🌟 Dear Marvelous Mind

Out of Office Notice: The Documentarian is Taking a Week Off (Letter 210)

May 18, 2024

Dear Marvelous Mind,

Tomorrow, we embark on a new adventure on the Big Island. This journey will be quite different from our trip there in January, when we danced with friends in kitchens, played games, and jumped off cliffs.

You’ve already planted seeds of fear, whispering, “We’re not ready,” and I don’t blame you. Moving into the unfamiliar creates some dread alongside excitement. It’s daunting to leave behind the comforts of civilization for nearly a week, to carry upwards of 40 pounds on our back, and to sit in silence without the usual distractions of the internet or materials. It will be disorienting to be without writing or speaking, our usual modes of expression. Haulting my habitual movements of writing words to paper is my gravest fear. I love processing life in this way.

I anticipate the familiar thoughts:

“What on Earth are you doing??! Why are you out in the middle of nowhere on scorching black rock, melting away like an ice cream in July?! It’s bloody hot. This pack feels full of bricks, and the chiropractor was right that this was a terrible idea. Are you nuts for ditching all your precious routines and comforts to eat oats for days and sleep on a cold, hard floor, only to wake up to a conch horn at 4:30 a.m., sit on a bunched-up sleeping bag, and count your breaths for hours on end with your legs falling asleep?! What were you thinking, or were you even thinking at all??”

And with no cellular device to call for rescue, Marvelous Mind, we’ll be out of solutions since we signed up for these discomforts.

When I told mom about this experience, she said solemnly, “That sounds lonely.” She’s not wrong.

Yesterday, when I told our neighbor Pradeep in the laundry room about it he remarked with a puzzled voice, “That doesn’t sound like a very fun vacation.” He assumed that my interisland trip must be for a holiday. I’d find time to go scuba diving since I am taking six days away from work for an unpaid holiday. Nope. None of that fun stuff. This isn’t exactly an experience to escape for relaxation. Instead, this is an intensive practice of Zen Sesshin. 

The past two years that we have completed the Hele Mālie Zen Sesshin on Big Island, I have been grateful to have gone. Even so, I know there will be moments ahead when I will regret embarking on this expedition. 

Even more intrusive questions of resistance will come, mostly questioning the point of it all and what my return on my investment of time, sweat, tears, and energy will be. But there is a point, even if I don’t yet know the outcome. 

The purpose of this letter is not to blame you for needing or wanting this retreat. I am creating a container of space and time to reset the norms of moving through life and create causes and conditions that bring us closer to living and realizing the Buddha way. This spiritual quest will allow me to return to you, my Marvelous Mind, more refreshed. It will pause the speedy highways of concepts you create, which often become delusional thoughts about the past or future. It is powerful to dedicate five days to simple living, allowing life to unfold while noticing each moment as it arises. This will be an experience to shed habits of acting on impulse to save and capture my experience before it flies away.

When I return, this pause will allow me to live more fully with undivided activity. In Buddhist practice, the Japanese call undivided activity “zenki,” meaning total dynamic function. Zenki is the reality of life, expressed through movement within that reality.

I am devoted to this practice of zazen meditation and have faith that it will till the soil of you, my Marvelous Mind.

Just know that it is rare and beautiful to exist in this lifetime and that the documentarian parts of us are taking the week off.

Love yours truly,

Jen, a Zen student

~~~

❓Question to think about

How would my life transform if I spent less time lost in the grooves of my Marvelous Mind and more time grounded in my body and spirit?

📸Photo of the Week

It’s been a very very rainy week here. Downpours. My pluviophile roommate is overjoyed. It feels like it’s been winter here on the island. I’ve been hibernating inside, brewing three pots of tea daily, wearing fuzzy socks and doing laps around my apartment building to get outside of my home.

🔍Word to define

Sesshin: a period of intensive meditation in the Zen Buddhist practice.

The term means "touching the heart-mind". During a sesshin, monks focus almost exclusively on zazen practice, which can include numerous periods of zazen meditation per day counting the breath up to ten, 25 minutes each with 5 minute walking breaks and meals eaten in a ritual.

🌟Quote to inspire

“It’s your road and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.” – Rumi

🙏Shoutouts

• Thank you to editors of my letter including Christine Cauthen, April Resnick, Melanie Keath, Hannah Broderick, and CansaFis Foote

• To Naseem Malik for sharing this week’s quote after he wished me well on my sesshin

• To Steffen Kelly for taking the photo of the week on one of his trail runs at sunset over in a valley called Tantalus

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I appreciate you reading this!

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Keep on learning 😁

Mahalo 🌺

Jen

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