Context

I was doing my zazen (literally, "sitting zen") this morning (I usually try to do at least five to ten minutes every morning to set a tone for the day) when this word exploded in my mind like a grenade. What an incredibly important word! I have begun to realize that in my own life, zazen never truly made sense to me until I started to work with patients in therapy. Suddenly, all of the teachings on compassion and suffering had a context, a background on which to apply everything that I had learned and experienced over twenty years. And believe me, there is plenty of suffering going on to keep me busy for a long, long time.

Someone once said that your work is your zen. That being said, it is much more difficult to manifest the teachings while working in an office crunching numbers or shuffling paper. It took me almost twenty years to finally make the choice to go back to school in order to do the work that I love, psychology, with the people that need it most. After all, I'm getting older, and if I'm gonna talk the talk, I better walk the walk! Long ago I dreamed of becoming a full-fledged zen monk, and maybe working with patients is the next best thing, or at least a tentative step in the right direction.

In a future post I will talk about how the techniques of the zen "roshi" or master when working with students can remarkably resemble those of the psychotherapist.