Interest by Kevin Gaughen Read Free Book Online

had come of his father’s death, it was that Len figured out that the only thing people were guaranteed in this life was the next exhalation. This is it , he remembered thinking to himself not too long after the viewing while lying awake in bed. Right now, second by second. Time is all we have—and most of us are wasting it.
    On a whim after his father’s funeral and his graduation, Len decided he wanted to move to Japan to become a Buddhist monk. He packed up what little he had at the time, put it in storage, and hopped on the next transpacific flight. His mother and brother didn’t understand his reasoning and never forgave him for it, but it was something he knew he had to do.
    Len hadn’t done a lot of traveling before going to Japan. He had never been to Japan before, let alone lived there, so the culture shock was monumental. He didn’t speak the language, and he didn’t understand the completely different way the Japanese saw the world. In Japan, it was never about I/me/my, it was always the greater good and honoring tradition . Coming from a Western culture and trying to adjust to an Eastern one forced a perspective shift on par with graduating preschool and going straight to becoming a grandparent.
    Len eventually found a monastery willing to take him, a foreigner. Life in the monastery was surprisingly tedious. He awoke at five in the morning when the bells rang, did meditation with the monks for an hour and a half, chanted for an hour, ate a silent breakfast with everyone, then worked outside, then meditated for another hour, then ate lunch, then cleaned floors and toilets, then meditated some more, then had a bit of free time to himself that he used for exercise, then (sometimes) ate dinner depending who was in charge (dinner being considered unorthodox), then meditated some more, then slept. The next day, they’d all get up and do it all over again. Monasteries ran on a very tight schedule and there was little deviation. Len lived like this for five years. Despite the tedium, he enjoyed the constant meditation.
    Other meditation schools started a student off gradually: they had a beginner follow the breath, repeat a mantra, or use any number of devices designed to help a novice learn to quiet and concentrate the mind. Then, once the new student developed a certain amount of concentration, the teacher moved the student up to a slightly more challenging form of meditation. After a number of years, the student learned the advanced meditations.
    Shikantaza , the Soto Zen method of meditation that Len was taught, was nothing like that at all. It was the most difficult form of meditation there was because there were no gradations, no steps, no progress. A beginner started off doing it the way a master did. There was an old Zen proverb that said, “If you want to climb a mountain, start at the top.” Shikantaza was taught the way swimming used to be: throw the uninitiated into a pool and hope they’ll figure it out. Basically, a Zen practitioner sat on a little cushion with no instructions other than the physical: “just sit” or “be quiet” or “straighten your back.” Len sat there for a year or two, trying to figure out what it was he was supposed to be doing. Where should he put his attention? What was he supposed to do when he had inappropriate thoughts? “Just watch your thoughts,” his teacher used to say. “Don’t follow them, but don’t reject them either. Just watch them the way you’d watch the clouds floating overhead.”
    Eventually Len figured it out: you weren’t supposed to do anything during shikantaza , because doing itself was the problem. The brain was always doing stuff. Even when he slept, his mind was still going five hundred miles per hour. The mind was always judging others, or trying to solve problems, or planning tomorrow’s events. By default, the human brain was dissatisfied with reality, and it was always coming up with ways to analyze or fix it. Len began to see