When I was 21, I traveled through China for a few months. At that time, there was no internet, no Lonely Planet, and no travel guide for China at all. I left with a one-way ticket to Asia, hoping to return via the Trans-Mongolian Express from Beijing. A few years later, I spent a period trekking through the Himalayas and stayed in Tibet for a month and a half.
After my travels, I was left with many beautiful and impressive experiences, but also with a lot of questions. I had felt a sense of recognition. But recognition of what? And what should I do now in the Netherlands, in my small student room in Leiden?
There were various Buddhist groups, but I didn’t feel a heart connection with any of them. I was very drawn to the Asian aspects. But, at the same time, I felt a firm conviction that ‘all the Asian frills,’ as I irreverently called them, were not what it was about for me. I seriously considered joining a Buddhist monastery in Asia, but there was a strong inner knowing that the essential had to be possible right here and now in the Dutch polders. Otherwise, it couldn’t be the essence, I thought! The essence doesn’t need colorful flags, no matter how beautiful. The essence isn’t in a black robe or a rakusu (the ‘bib’ worn by Zen Buddhists).
The key question for me remained: what is the essence, how do I find it, how do you live it in everyday life?
Meanwhile, decades have passed. I still live in Leiden. Although not in a student room anymore, my daily situation hasn’t really changed that much. I lead a normal, ordinary Dutch life. But I have taken the Buddhist vow, been ordained in the Zen tradition as a ‘home leaver,’ and am now a Zen teacher. I have a rakusu, a black robe, and a teacher’s staff. How strange can life be! How have these things combined and ultimately become one and the same?
When I made my first major commitment – the so-called jukai ceremony where you receive the Buddhist vows—I received a booklet from my partner. I asked my Zen teacher, Maurice Genko Roshi, to write something at the front. When I got it back, it read: ‘A path with a thousand twists and turns is also a straight path.’
How do you express the essence when you’re cooking, when the train turns out not to be running, or when you’re having a work meeting?
Yes, apparently this is a straight path. And I realize that it is also my path. But looking back, I would have liked to hear, see, and read more about women and men who are finding their way in ordinary life. What does practice involve when you’re looking for a job? How do you meditate with two babies? How do you express the essence when you’re cooking, when the train turns out not to be running, when you’re having a work meeting, when you’re calling your mother, when you’re cut off by a car on the highway, or when you need to separate your arguing children? I would have liked to hear more about what it looks like when you’re not going to a remote monastery on a mountain to seek enlightenment, but are looking for awakening in everyday life.
The lives of the Indian, Chinese, and Japanese female ancestors on this site are all different. This path is colored by each person’s time, as well as by the country, circumstances, and culture in which (Zen) Buddhism found its way. But despite this diversity, all these stories share a common ground that can be recognized. It is precisely through these differences that the underlying thread running through all these experiences becomes clear. Adding contemporary stories can help make visible the unspoken essence that runs through them.
That’s why I am writing this blog. To share how it looks for me and thereby presenting one experience. One experience in the endless and boundless variety of lives and manifestations.