Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [118]
When I was still a relatively new Dharma student in Nepal, I ran out of money and possessions to sell. I decided that I would go to Japan for a year. Friends had told me that I would be able to study and practice Zen Buddhism while I made a living as a teacher. In the meantime I would be saving money to return to Nepal.
I was studying with Uchiyama Roshi at Antaiji Temple in Kyoto and working at Seika College some forty-five minutes away by subway train. I taught English to college students during the day and to Komatsu Company executives at night. At first I really struggled against this way of life. I had been living and meditating for a few years in the Himalayan mountains; what was I doing riding during rush hour every day on a crowded Japanese subway train? In my mind, at first, this all seemed like a terrible waste of time. What did this have to do with the spiritual life, I wondered? Was I wasting my life? My girlfriend, Suil, meanwhile was happily studying Zen painting, tea ceremony, and flower arranging.
In order to fill time on the subway I started reading junk books—fast-paced thrillers like The Godfather and Shogun. I liked these books; I could reread them on vacation even now, but then I worried that my mind was turning to mush so I started to read better books—The Brothers Karamazov and War and Peace. This made me feel better about the train rides because I felt as if I were getting more out of them—improving my mind and writing skills and so on. But I still hadn’t solved this particular koan, the conundrum of daily life. The conflict I experienced was between the pleasure and delight I had in reading the great novels and the ordinariness of teaching vocabulary and grammar. The stretch was too great. This gnawed at me as I dreamed of going back to what I thought of as my real life with my lama teachers, in Kalu Rinpoche’s monastery in Darjeeling.
Finally I talked to my elderly Zen master about this. He pointed out, reasonably enough, that my problem was “the koan of everyday life.” We all have to solve it in our own way; how we live our lives and what we do depends ultimately on ourselves. Then he said something very important. “You have forty-five minutes each way on the train; that’s like a meditation hour twice a day. Why complain that you are wasting your time? Time doesn’t go to waste…. it doesn’t go anywhere. If time is wasting, you’re wasting it.”
As I reflected on what he said, I realized that by killing time and treating anything as though it were a tedious chore to be endured, to get through and put behind me, I was only deadening myself. From that day on I started trying to meditate on the train. Of course there were certain practical hassles. Do you close your eyes or do you sit with a rigid stare and risk having people think you’re some kind of zombie? How do you keep track of time and get off at your stop? But it wasn’t that hard. You don’t always have to sit in the same seat; you don’t even have to have a seat. And, yes, you can meditate with your legs down, instead of cross-legged, even in Japan. I just relaxed and meditated, and nobody noticed. In some ways, you are never more alone than in a subway during rush hour. There was a certain perfection to the whole experience.
Amazingly enough—and this is the magic of Dharma wisdom—I began to enjoy what I was doing. I started to love getting off the train and walking through the college campus, which was like a garden. I began to get pleasure from seeing the fresh-faced teenagers with sparkling eyes and welcoming, laughing spirits. They were always so happy to see their English teacher from New York. My heart leaped with joy. I had a lot to give and receive, and my work took on a whole new energy and meaning. Meditation works!
For each of us, the koan, or riddle, of existence is the work of puzzling out the meaning of our individual lives. The gift