That Sinking Feeling | Dave's Place

Another Rohatsu Sesshin Down the Tubes

The day before sesshin began—we always start on Friday evening—I told a friend from the Zen Center that I didn’t think I’d be able to have lunch with her on Friday after all. I had too much to do. “Yeah,” she said. “Me too. It’s kind of like you’re preparing for your own execution.”

That was the way I felt. I couldn’t have expressed it better.

Our teacher always tells us that, before sesshin, she pays her bills, cleans the house, puts everything in order, and says goodbye to her family as if she might never see them again. “It isn’t exactly that I think I’m going to die,” she said this year. “Though extreme things do happen on sesshin.”

Extreme things, yes. But death? There’s some actual possibility that we might die from doing sesshin?

That was a great thing to hear on Day 2, or whatever it was.

And at the end of sesshin, while we were sitting around having tea, one guy admitted that as he was turning in the entrance to the Zen Center parking lot, a part of him was saying, No! Don’t do it! Get away from here! Get away while you can!

I didn’t wait until I was turning into the parking lot. I spent a whole week dreading sesshin. As soon as Thanksgiving was over—a wonderful holiday this year, with my brother and his wife coming down to visit us—I thought, uh oh. Here it comes. I’ve got one more week to live.

Why is it that we associate sesshin with death?

In one way, of course, you’re more alive than at anyother time. You’re just sitting therebreathing, focused on pure being. Youmight as well be an amoeba. On the otherhand, you’re giving up everything that makes you who you are, in my casereading, writing, going to the Y, talking to my wife, hanging out with friends,keeping in touch with my son and his family. You’ve removed yourself from everything that makes you you. If you’re not doing all that, do you exist? Is there a David Guy anymore?

It doesn’t feel like it.

I am at a point—70 years of age, 26 years into my daily practice—when the physical fact of sitting isn’t too difficult. There’s a sixty minute period called Open Zazen[1] at the end of the afternoon when I try to sit the whole time, and that can be a bit of a trial at the end of a long day, but otherwise my body doesn’t bother me much when I’m sitting.[2]

My mind,on the other hand, goes totally apeshit. I seem in general to be okay early in the morning, when my energy is good and my mind comparatively clear, but in the afternoon, as I grow weary (or maybe because the dharma talk at the end of the morning gets the discursive mind going) my mind is full of garbage, incessant conversation, my favorite songs (and some unfavorite ones), pure mind vomit. It’s a periodic reminder that yes, I truly am nuts. I manage to keep a lid on it most of the time. But I’m nutty as a fruitcake.

I assume—as I mentioned to my teacher this year—that what is really happening is that the mind is frightened at the extent of its own vast space, its infinite space, and wants to fill it with crap so it won’t have to see that. We have a primal fear of space, so we fill it with crap.

I also see very clearly that, though I love the morning and the bright clear energy it brings on, I hate and fear the afternoon and the waning light, especially in winter, when it happens so early; I hate the cold and the dark. I don’t think I really have Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I may have a mild case. And as night comes on I often experience a bizarre and panicky fear that I’m stuck in that place and will never get out,something will happen, my car will break down, I’ll never get home. I’ve written about that in some detail elsewhere. I don’t know what that’s all about. But I experienced it again this year.

I had one evening when, as I lay down to sleep, I dropped off at first but then woke up suddenly, spent twenty minutes or so seeing weird distorted images of human beings, grotesque images, then had a whole night of disturbed frightening dreams. I had a couple of evenings where I was hearing voices, very quiet voices, as if a radio had been left on a couple of rooms away. But I walked around and checked. There was no radio on. I hadanother evening when I had severe foot cramps, then had a terrific case of the shakes, shaking as if I were freezing to death, discharging all kinds of nervous energy.

All these things have happened before.[3] My dokusan is a real yawner. I don’t know how the teacher keeps awake.

I also had a feeling, on the last day, that despite all the difficulties, the irrational panicky fears, my bone-weary body, my absolutely insane consciousness, which really hasn’t improved much after all these years, 26 years and I still can’t persuade my mind to please shut the fuck up,[4] that this is the practice for me, that—like it or not (and most days I like it very much)—this is my way of touching into that larger thing that is always here but that we so often neglect. This is my way of worshiping God and getting in touch with the Tao. It’s my way of experiencing pure being in the world.

I love it and dread it at the same time. How is that possible? It makes no sense.

It makes no sense, but I can do it. I do it every year.

[1]In Open Zazen, you can sit or walk as you like. You could actually spend the whole time walking, but I’m too proud for that. My ego wants to show what a great sitter I am. Also, have you ever done slow walking for an hour? It’s as bad as sitting.

[2]I should count my blessings, I’m sure. I may be in my Golden Age of Zen (as opposed to the Golden Years of my life). I’m nearing the age when I number of people do begin to have physical problems which force them to alter how they sit.

[3]Except the voices. That was a new feature this year. But they’re nowhere near as frightening as the grotesque images.

[4]It reminds me of a colleague I had at Forsyth Country Day School when I taught there in the early seventies. When he was monitoring study hall, a bunch of seventh and eighth graders, the noise level would gradually rise (“Shut up,” he would say), pause and rise some more(“Shut UP!”), more (“SHUT UP!”), and more still. “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” The kids would look at him, startled and afraid, dead silent. This was the seventies, when you didn’t hear that word every time you went to the movies. Then the whole process would begin again.