Lighten Up
About a decade ago, I was dragged to the mandatory Christmas mass with the folks. I hated it. My brother, cousins, and I spent most of it finding ways to entertain ourselves until it got to the good part: the end. Mostly that consisted of a sustained guerrilla campaign of zealots armed with candles and psalm books. While the adults were distracted with their boring songs, we'd sneak a waxy shank into the liver or a swift kick to the shin. The craftiest side most often won the day, drawing their opponents to break their cover in a blatant attack. Being the youngest, the craftiest, and the fiercest, I often emerged victorious, but it was Pyrrhic. They'd get their revenge when I got back home and the folks were no longer around.
Man, looking back, I pity my mother for having to deal with two too clever and violent boys. But I also smile at the thought of engaging in guerilla warfare in the church's pews. There's something so charming and epic in that image, in that disregard for the sacred, in discarding lofty beliefs in favor of play. But boy did I make a turn around.
By the time I was 19, I was dead set on becoming a Buddhist monk. The world seemed a hopeless mess with everyone rushing towards a horizon that never arrives. Family, career, even the noble attempt to make the world a better place: dead ends. All these goals were but lies told by the world to keep us enmeshed in its snares. As Michael Dairyu Wenger used to joke with me, "Nirvana or bust."
After an initial period of irreverent devotion to Zen, I grew increasingly fundamentalist. It started with cakes. As I became more involved in the San Francisco Zen center, I started to join classes, volunteer in the kitchen, and even began the process of sewing the rakusu. Speaking of rakusu, indulge me in a short diversion: when I first saw them at the dharma talk I attended, I wondered to myself, "Man, this place is wacky. Everyone's wearing these oversized bibs all the time. Clean freaks?" Despite having lived in Japan practicing in monasteries there and seeing them frequently, I've yet to wash the adult-sized baby bib image from my mind. Anyways. Yes. More serious. When I started getting involved more, I began helping out in the kitchen with meals. It was good fun and I met some amazing individuals, but there was one particular remark that drove me off the cliff.
While I was chopping some leeks, one of the seniors came over to me and started going on-and-on about how much he missed the cakes, how he wished they'd make more cakes, and carrot cakes, and blueberry cakes, and every god damn cake imaginable. At 19 and trying my best to be a good boy, I buried the urge to tell him what a shit Zen practitioner he was and that Hakuin was somewhere rising from the dead just to set lop his childish head off with his Zen stick. Instead, I nodded as slightly as humanly possible without making eye contact. Eventually, I was spared when the head cook came in and rushed us out to serve the meal. Thank God!
I was in the back of the line thinking to myself, "What kind of guy stays at a monastery for 20 years and is still able to act like such a spoiled child?" I biked back home that day certain that the West was full of half-assed practitioners who were more concerned about what's for dinner than the true matter of life-and-death.
I only got more serious from there. A year later, I was on a one-way ticket to Japan to pursue intensive practice without all of the frills and corruption of the West. I practiced at Tofuku-ji and Antai-ji for a year in total. After that and bouncing around Southeast Asia briefly, I traveled to Thailand to become a forest monk where my fervor and seriousness reached fever pitch.
That's not to say that there weren't moments of laughter and joy during that time. There were. During a particularly intensive period of practice at my temple, one of the younger monks started laughing for no apparent reason during morning chanting. Then another monk. And then another. Pretty soon, we were all laughing uncontrollably for a good 10 minutes straight. I still don't know what happened, but it's one of those weird, magical moments intense practice brings. But those were oases between loooong stretches of desert.
I was sure that I was right, that I was fast-tracked towards liberation, but the seriousness started to take its toll. Literally. After years of fasting, sleep deprivation, and enduring the extremes of heat and cold, my mind and body broke down. My mind was in a constant state of fog. I started having panic attacks. Even the modest daily chores were now Herculean tasks. It reached a crisis point when I started having allergic reactions to all manner of food: soy, eggs, cheese. My body would burn from the inside out and my normal brain fog would thicken into a near-blinding mist. A few times, I found mysellf just speaking near gibberish to friends and family.
I knew something was off but was so out of it and so entrenched in my views that it was near impossible for me to recognize it. During a medical examination for a visa extension, a hardened nurse who'd spent most of her adult life working for health organizations in war zones, gave me a stern talking to. "I've been around the world and seen a lot. You're in bad shape, boy," she said. "Stop torturing yourself. Eat. Sleep. Talk to friends. Lighten up. If you don't, this isn't going to end well for you." She broke the spell. A few weeks later, I was on a flight back to the states to visit family and get myself back in order.
Returning state side, I got more sensible. I ate more, slept more, and laughed more - to the best of my ability. But it was hard. Especially the last one. One time my parents came and my comedic dad mad some quip about the temple's garish lights in an attempt to lighten the mood. I forced a smile that he saw straight through. Inside, though, I was upset at his frivolous attitude towards such a serious matter. This is a temple, damnit. However, that crises was a turning point for me that would take years to unfold.
Looking back, I still shake my head at my own stubbornness. My two main teachers: Michael Dairyu Wenger and Luang Poh Sudhiro both were adament that I lighten up, but I was sure that they were wrong and I was right. It took a near total physical and mental breakdown for me to even begin to entertain their suggestions seriously.
Over the following years, as my health returned and, with it, a good bit of commonsense, my intensive practice started to bear fruit in spades. Every few months it seemed I would have some earth-shattering insight that threw me for a loop, and, with it, changed who I was and how I saw the world. One of the things that these insights brought with it was a sense of humor about everything. I finally could understand why my teacher, Luang Por Sudhiro, could laugh at just about everything all of the time. He wasn't unserious, but a joy and lightness bouyed that gravity. I discovered that in myself, then. I'd learned to lighten up, as my teachers had been encouraging me for years. And yes, I did feel lighter for it.
My first teacher, Michael, prioritized humor. Like Luang Por, he was a jovial fellow who cracked jokes that doubled as teachings too raw to be heard straight. Some of the things he used to say (paraphrased) were: "Humor is a kind of wisdom" and "I don't trust people who can't laugh at themselves." Looking back at my brother and I swashbuckling with candlesticks in church all those years back, maybe my parents, the priests, and the other adults around should've trusted us a little bit more. Maybe, just maybe, we kids were onto something. And maybe I should've trusted myself less when I went on my crusade against those cake-loving, half-assed Western Zennies. There's a wisdom in humor, in not taking oneself, one's endeavors, or one's life too seriously. I try my best to keep this in mind in all endeavors: lighten up and don't forget that little rascal from way back when. He's got something worth listening to.