As pointed out in the retreat there is an immense source of distractions as never before in the history of humankind. I’m sitting in an airplane with hundreds of individual screens offering a variety of movies, tv shows, games, music, etc. An escape from the discomfort of sitting for eleven ours with our thoughts and emotions, with our boredom. And, after having played some of those games myself, I wonder, how to escape distractions and focus on what really matters? For scattered minds like mine, the environment you put yourself into will influences your life direction. This is particularly important at this unstable moment of my life.
I spent 10 years building a professional career, dreaming of fame and prestige while doing what I most liked. But a little change of plans triggered an ongoing crisis that affected every aspect of my life for the subsequent 6 years. I went from a professional crisis, to a marital crisis, to an existential crisis and eventually developed anxiety for illness and death to the extent that I could not work and live properly anymore. By now, I’m losing hope that the crisis will someday end. This crisis is teaching me that, whereas life is everchanging, I spent all those seemingly stable years trying to grasp something ethereal, resisting change.
Although the perspective of being unable to function properly due to anxiety for death and illness doesn’t sound appealing, paradoxically, never have I been more grateful for all the benefits I have received in my life than on those days of intense fear. And yet, it was not out of fear that I realized the immense privilege that it is to have a place to sleep, food to eat, and access to basic hygiene. Let alone having a functioning body, able to see, to hear, to touch, smell and taste the huge variety of stimuli that life offers for our delight. Or to hug a beloved one.
At the same time, I paid more attention to the long known but often ignored sense of dissatisfaction with how I was spending my life. I wasted a good chunk of time and mental health working for a billionaire company that belongs to a handful of people who are as equally trapped in this system as I am. A voracious system that pushes us over the limit to keep growing economically at the expense of our health and relationships; a rotten system that damages and destroys its very source, namely human beings and ultimately, all beings on earth.
At this point, there was only one option left. Together with my wife, whose mental health also declined, we decided to quit our jobs and leave our comfortable life in The Netherlands for something more aligned with our values. As the deadline to leave approached, we faced fear and uncertainty, probably the most powerful incentives to keep the futile search for some solid endurable object to grasp. With sadness and maybe a glimpse of regret, we left our house heading to the Karuna retreat center to spend two and a half weeks as volunteers before immersing ourselves in silence for 7 days. This was a necessary transition before we could travel back to Mexico, our home country, without a job, without a house and without a plan.
It is almost unavoidable to hope for a peaceful and even blissful retreat, but I knew it is not always the case. Sometimes unpleasant feelings, thoughts and memories come to the surface of the mind when they are offered space, as it happens with the deepening of silence. Yet unexpectedly, as all my regrets, guilt and sense of fear for the future came up loudly in the first morning meditation, I lost all hope for a peaceful retreat. After this period of Zazen, I went out, overwhelmed with fear, to see the sunrise. As soon as the sun rays touched my face, I recalled something I once read: the sun shines equally bright on everyone. That single thought touched a deep open wound in my heart with the same soothing warmth that the sun touched my body. I felt the sun loving me, no matter what.
I looked around and saw my fellow retreatants enjoying the sunlight. Regardless any of our “good” or “bad” deeds, or whatever has been done to us, the sun shines its light with no discrimination, neither distinguishing nor judging who is worthy of his love. And at that moment, an aspiration came up. It doesn’t really matter what I do next with my life, I just want to be like the sun. Loving everything and everyone, asking nothing in return, for the sun is self-illuminating. It is impossible for the sun to shine its light onto everything without illuminating itself as much as it is impossible to be self-luminous without illuminating it all, for both qualities are one and the same.
To my surprise, what seemed the start of an awful and painful retreat, became a peaceful experience that left me with a sense of ease about the uncertainty to come. After leaving Karuna, as we step into an uncertain life jobless and homeless, I get to feel that loosing grip on my sense of property, say about “my” bed or “my” house, I’m offered a multitude of beds and houses by those who love us, and sometimes even by people who barely know us.
The retreat didn’t “cure” my fears, regrets and anxiety, but sitting for long ours with myself and my discomfort, with no distractions, allowed me to take those feelings with me, not as a burden, but as just another set of features like love, compassion, determination and many other that compose my sense of self. As we literally are on thin air, flying back to Mexico, I realize that this radical change of life, stepping into the unknown, is nothing but the continuation of a long path with no beginning and no end. May we walk our path with ease and for the benefit of all beings.
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