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The difference between the balance achieved by a pro tennis player or a really hot drummer and that attained by a Zen practitioner is that the balance the latter have cultivated through zazen is more universal, more all-embracing. Zen people have an easier time retaining the balanced state of body and mind after getting up off the cushion than performers do after they walk offstage. Zen people also tend to have less money and be less famous, which helps—when you can get everything you think you want, you tend to spend more time and energy on fulfilling those made-up needs rather than looking honestly and critically at yourself, discovering who you truly are and what you really need. Guitar-playing or painting or what-have-you embraces just one small part of the universe. Zazen embraces everything.

THE WORLD OF DEMONS

I think of demons.

ROKY ERICKSON

FROM THE ALBUM “THE EVIL ONE”

A nightmare of shattered shapes and bizarre sensations followed by a waking nightmare of inescapable panic, a cold sweat, a racing heart. Sheer black terror. No way out.

Where am I? What’s this big room? Why are there bodies all around me? Why am I on the floor?

Breathe. Think. Look. What is this place?

A temple. Ah yes, I’m in a temple!

It’s a Buddhist temple, I recite it to myself. A Buddhist temple in Shizuoka. The people around me are not dead, I realize, just sleeping. It is the first night of the 1997 summer zazen retreat. There is nothing anywhere near me that could do me the least harm.

Then why am I so afraid? I want to run as far and as fast as possible, to scream bloody murder and cry for help. But where would I run to? Away from what—some nerdy-ass Zen students sleeping on the floor? I tell myself again and again there’s no need for panic, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Stay calm.

I tiptoe out of the sleeping room, slide open the ancient wooden door to the main hall of the temple and quietly go in. At least there are lights on out here.

I am in surroundings of utter serenity devoting my days to the pursuit of inner peace through the silent practice of zazen—what could possibly be less frightening? Still my breath comes in panting gasps, my T-shirt is soaked through with sweat and I can’t stop shivering. I have never felt such panic in my life. If I’d been being pursued through a darkened alleyway by a vicious gang out for blood and armed with motorcycle chains I couldn’t have felt more fear. All the fear I’d ever felt in my life has descended upon me in the middle of this night.

I sit on a bench facing the Buddha statue in the center of the main hall, a few feet from the spot where Nishijima lectured to us just hours earlier. I work hard to try to hold my body still against the shivering. I force my breathing into a normal pattern by very deliberately breathing in for a count of three, out for a count of three. I try to come up with anything real that is even potentially dangerous around here. I try hard, but can’t think of anything genuinely scary. Am I having some kind of premonition of imminent danger from some unimagined source?

Gradually, I force my thought processes to return to normal through logic alone, since my emotions are completely out of control.

I realize I’ve had a dream and that it was some kind of subconscious message. Something in my life is causing me tremendous distress and I haven’t even been aware of it. As surreal as the images are, there is a message in them that I can interpret consciously. I can see what needs to be done and I resolve to do it. I realize clearly that I am the cause of my own distress and I am the only one who can put an end to it. When my heart-rate settles and I begin to breathe normally again, I slide back into the sleeping room and crawl into my futon. After an hour or so, my mind settles enough that I fall into a troubled half-sleep.

IF YOU PRACTICE ZAZEN SINCERELY, eventually you’ll encounter demons. The demons are psychological, but they’re just as scary as the fiery denizens of hell. Practicing zazen is like taking the lid off a pot of boiling