Strange creatures grow on the mat.”
That’s what happened to me.
My ego had completely co-opted my practice. Egos don’t care if you have a super-inflated idea of yourself or a super-deflated idea of yourself. They just want you to continue to have an “idea” of yourself so that the ego remains in charge.
Ultimately, I was just in pain.
Finally, one day it all became too much. I arrived at the Zen center before 6 am on a Sunday for a full day of meditation. As we settled into the first round, I began to softly cry. My frustration had reached a tipping point. After the round, I fled the zendo and changed back into my street clothes and left the center.
Sitting in my car, still crying, I was humiliated to return home with my red face and runny nose. I didn’t want to tell my husband that the jig was up. I was an utter failure as a Zen student. I had completely wasted my time and was never going to become enlightened like the Buddha, was never going to be happy, let alone achieve a state of perpetual ecstasy.
Moving on
After I left Zen, I started a self-healing process. I read books about self-compassion. “The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World” by Pema Chodron was helpful. And Cheri Huber’s book “There is Nothing Wrong with You: Going Beyond Self-Hate.”
It took a couple of years to get myself re-balanced and ready for new spiritual quests.
I don’t want to sound all sour-grapes about Zen. But I think my story is important to tell. There are probably Zen students today who are shunting aside their negative self-thoughts as they try to put all their attention on Mu. Before they kick those thoughts aside, they need to look and see what’s going on.
What we resist, persists.
In classical mythology, the hero often descends into darkness where he must confront his own fears. He usually gets his ass kicked by his worst demons until he finally stops running away from them and turns to confront them head-on. The hero then sees that they weren’t such horrible monsters after all, just figments of his own mind, searching for love.
I ran from my demon thoughts for 12 years and don’t recommend it.
It’s a much better Zen practice to see, “Ah, there’s that thought again about me not being worthy. I’m going to give myself a few minutes to feel that thought in my body. I’m going to tell my mind. ‘I see that thought, but I don’t wish to dwell on it.’”
For myself, it’s hard to say my experience with Zen was all bad. It gave me a lot of discipline, which is quite important on a spiritual journey.
And even after 20 years of being away from Zen, the smell of the particular incense used at the Denver Zen Center or the sound of Ta Hui’s “Vow for Awakening” can still bring tears to my eyes.
