Ango Days 12-18

The past week has yielded a sudden, inexplicable drop in my energy and motivation levels.

As last week wore on through to the weekend, my time for zazen kept getting pushed later and later into the night, resulting in shortened sitting periods of 25 minutes on Friday and Saturday and culminating Sunday in the first day of this Ango when I failed to sit zazen at all. I got back on track the next day, and today during my sit, noticed cracks opening up in the carapace of numbness that my body had hardened into. I felt myself softening and opening up, blooming into the moment. It was clear how much my subjective numbness has been a defensive reaction to an underlying tender sadness I cannot explain, as that sadness welled up, seemingly from every pore, throughout the sit. It is interesting how similar the feelings of tiredness and sadness are.

I am drawing ever closer to my final day at my job and my arrival back home in Virginia. This arrival will begin a 2-3 month "sabbatical" period in which my family has been gracious enough to offer to support me financially until I get a new job at the beginning of the coming year. I feel out of touch with myself and exhausted, and need time to reflect before returning to the workforce to be able to do so with any clarity and focus. A season of rest and reflection is an unimaginable boon.

With such a wonderful vista ahead of me--the prospect of recuperating and spending time with my dearest loved ones--I would expect myself to be energetic and motivated, optimistic and practically dancing for joy with each sunrise. And yet the opposite has been happening. Days 15 - 17 of the Ango constituted a long weekend in which I had three days free of any obligations. Not only did I not leave the apartment, I avoided human contact in just about every form. Nor did I set myself to any number of tasks that need doing, such as posting sale notices for my furniture on Craigslist or cleaning my apartment. Also, in a coup de grace of Ango mismanagement, not only did I not sit on Sunday, I also failed to do the weekly 90 minute zazenkai on any of the three free days I had. Nor have I yet to make up the four hour zazenkai I missed the previous weekend because I did not know it was a four hour zazenkai, having done the 90 minute version instead.

In the substance abuse program in which I work as a counselor, we refer clients who cannot maintain the discipline and effort required to navigate the stressors and triggers of their daily lives without reverting to substance abuse to a "higher level of care," such as a 28 day inpatient program. In that spirit, as a Zen practitioner committed to re-establishing a sober life of practice and aware living, I could not disagree with a "Zen counselor" who referred me to a monastic sitting where the group spirit and structure of the program would carry me through and sustain this practice, supporting me where my current motivation and energy levels cannot.

But all I can do now, faced with the realistic limitations of my situation, is to recommit myself every day to living life not as it is lived by default, but with awareness and intention. By "intention" I do not mean direction toward a particular goal, but rather an attitude of attentive care to every task. What I am finding in my uneasy relationship with the commitment of Ango is that the discipline I resist is not draining once done instead of thought about. Zazen is an oasis and home care tasks performed with attention become delights in themselves. It is amazing how quickly I forget this, and how pleasant the surprise when I yet again experience the deep release of zazen or the joy and love of a simple task engaged fully.

I have found in myself a fatigue and a melancholy that surprise me. But it seems so obvious now from the midst of it that it is hard to imagine ever expecting otherwise. Even when we leave some place for what looks like a much better one, there is a sadness in the leaving, in all of the goodbyes that must be said, the loved rituals and places of pilgrimage that will fade from life's rhythm, and the acceptance of failures and unrealized dreams.

The New York and North New Jersey metro has been hostile and alien since I set foot here, and leaving feels like an admission of failure. This city bested me, and the life I dreamed for myself here never blossomed. A first flush of color and fruit that burst into life quickly after my arrival dropped to the ground mere months later, leaving a withered tree that continues to struggle to come to leaf again. I am confident that my home soil will nourish and heal, and perhaps it is less that I am not enthusiastic about the seeming brightness of my near future, and more that it is so long overdue that the joy can only come when the relief is actually here.

It is easy for me to turn the commitment and discipline of Ango into another whip with which to scourge myself. And I am seeing clearly that this is not the Way. My exhausted mind and body need gentle tending. This Ango discipline, firm but flexible, supportive at the same time it is accommodating, is not like a grinding stone. Just like forgetting the instructions and coming back from distraction again and again when sitting, I forget repeatedly that the gentle efforts of Zen practice open life up and make it gentler, not harsher and more unforgiving. And each time I come back, and remember, it is like a revelation.