I grew up Muslim but quit when I was 21 because it felt hypocritical to adhere to the prohibitions when I didn’t believe they were bad; like I was doing the faith a disservice by not doing an honest job of it.
After a few years of enjoying newfound freedoms (and nearly falling down the New Atheism to alt-right pipeline), I had a crisis: if no God, then what? Searching for meaning, I tried ethics, then suicidal depression. I had a sense that there was real, capital-M Meaning to be found somewhere. But I didn’t know where to look or how to find it. Not finding it, surrounded by “there’s no meaning, make your own,” being unable to give up hope – it was crazymaking.
Fast forward a few years to 2015 and a therapist says to me, “You need to find a meditation practice so you can learn to sit and have feelings without freaking out.” I checked out a few places and landed at a local Soto Zen center primarily because I liked their hardwood floors. Fairly quickly I found myself able to catch anxiety/depression spirals early; eventually, turning towards the difficult stuff became a core belief. Quite simply, Zen and therapy saved my life.
In 2021 I burned out from work and took a year off. After much unwinding, at Rohatsu sesshin, at exactly the moment of finally, fully giving up and accepting myself, I experienced kensho. Instantly I recognized it as the thing I’d been looking for: 🌸
Vindicated, I fully committed to my practice. I took Jukai, the Zen ethical precepts; I became board president of the Zen group’s nonprofit. The latter turned out to be a huge mistake.
Teacher abuse of power had come to light a couple of years before. I thought the turbulence had blown over, and that the sangha was in recovery; I had aspirations of really building community. But many people still felt very affected by what had happened, and the group turmoiled in fresh new ways that my inexperience and naivete made me completely unsuited to handle. I left after nine months of assuming the role, with two thirds of the board resigning on the same day.
All this meant I ended up unsupported in integrating my kensho experience. For a year or so I was on top of the world, elated; but the perspective shift faded. I spent a lot of 2022-2024 feeling uncomfortable about Zen; not practising, casting around for a different path that felt right for me. Tibetan traditions, particularly Dzogchen, appealed, because they had something clear to say about after kensho; but despite some long conversations with a Tibetan teacher, I never got a foothold - quite possibly because I was looking for individualized teacher instruction like Zen’s dokusan.
At the time of writing I am back to sitting with a Zen group somewhat regularly, dipping my toe back into practice. It is a practice I know well, that has done a lot for me; though I was attracted to it for its austerity, and no longer seek that, I’m interested in seeing if I can find warmth in the practice too.
All of this to say: I’ve been doing this for ~10 years; I see so much of life through a Buddhist lens; I love the path; it has saved and shaped me; what else to do but walk it?