Is this hell or heaven?

day four at a zen monastery in Japan

It is five a.m. and I am sitting in the zendō, aka meditation hall, in a zen monastery in Japan. I am wearing half the clothes in my suitcase yet still freezing. But the biggest issue is that I am nauseous from caffeine withdrawal and worried I might puke at any moment. If moving is forbidden, getting up and going to the bathroom is nearly unthinkable. My thoughts, ever-helpful, chime in to report: "This is one of the most uncomfortable moments of your life."

But the nausea, like everything else in life, passes. Next is weeding, in which I spend half the time daydreaming about getting a job at a startup in Amsterdam. Clearly I have not appreciated normal life enough.

Life at the monastery is a grand waltz, and I seem forever landing on the wrong foot. Today I have been corrected on how to set my chopsticks, to line up my bowls, to center my shoes, to only serve myself rice at the beginning of the meal... it goes on and on.

I have many skills, but none of them will help me here. My typing speed will not help me here. Knowing Bitcoin's transaction model will not help me here. Increasing a sales funnel's conversion rate will not help me here.

I have but two tools: #1: following the breath, #2: my vow to use my life to help others. And #2 is just a motivator to stick around and use tool #1: follow the breath.

Exhale... Inhale...

Typically we sit for thirty minutes at a time, take a break, and sit again. But this evening the sit goes on for much longer. We were not told it would be a long sit, we simply sit until the bell rings. I know it is a long sit because the sun is up when we began and it is now dark. I know it is a long sit because the pain in my legs has turned to fire.

I have felt this fire once before, during a Vipassana retreat session when the teacher, Goenke, demands you to not move at all and witness the sensation changing. It turns out that discomfort turns to pain turns to fire turns to... I don't know, but it does change. What you think is unbearable turns out to only be a mental construct.

Sick of doing everything wrong, in this sit I am hellbent: "I WILL NOT MOVE," I resolve. I tread deeper and deeper into my mind. I notice how my mind keeps desperately searching for any indication that the Rōshi will ring the bell. I notice how I am always looking for an exit from the moment.

Why can I not bear to be in this moment?

And just like that, I crack. Something in my mind opens and reveals a deep discomfort. Something so overwhelming I feel like I have been avoiding it my whole life. But now, in this container, I just sit with it. I let it be. I face it.

How long had I been itching at that piece of emotion, unconsciously simultaneously running from it and trying to surface it? And now here it is on only day three. (By the way the sit was 1.5 hours 😛)

I can talk about how I disagree with X and Y monastery rule, or that all the ceremony is senseless, but the fact that I got to that depth on day three speaks for itself: whatever they are doing at this monastery works.