Sober but still grieving, angry, and seeking serenity.
Struggling to find a higher power, I stumbled into a Buddhist practice that offered both discipline and a refuge. While living part-time in an authentic Buddhist monastery in the Catskills, I found a way to forgive myself and accept the past and the promises of a sober future.
The Monastery had a charismatic abbot that interpreted Zen Buddhism in a way that worked for this wild child, but his ethics (including becoming involved with students) were not aligned with Buddhist precepts. As a rebellious student, this was a perfect match, but my experience does not reflect others’ experience with Buddhism.
“That’s a yoga class!”
We were naked, post-coitus, and lounging in the forbidden hot tub that my bad semi-boyfriend had discovered and lured me into. The room was off another room with the unmistakable sound of yoga mats unfurling and people speaking quietly. We had only been at the “Wellness” weekend taking place at an authentic Japanese monastery situated on 1,400 acres, deep within the Catskill Mountains of New York State, for an hour but had already managed to behave badly.
Norman smiled at me, undisturbed by the prospect of emerging from our illicit soak in front of the class. He climbed out of the water, air dried, put on his pants and a shirt, and disappeared out the door while I remained guilty, ashamed, and overheated. After a few more minutes, I dressed and walked into the room where a dozen “Wellness” attendees were in child’s pose. The teacher, a tall man with a bald head dressed in yoga clothes, smiled at me as I tiptoed from the room. He also winked.
This was my introduction to a person who would help me discover a Buddhist practice, allow me to find refuge not just in the Dharma but in the world that dealt me severe blows, and ultimately set me free to rediscover my strength. I didn’t know he was the abbot of the monastery or that he had once manufactured Clear Light “Windowpane” LSD and found his practice in federal prison. It would make sense that he would appreciate our illicit behavior and my lack of respect for authority. The Monastery had its share of scandal, and many former students, including Alan Ginsberg, had left.
I knew nothing of this. All I knew was that when I took a yoga class with the abbot he walked over to where I lay, and pressing down on my shoulders, I experienced something that released a sense of grief I had hitherto avoided through alcohol. As I sobbed quietly, it occurred to me that this place felt like a refuge.
While I was several years sober, I had not allowed myself to actually process the events of the previous years, including the sudden deaths of my best friend and eldest sister, the breakdown of my father, his affair with another woman that produced a child, and my own marriage to a physically abusive man leading to a complete loss of self until I left him, got divorced, and got sober. I was exhausted, and when the abbot offered me a room in the Monastery in return for writing, I accepted. I could go to AA while I was in the city.
The Monastery’s practices included sanzen (dynamic interaction with the teacher), advanced zazen (seated meditation that sometimes lasted 17 hours), koan meditation, breath training and chanting, lots of rituals, and tons of things to remember. Most days, the schedule was to wake up at 5:30 a.m., chant, clean, eat breakfast, finish more tasks, meditate, and eat other meals. During the retreats, we rose at 4:30 a.m., sat, and engaged in dokusan (meeting with teacher), followed by more chanting, breakfast, work, two hours of sitting, lunch, more sitting, tea-sitting-dokusan, yoga, dinner, more sitting, and dokusan. The week was held in strict silence.
While some were dedicated to deepening their practice, even sitting zazen outside until midnight, I was back in my room making coffee, eating chocolate, and reading Vogue. I was a bad Buddhist. I kept being sent through bowl orientation because I could rarely finish my food, wash my bowls, and rewrap them before the clackers clacked. Instead of writing, I started polishing endless amounts of wood and baking bread. I flirted with a student who had been released from jail to work in the monastery. We called him the Prisoner of Zen.
One result of the hours of sitting meditation was the sex fantasies I had featuring me and the abbot. Leaving the Zendo one night, he stopped me and smiled.
“Enjoying the porn loop?” he said. I blushed and shook my head. He laughed.
I was serene and silent until I got in my car and drove off the mountain to teach at Rutgers and continue my life in New York City. Four days back in Manhattan was enough to remind me I was losing my city smarts. I could see the pain of others while riding the subway or walking down Broadway. Humanity had never seemed so vulnerable. I handed money to homeless people despite my own near poverty.
Otherwise, back at the Monastery, I provided comic relief to the monks. Going into dokusan, a meeting with the Roshi who was the spiritual leader visiting from Japan, I wrote all the stages—crawl, bow, stand, bow, crawl—on the inside of my arm and still managed to get things wrong. One of the monks was angry at me for taking over the writing, and I mistakenly signaled for him to hit me with the kyosaku, a bamboo stick used to help wake you up. He hit me so hard that I went completely flat to the floor on my zabuton (cushion).
Meanwhile, the abbot kept urging me to get more involved to the point where he suggested I consider becoming his inji, a personal assistant to the abbot. I told him Buddhism reminded me of Catholicism, what with the incense and the dark and the ritual, and how I was mostly terrified all the time. He found this disappointing. I went home to my parents and told my mother I was considering committing to the sangha and becoming the abbot’s inji. This announcement was greeted with horror on my mother’s side and laughter from my father, though my older sister claimed my posture had greatly improved.
Sometimes, I brought my zabuton into my creative writing class and told my students about the Zendo. They were fascinated, but I knew I had to make a decision. Commuting to the Zendo meant I arrived on Thursday night wired from my life in New York. However, the meditation practice was helpful in ways I could not have predicted. I found in the silence a way to forgive myself for my terrible marriage and my alcoholism and move further away from the intense grief I had carried with me for so long.
One day, I felt my shoulders free of the weight I didn’t know I felt. But then, again, life intruded. I received a message from a dear friend that another friend had been murdered by his lover as he prepared to take a journalism job with Reuters in Beirut. Philip was one of the kindest, gentlest people I had ever known and was deeply loved, especially by another friend who was living in Madrid, Spain. It was crucial that I reach her before her very crazy mother.
When I told the abbot, he suggested we chant for Philip.
“You see,” he said. “The world is dangerous and cruel. You need to stay here.”
“I live in that world,” I said. “I need to speak to my friend.”
After we chanted, I went to my room and packed up everything. As I drove down the driveway, I stopped at the abbot’s house to tell him I was leaving.
“You belong here.” he said.
I could see he was finally ready to have sex with me. My desire for him was completely gone. I needed to go home.
“I’m a writer,” I said. “I can’t write about polishing wood.”
As I entered my apartment at 3 a.m., the phone was ringing. My friend was crying hard, asking how something so terrible could have happened. I had no answers, but I listened and remembered that my work was about people, love, and life.
Read Molly Moynahan’s blog, The Teachers Way, on Substack, and learn more at mmwriting.com. “I have been teaching creative writing to both adults and teenagers for over thirty years. I have an MFA from Brooklyn College and three published novels, one a NYT notable book. I have taught English and writing both in universities and high school. I can teach creative non-fiction, fiction writing, and memoir. I am also a college admission essay expert. My writing practice focuses on the process of finding one’s voice and story.”
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