Writing

Books by Zuisei

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Writing

Below is a selection of Zuisei’s writing, including articles originally published in Tricycle Magazine, Buddhadharma, and Lion’s Roar.

Featured Article

On Belonging: the Myth of Separation

Many years ago, while chatting to a social worker friend during a seminar on race and gender, he told me about a retreat he’d attended, not unlike the one we were on. At one point, fifty participants had sat in a circle, listening intently as a series of statements were read aloud.

“We were supposed to stand if the statement was true of us,” my friend said. “Things like, ‘Have been outside the country,’ ‘Speak a second language,’ ‘Have parents who own their home.’ The activity was meant to give us a popcorn view of privilege, but it also showed us something we didn’t expect.” He paused and looked out the window, as if looking for that something out there in the woods. “I’ve done that activity many times since, and while the general statements vary, the last one doesn’t change—it’s the one that always gets the whole room to stand up at once. And it does so every time.”

“What is it?” I asked after a longer pause.

He said, “‘Have ever felt that they don’t belong.’”

I want to think there are those who haven’t felt this sense of alienation, who’ve never tried to pinpoint the exact moment they wandered off the path and aren’t struggling to find their way back. I’d like to think not everyone wonders what is wrong with them, or secretly believes everyone else has got it figured out. I hope this is true, though I know it wasn’t true for me. Early on I recognized my lostness. Early on I became convinced that something was off. Fortunately, I also began to question whether the feeling was real or my perception. It was this questioning that led me to Zen, and eventually I saw that my confusion was really the byproduct of a kind of amnesia. I’d simply forgotten where I’d come from, and in the process had lost track of myself.

It went something like this: in the beginning, there was ocean—ocean as far and as clear as the eye could see. Before thought, beyond words, I knew myself as that ocean, but so much vastness was simply too much for me to hold. (Immensity has a way of freaking out the fragile self.) Grasping for a sense of security, a bit of that ocean that I was turned, looked at itself, and fell madly in love. “I,” the wave declared in its self-adulation, and immediately forgot its own source. That was the birth of avidya, ignorance, and my first inkling of a separation I essentially made up.

It wasn’t like I didn’t know there was something faulty about this new way of being. It felt awkward, unbalanced in a way I couldn’t place. But instead of wondering whether my view might have become constricted in my infatuation, I convinced myself that my uneasiness was “simply the way it was.” I was now not only separate but bewildered, primed for feeling lonely and misunderstood.

Then I looked out at the rest of the ocean and cemented my misperception. This is me and that is them, I thought as I stared at all those other waves. We might look alike and we are all stuck here together, but it’s not like they can possibly get who I am. I drew the line then and I stuck to it, and whenever I started to feel a little lonesome or a lot restless, I went looking for something to keep me entertained. In this way I whiled away my life, both craving connection and fearing it, mistrusting the very closeness that would heal me from my conviction that I was somehow apart. It humbles me now, to think of all the time and energy I gave to cement my sense of separateness, when all I had to do was look down and see we’re made of the same stuff.

The great Thai teacher Ajahn Chah was walking through the forest with a few of his monks one day. Passing a large boulder by the side of the road, he pointed to it and asked, “Is it heavy?”

“Well, yes,” his monks replied.

“Not if you don’t pick it up,” their teacher said and smiled.

To not pick up the weight of not-belongingness; to set it down once we’ve hefted it onto our backs—this is the work of becoming fully human. It’s also the greatest paradox that spiritual traditions have always recognized and honored: we must travel long and hard—sometimes supremely hard—to see we never left the place we’re struggling to return to. We were never lost, because there’s no place where we don’t cover the ground where we stand.

What joy it’d be to attend one of those workshops, sit in a circle with others and watch as we popped up from our seats. “Have a master’s degree.” “Get paid fairly.” “Is able to take vacation a few times a year.” Finally, the facilitator would read the last statement. “Have ever felt that they don’t belong.” And fifty people wouldn’t move a muscle. We’d keep on sitting as we looked at each other, a smile slowly spreading across someone’s face and then catching on.

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*Banner photo by Johnny Briggs