One Year Monk

My orientation to the spiritual life

I am in my last month of a yearlong residency at Zen Mountain Monastery. To say this place has changed my life would be incomplete. Change is the nature of things. Our lives are changing all the time. To say this place has transformed my life would be exaggeration. Transformation means conversion to a different state. Our lives are not so black and white. Thus I say this place has redirected my life.

Being at ZMM has filled me up, to the brim and then some. I don’t want the overflow to just peter off. This is an offering from bounty, back to source and outward. This is one necessarily incomplete articulation of my time here. More of an exploring than a telling. To the tune of Seasons of Love from Rent:

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes.
How do you measure,
Measure a year at a Zen monastery?

In mediation periods? approximately 1548 
In silent weeks? 12
In dharma talks? approximately 96
In service positions? 6
In averaging the rating between 0 and 100 assigned each day? 72.3

That’s the plot of rating all my days here. Before going to sleep each night, I opened up my Google Sheet titled Monastery Days and put the first number that came to mind in the column next to the date. While I ascribed no criteria for coming up with the number between 0 and 100, it’s a proxy for life satisfaction. I was most interested in having a full year of data to compare to the ratings I collected in 2020 (more details about that in this post).

I was 15.8 points more satisfied on average with a year at ZMM than in 2020!!!! I find this quite validating. The day-to-day corroborates my macro-evaluation of life being a much better experience now than back then. I was going to say that me living this way is the greatest testament of its efficacy, but that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. I have walked miles and miles on merry-go-rounds.

It feels I’d be remiss to write any further without acknowledging how little I’ve had to do with all this. Whether you call it randomness or God, reality is the same. This One Month Monk post about my initial residency begins with the far-fetched factual tale of how I ended up here.

If I curated journal entries from this year to match the style of that post, the read would be similarly volatile (as the plot above would have you surmise). Despite the baseline increase of 28%, the standard deviation of this year’s ratings is within a few points of 2020’s (26 and 23, respectively). The rhythm of life here epitomizes stable, so I am amused by this slightly increased spread of subjective highs and lows.

I used to think stability was boring. This was based on a mistaken notion of what it means to live life to the full. Externals in myriad forms can certainly cause a high, but this is like strapping your wings to a rollercoaster instead of taking the sky.

I am in the A-frame up the hill from the main house where I have stayed most of this year. Here is a picture of my inhabitance.

It’s a seven minute walk down. My current routine on a training day is to wake up at 4:30 AM, journal something I’m thankful for and an offering for the day, put on the same clothes I wore the day before that’s in a pile on the floor, and get out the door around 4:35. This leaves time for the bathroom, a few gulps of water, and changing into my robe before the zendo closes at 4:50.

Right now it is Hosan, the time we are off schedule from Sunday afternoon to Tuesday afternoon. This period of unscheduled time has, perhaps ironically, been one of the most challenging aspects of my time here. I do not want to live without intentionality. I don’t have to depend on externals to generate meaning for me. Zen Mountain Monastery has trained me in living well.

I set my alarm for a generous 6 AM this morning and still wanted to sleep in, but I didn’t. I made a deal with myself to stay up the hill until 12:30 for food. I have this blog post to write! I have been musing about it for many weeks and making progress in fits and starts. At 11:30 I decided to loosen the reigns. I was getting all tied up about communicating a certain way.

I was going to tell you about our schedule but had no heart in that. I was going to write about our early wake-ups and recount how I felt indignant about lack of sleep in my early months but then felt embarrassed by that. I like what our Abbott said once to the question of why we get up so early - enthusiasm! Meanwhile, I have rarely (maybe once) been in the meditation hall more than a few minutes earlier than I had to be. This is an uncomfortable admission for someone who abhors bare minimum thinking.

I passed the 12:30 mark, ate some lunch, and recognized a familiar hardened state that would have to go to maintain hope of finishing this post today. Surprisingly, I thought I ought to meditate. I do not like to meditate. I set my timer for a short period of 25 minutes. A typical period here is 35. I soon remembered why I am averse to sitting cross-legged on these round cushions called zafus. Such pain. Such annoyance.

Sure, some clarity too. This is all beside the point. As is whether I like to meditate or not. Part of the Heart Sutra that we chant in the morning is, “No path, no wisdom, and no gain. No gain and thus the bodhisattva lives prajna paramita.” Bodhisattvas dedicate their lives for the good of all. Prajna paramita is the perfection of wisdom. The point is - this isn’t about me. (And yet, how could it not be.) (This is my blog, after all.)

The week I was scheduled to meet with the guardian council about staying a year here fatefully coincided with end of a graciously extended year of leave without pay from a high-paying, high-prestige, high-security job that I worked for about 18 months after college. They called, and I resigned. Here is a shortened version of the note I wrote to myself on that day.

Future Melissa,

I wanted to provide this note to you because I am guessing (knowing us) that there will come a point when you will spin on this and think it was a terrible mistake. Please don’t blame me. We did the best we knew. We think this is the best thing for us right now and we believe in us. Right now it is written on our heart to be here and we’re so thankful that we have this monastery and its full time support, and that we are becoming the person we want to be. The path of truth and love and goodness. I don’t think my interest is opposed to the collective interest and by doing what is written on my heart I am doing what is best for everyone and by doing what is best for everyone I am doing what is written on my heart. This is a better environment for us right now. One to strengthen and learn and develop. We are not giving up on our dreams, we are living them. This time feels different, and I want you to know that a big part of this decision is me believing in you. Wherever you are. That when something is written on your heart it will come together as an act of cocreation between you and God and all the things of this world. You are loved and beautiful and safe and capable. Please keep on going.

I love you so much, 
Melissa

P.S. Life is so full of possibility now and forever!

I read this as future Melissa for the first time while working on this post in a previous sitting and was so touched. I wrote this reply.

Dear Past Melissa,

Thank you so much for writing to me about resigning from the job. I think you'll be happy to hear that we have not once yet thought that this was a terrible mistake! I don't blame you for this. I am so proud of you. Not in a pride as the opposite of humility way. More like the sympathetic joy we chant of here. This year of residency aged remarkably well, leading us to conclude that there is not a correlation between the amount of time we spend deliberating a decision and the outcome of that decision. What matters is where it comes from. As you said, what is written on the heart. The part of your letter that most caught me was "This time feels different" because I know now what that difference is. We were made for a purpose! We were made for a purpose. We were made for a purpose. Alleluia, amen. Tears are in my eyes now because this is what we long searched for. Something to live for. What are we here for. I am remembering the painting Tiffany gave us with green words over a yellow flower "Made for a Purpose." How I had it hanging in my college room and so wanted it to be true. Nothing of this world is the end! Now we realize that.

Love, 
Future Melissa

It’s 6:00 now. Frenetic is the word. This post is going out tonight. That’s for sure. I give myself some kudos for first trying meditation to get this through. That certainly seems like the higher road to take. I really wanted this post to be good. I really wanted it to stay on topic and to not interlace writing woes. Alas, here we go.

I really don’t know if this is me pushing my agenda or surrendering control. I was following writing advice, just putting in the time. Questioning whether my words were true, in touch with the sense of when to move on. Then I suppose I got impatient, but I have to get this post out! Of course I don’t have to, but you know what I mean.

I felt such disappointment about what I had to show. I had such big ideas for this post. I had thought through so many things. I wanted to share so much. I wanted to get the point across that the life you desire is real! I thought it would come out in beautiful prose.

I put myself in a trap. I know there is a way to live without conflict, so please allow me to parse this one out. It seemed I had the option to post a well-written but limited account or to incoherently get everything I wanted to say out. Both options feel stingy. Less than the best I can be. Ah there I am again.

To distract from this discomfort, I turned to my familiar friend food. I do say this lovingly. Thank you food. You did for me what mindfulness did not do. I don’t know how, but you made my self-consciousness go away. I can just say all of this, and it is okay. These posts are never so momentous after as they feel in the moments before. It’s like you leased me a license of humanness, paid for in soul.

I demur knowing a better way and acting contrary, but here I am. Of course I could cut all this out, but this edge got me through the trap. It is my intent for these words to be of benefit. I reckon in sharing this, you have a better sense of where I am at.

Each month here ends in a meditation intensive week of silence called sesshin. Here is a poem I wrote after April sesshin:

The fire has been rekindled 
Inside my soul
It never went out 
But it was damn near close 

As long as I have breath 
I have this flame to stoke
No such thing as neutral 
There’s contraction and there’s growth 

Like a blaze in a pit outside 
Contending with the wind
To be light and warmth 
Logs must keep going in  

I thank ZMM for this. With fire, I also think of this song we sang at Holy Family Elementary when the graduating sixth graders passed candles to the fifth graders.

It Only Takes A Spark
To Get A Fire Going
And Soon All Those Around
Can Warm Up In Glowing
That’s How It Is With God’s Love
Once You’ve Experienced It
You Spread His Love To Everyone
You Want To Pass It On 

I promise this isn’t proselytizing. I worry about venturing into that. I know you are on your own path. I just want to talk a little bit here about how a year at a Zen monastery deepened my relationship with Jesus Christ. I find that quite amazing and think this is attributable (after grace) to the moral foundation, contemplative practice, and unconditional community love here.

One of the most appealing things about ZMM to me is the walking of the talking. We live in a values-aligned way. Not trying to secure advantage for ourselves. The way we live is a way we would endorse for any group of humanity. This shines through in how we use resources, care for each other, and spend our days.

We spend a lot of time on the meditation cushion here, which can be thought of as being with what is. There are different practices in the Zen tradition. My practice has been different forms of prayer. I was hesitant to tell the teachers this at first for fear of being perceived as contrarian. There were no qualms. My Christianity has been so wholeheartedly embraced. It’s a real testament to interfaith. I also think it’s an ingenious and good-humored design of the universe that the key is within everyone all along.

Love is the cliché that unites us. I think we all know that deep down. What a great mystery why we don’t just live from that. Here there are no structures to favor one over another. No employees of the month, popularity contests, or privilege to be had. There is a hierarchy in beautiful form. The people with more power serve more. There is no incentivizing or punishing. We learn by experiencing cause and effect.

Now for the most important part of this post. This claim I made about ZMM redirecting my life. My course before was as basic as cautionary plots in Hallmark films and children’s stories. Protagonist ambitiously pursuing the world until learning the hard way that’s not what life is all about. I was deluded. I followed paths that were not true. I trusted my perception more than the grandest view.

Catholicism is my spiritual home. Faith predicates the journey. My purpose is to know, love, and serve God. I don’t know how this happened, but I am so convinced. There is absolute. There is truth. It is only in dying to self that we can fully live.