What was it like Coming Back from Japan to Normal Life?

Adjusting Focus, Being Honest, a Slow Integration

Some people have asked me what it was like for me when I came back from Japan.  What it was like to readjust to life in the world, and to walk around and function.

First, I must say that it was extremely difficult for me to leave the Roshi and the training. I love the Roshi so much, and I loved the training. In many ways, I was willing to just live as a monk for the rest of my life, and do as Roshi asked of me. In other ways, I'm sure that would never have truly worked out over time.  

My now partner Teresa of many years was pregnant, so we had to leave the monastic life and go out and make a life for ourselves outside of the training.  The emotional aspects of that separation were a big deal, a huge process in itself, quite a strain, and one I will go into another time.  

In this post, I'll talk about my state of mind, and what it was like to be a person in the world, and learn to function as a normal person, after going through that crucible of training.

I had the luck to have a few people who knew about me and my training take me in a bit and give me some work. I went to work for a guy named Kim, who shared my friendship with Gary Snyder.  Kim is this builder and wood artist. He was quite a whirlwind of energy and enthusiasm and Pacific Northwest humor and swagger.  I liked him. He took me on as a carpenter, and I sanded a lot of beautiful cedar slab tables and helped build some artistic homes. But I did not want to be a carpenter. And I was in need of expressing myself. I had some aspects, some gifts I needed to communicate, I was very sad about leaving the training and the Roshi.  I had nowhere to put this most precious gift moving through me, no one to communicate with.  It was as if I knew a cellular language no one else spoke, and I needed to find a way to share this.

Then I worked for another carpenter for a while on a big crew. Greg had been in a Catholic abbey in Indiana for 12 years, and before becoming a priest he left because he did not feel he had the gift of celibacy, something I could identify with. He was a carpenter, but really he was a priest walking around, and emptiness seemed to follow him around. A huge guy. Massive and quiet, gentle.  I'd see him once in a while show up to a job to check on things. 

But I worked on that crew and felt like a real alien. It was as if I were living in one realm, and everyone else was living in another. I was touching the texture of everything, and now my communication with others felt so awkward and vulgar. I was over accommodating. I was sensitive. I was a bit like an exposed nerve. I was walking around with every filter blown open in an environment of gruff psychological warfare. I would lose myself in samadhi while sanding a beam overhead. But I was not integrated and would often not do things in the most efficient manner, overly focused, extreme in my relating to things.

We moved away from the Island here when Rose was several months old. We moved to Minneapolis, parly to get away from the scene around the Roshi, and partly to be near Teresa's family in Minneapolis.  It was good to get away, and as I got some distance from the Roshi and Tahoma, my integration started to happen.

I got some jobs here and there. Some landscaping, organic farming, and then as a cook in a famous cafe in Minneapolis.  In working in that cafe, I began to get a sense of how to be with people, although I was still exposed and extreme and way too intense. It was a good time of fusing and melding and harmonizing.  My boss there was Andy, and Andy was so quiet. Never raised his voice. Always relaxed. But also not to be messed with. I learned a lot about how to tone it down and be cool with Andy, for which I feel so lucky.

I was also a young papa and husband. I was working with trying to figure out right livelihood. I was still torn about leaving the Roshi. I was divided, in my relationship and in my work, and this was a struggle I wish I had not put Teresa through. I think it took a long time to mend this.

So, to the point of this post, what was it like?  What was my experience?

Meeting Each thing, Adjusting Focus

In training, I learned to bring my whole being into oneness. This requires an incredible amount of focus and time on the cushion and in the energetic practices.  This is a very visceral, physical process of unifying. There is no way around that. This is such an intense process, and we all end up like focusing machines.  Like gathering a huge river into oneness and pouring it through our eyeballs, pouring it into everything we are doing, everything we are looking at.  

And in that process all of my fierceness I was holding back because I did not think life could take it, I was able to be put into this process. I wasn’t there to become a good buddhist, but to throw myself into an unknown process with everything I had and see if life could handle me. And then that process begins to have its own momentum, and we see that the universe is pulling us into this oneness, like a funnel.  We are driven more and more into it, and this demands an awesome amount of surrender and commitment and often a choice to do it or die.  It also feels like such relief to be pulled into this process trying to happen.

Then at some point, after a huge process of dissolving and unifying and being led and full, you finally touch it, you pierce through reality, the bucket bursts and the hole drops out of it. It's like you've been hit by lightning, all of the energy in the universe has gone through you, and you see that you live in this huge expansive world of oneness and freedom.  There is no separation between you and anything else. This requires heroic determination, but it is also what we are called into. It actually feels like the most honest, most pure form of encountering our experience. So the intensity is not force or something we don't want to do. It feels like such relief to be able to express so freely and truly.  This HUGE YES. And in that sublime piercing through, our perspective on everything changes. We are blown open, and our mind never works the same again as everything has been rewired. We see that we don't ever have to go anywhere else for our true nature. There is nowhere to go because it is everything. We are in the center of this completeness.

But, because we have developed this one pointedness, and been hit by lightning, let go into this 10,000 horses of intensity, we then have to learn how to function in the world. So for me, even though I felt one with everything in the most primordial way, I had to learn how to calibrate all of that focus to meet each thing I was encountering in a natural way. It was as if I was this firehose of focus, and I needed to be a little gentle squirt gun when I met people.  In the monastery everyone is there with their life on the line putting the volume up as high as possible to break through. But with people in the world, living their lives, one needs to be much more nuanced with one's focus. I had all of that lightning coming through my eyes when I looked at someone, or talked, or got angry.  But I was unskilful. I had needed that complete abandonment to let go in the process, but then I needed to come back and smooth out all of the layers to infinity, especially with people. When we’ve touched the absolute, we need now to blend in and harmonize with each small thing.

I would be working and I would be just too much for everyone. I'd be in the kitchen in the cafe and this huge intensity would be coming through me. I could feel everyone in the cafe, I could feel all of their intentions.  I felt again like an alien, living in one realm as others lived in a completely different one.  I saw over time that I had to adjust the aperture of connecting with everything around me. This does not mean closing down, not in the least. I had to meet people, had to find them, become them, and feel what they could take, what would make them feel good and safe. I could feel this subtle under the table communicating because this was my experience of sanzen, and I slowly got better and better at adjusting.   

Being Honest

When I came back, I saw everyone living their lives, and I saw their intentions and the direction of their sincerity, saw that their moment to moment focus came from a sincere place, even if it was confused. Even people doing bad things were actually revealing their point of wanting love and to find meaning. I could see this because the training gives you a sense of space, and in that space, you feel where others are coming from like a wave going in a direction. That skill naturally develops.

I saw that, in my interactions, I knew I needed to be the most sincere, most honest, most raw, keeping myself cemented to this centerless place of truth, but I was unripe and unskillful. I could have used a few more years of settling into my experience. I was shy. I was working through how to let go of habitual patterns of manipulation and fear and control. I knew this place of truth, but was not ready to sit inside of it and not reach out to make sure life was holding me, even though I knew it in my bones it was. I was not ready to bare all to the present moment, especially with people. It's funny, these old patterns. Even though we know with all of our being that we must let go, it still takes time and severe self reflection to allow the process to congeal.

I was immature. I still wanted people to know I'd done severe practice. A part of me wanted to be special and give advice to people. These patterns are deeply embedded, and must be slowly seen and dropped away in this process of maturing.

When I came back, a few of us were hanging out one evening. It was our style to push it and do just too much in the best way. Cook too much, stay up too late, Sogenji style. Our friends Josan and Sogaku were over and they had made this amazing chocolate cake. I remember later that night in bed, Rosie, still in the womb, bouncing around in Teresa's belly from that wonderful rich chocolate cake. We kept joking about that for years. But in the dinner earlier that evening I remember saying to everyone how I thought everyone I had met in the world was so beautiful, and that I think my big take home from my Zen training and passing Mu and koan work was that I just wanted to be profoundly honest.

I knew that I was not being honest, with my own internal world, with every precious encounter, with this huge present moment molding me. And so I am not talking about a mental honesty, but an honesty of allowing every moment to share and shine in its infinity. And the thing about kensho is, you have to go to this place of ultimate vulnerability to let go, and so I was not yet refined after it. I was walking around being hit by lightning. I was a vessel that needed to widen to handle all of this light moving through me.

So, a lot of my life became about that harmonizing.  How could I do that?  I could feel the main line of everything, but I had now to learn finesse in my interactions.  

Slow Integration

In Minneapolis I liked to take walks and just become the environment as I walked, like a great rolling ball, meeting the environment and melding to it as I moved.  This is a wonderful practice, and one I would really like to do one on one with people in sessions. And where I was not meeting the environment, where it felt vague or blocked or dark, I would adjust. I would back off with my intensity until it felt alive.  I could blast the environment, and then it would not be open to me. It would feel asleep or hidden to my inner seeing.

And this was also where I did not feel good. When I was not harmonizing these primordial forces, every cell felt clogged up. And let me tell you, this is no idea, but an unrelenting vice grip of weight molding you to harmonize when you are in this process. My experience of post-kenso training has been a physical experience of greater subtlety and softening. So my life became about unclogging myself in the way of life.

So, just an example, when I came back, and was working as a carpenter, I would be with people, working, sanding beams overhead, absorbed, unified. And then I would talk to someone, and if I was not agile in my meeting and harmonizing with the huge present event, I would be in physical pain. It is like reality is a heavy weight pressing you into being one with it, and if you don't, you are crushed by it until you can get with it. This is not an idea, but my every moment. The monastery is set up to allow this process to take hold over time, but out in the world, I was in the crash course of needing to meet lfe. Meet the mainline of experience and be a vessel for it. People think that after having a big experience, it is all done, but in reality, a huge process of integrating must take place, and one must be ever vigilant in refining it. The Roshi had told me I needed to stay for 10 years after passing mu to ripen in a healthy way. But I really only had a couple of years.

I would also say that when one touches the main line of life, they are often raw and emotional and volatile for a long time.  And that volatility can be quite physical. And I have been on a long journey of physically harmonizing that as I also harmonized my way of relating with life and others. That is part of why I stress the physical practices so much in my work and classes, and am so against practices that seem mental and disembodied.

Later, I went into body therapy as a way to be with people and explore this meeting and harmonizing.  I could bring all of that intensity, but that might not work with some people. I might need to back way off and let them come to me, as I also learned from my children at home.  I had to let them come to me, and all of my eagerness and one pointedness would not bring them to me.  I had to receive them, and I had to receive my clients, my wife, my life.  Each person, each encounter was fresh and new and had a different flavor, a different shade or texture.  I had to adjust to meet it.  I had a lot to learn. You see, we become felt sense harmonizers. The process becomes something we feel with our total being. Life becomes something alive we interact with.

I spent a long time one on one with people exploring this, mostly nonverbally. That has been my laboratory of refining my experience, where I could allow space to emerge and allow samadhi to be the main therapist in my work.  I feel now like I can express myself from that place of essence, rather than jamming up life with my intensity and unskillfulness. There a transmission of this in my work for which I claim no ownership.. That, along with being a husband and father, a community member, learning to deal with conflict and being supportive of others, seeing where I am myopic (another tendency for training people).  I am learning as I go, extremely touched by life, quick to emotions, a goofy jokester papa, silly, still finding how to dial it down at times.  I like movies, art and dance and love, I am very affectionate.  I am still learning how to love well. Luckily I have Teresa to help me. I very much like trying to write about some of this stuff and see what emerges. Writing has been one of my main mediums to distill expression.

When we touch something and truly meet it, this is where essence flows. Refining how to do this is a real skill, and one I've been exploring for a long time. Mostly it feels like the authentic physical honesty and intimacy with life. This is much like a green light, and that green light becomes a compass in our interactions.

Having kensho is just the beginning. Learning to walk around and feel life and disappear in it and respond from a place of harmony is the advanced practice.  I think touching the main artery of life is very necessary in this process, of going to that most primal urgency and doubt and letting it obliterate us.  But having done the homework, to then have a life of refinement of touch. Meeting life, merging with it, feeling it respond and responding. It is a big dialogue with life, a conversation.  It is so beautiful. It is much of what I am sharing in my work these days in classes and retreats. The ability to feel and touch and interact from this place of true honesty.  I started teaching a few years ago because I began to feel like I was not betraying this wide open freedom each time I opened my mouth. 

It is one thing to know the truth. To even know it in every cell. But then there is a long process of letting that process integrate and congeal in the whole life. We have to get clear feedback from our system that letting go is the only way. And the clear feedback does come, as it must, but that does not mean it is a smooth process.

You can do it.  No one is left behind. You don't need to go to a monastery to discover this. But you will need to face a cellular process. This is what I am sharing in my work, and I see people changing every day. This natural process without special clothing. Your honesty is a super power.  Thank you for reading. Please send questions and I’ll try to answer if I can. I will probably go more into this topic again in slightly different ways.

P.S. You may never have a normal life.