Sandy Reiger
Taken from AZC Newsletter, July 2010
I remember as a child feeling completely puzzled by the Christian belief system.
As I got older, puzzlement turned to confusion, then to a nagging feeling of inner disquiet. When I was a senior in high school, I found partial relief from my religious angst in a physics class when our very cool teacher responded to a question about God.
I don’t remember the question or who asked it—probably it was me—but I do remember his answer: “Maybe God is just space.” I felt liberated, because for the first time I heard something that actually made some sense to me.
However, it still didn’t answer a lot of other questions. The Death-with-a-capital-D question still loomed at the top of the list, and by my early twenties I had developed a full-blown case of panic attacks and anxiety around death. I suppose the only question that was answered had to do with the direction I would take to continue to look for answers.
When I was 20, I was introduced to a “California Dreamin’’’ version of Buddhism in Los Angeles. So close to the Roshi, yet so far away. The tradition emphasized chanting for your material desires. My friend had pictures of Mercedes Scotch-taped to her mini butsudan.
When I moved back to Albuquerque, I found a group to chant with, but there was no teacher, no guidance, no answers, no clarity—and no relief from the anxiety. I drifted away and most of my adult life was spent just fending off the demon and aligning myself with the agnostics and atheists.
Then, about nine years ago, I was chatting with a bank customer of mine and I think we may have slid into a conversation about spirituality, because he suggested I visit the Albuquerque Zen Center and ask for Seiju.
I had never been to a place like AZC. There was something different about it. Even after my first beginner’s instruction and first agonizing mid-morning sit, I knew I could stay here and figure some things out.
It took a long time for me to shed my Hollywood ideas of enlightenment (living for the moment, compassion etc.) and begin examining the pitfalls and misconceptions of my thoughts and opinions about life, and—oh yes—death.
It was still shadowing me, but about two years into my practice, I received a couple of much-needed instructions from Joshu Roshi and Seiju. In my very first sanzen with Roshi, I was a clueless mess of thoughts and emotions and the only thing I blurted out was, “I’m afraid to die.”
In a flurry, Roshi snapped up his little stick and smacked it on the chair and then rang the bell. Dismissed! I didn’t know what to think and so I couldn’t think. It felt like he had smacked that silly thought right out of me, and yet I resisted (although at the time I didn’t even realize it was a resistance). It seemed as though the thought was spontaneous and uncontrollable. It arose and didn’t go away until some decision was made by some unknown decision maker.
During our refuge-taking process, I felt compelled to ask our teacher, Seiju, about death. “You’re worrying about death and you don’t understand what life is,” he told me. Those words had the same effect on me as Roshi’s stick and bell. I began sitting with both of these instructions. Smack. Ding. You don’t understand.
Wise teachings from skilled teachers moved me from a hapless pawn of unknown sources to some understanding of how the hapless pawn arises and disappears. Since then, I’ve been sitting to look into this self and this life—the experience and activity of this self and this life.
There hasn’t been a reason to inquire about anything further at this point. No therapists. No pharmaceuticals. Just Zen practice.
Death has taken a new seat in the back of the theater. It doesn’t clap or heckle. It’s there. But sometimes when I manifest living activity, it’s not there at all. So that’s where I put the energy. I come back to my breath. I come back to: inhale.
In my practice, this was the point of a second and even more stubborn resistance.
For years, I resisted that simple yet profound instruction that we hear over and over and over. Sit and breathe completely. I just wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t let go of my thinking mind for even half a breath. I wouldn’t surrender to the activity of breathing.
I fought it and beat myself up over it, like we all do around our personal sticking points.
The readings and dharma talks and rare moments in sanzen helped me. Ultimately, I had to sit on the cushion and just do it. A slogan for Nike. A slogan for Buddhists.
I learned that the habit of resistance can fall away and I know that the countless other habits that confront me on the cushion can suffer the same fate. All I have to do is inhale.
Completely.
