It ended up just being me

[Guest guest]

from NDhighlights, if you have the time, read the whole story, its

full of great insights like these. -Gloria

A Zen Retreat in the Woods

At the age of 25, Jane Dobisz decided to undertake a 100-day Buddhist

retreat in the New England woods. Because Zen practice doesn't allow

taking notes, she didn't keep a diary of her experiences. But she

wrote 10 poems that, 20 years later, helped her remember the details

of her time there. Dobisz says she's glad she waited so long to write

her book, The Wisdom of Solitude, about the experience.

That year when I was 19, I was in Europe, and I started meeting all

these people. At the time, you could travel overland to India, and

people were finding gurus and all this sort of thing, and some people

mentioned to me that there was this thing called Zen. I thought it was

flower arranging or tea ceremony or something, but I signed up for a

class in college. The book Zen Mind, Beginners Mind was on the

syllabus, so I went to the bookstore and bought it, took one look at

it, opened it up randomly it said, “If you want to know if tea is hot

or cold, you must drink it yourself”--and that was really it for me. I

was done. I said, “That’s what I want.” And I looked at Shunryu

Suzuki’s picture on the back cover and of course, that face which has

launched a million practices…I was done. I got on a plane and went to

Nepal two months after that.

It was like, you just have to experience it yourself, you can’t read

about it, you can’t study about it; you can’t listen to somebody

else’s version of it. You just have to taste it or else it won’t work

for you. [...]

You’ve mentioned the question of being afraid to find out who you

were, but that you were compelled to do it. Who did you find out you

were?

It ended up just being me. None other than who I always was. It’s just

being at home with that. When you sit there long enough you see all

the content and the storyline and the emotions and the grasping and

the ignorance and all the stuff just come and go and come and go and

come and go enough times that it starts to become like the weather.

And instead of it all being my story and me and then when that

happens there’s this lightheartedness that surrounds it for all of

the little foibles and just goofiness of who we are and just the

narrow-minded pieces of ourselves and the jealousies and the fears

and all the great, wonderful parts, too, that are so loving, and so

giving. Everybody has this. And when you can accept those things in

yourself, it’s so much easier to accept it in someone else instead of

react to it. You’re like, “Yeah, I know that. Oh, there’s that little

gremlin.” And you can see it in someone else.

So you think that was the most important lesson you learned?

The most important thing I learned is that I don’t know anything.

Explain.

We don’t know where we were before we were born. We don’t know who we

are. We don’t know when we die, where we’re going. We just don’t. We

could adhere to karma or heaven and hell or whatever …you can make up

stuff. When you press things to the end of the line, the bottom line

of everything is that it comes back to this place that’s before any

idea and before name and form and before thinking.

But it’s very difficult to hold onto that idea because people want to control and know everything.

So if you can just get very comfortable with not knowing anything,

that’s a great, great thing to be able to do.

~entire story at: http://www.beliefnet.com/story/140/story_14015_1.html