A Journey Still to Come
Monshin
A Journey Still to Come
By Santiago Monshin Aviles
It was sunny, and I could feel the fresh air scent of Springtime at Upaya Zen Center. A nice and warm Friday afternoon: the han was announcing the first practice of our retreat. A whole new experience was about to start.
For part of my training, as a physician who works in the end-of-Life Care field, I enrolled to attend a “Being with Dying” retreat led by Roshi Joan Halifax. There were many things I had not explored and they appeared at the edge. I knew nothing about the rituals and the forms of this place and without having received any kind of previous instruction, of course, I was finding myself lost and confused. I just followed what other people were doing, trying to imitate them.
However, as I first entered the zendo a wonderful atmosphere encompassed me. From this moment, the silence, the solemnity, the way the space was handled, the soft steps of the practitioners, the magnificent altar, and all of those and many other things, created a space of peace and bliss in me. Bliss, I could say; that is the best way of describing it. I also realized some people were wearing what looked like a black apron on their chests. All very solemn. As the minutes passed, the sitting meditation practice was profound. I must say I was expecting a guided meditation, but the instructions never came, so the meditation simply was. How wonderful! After a while, the view before me, the feeling inside of me made me say, “This is what I want; this is the practice I want to follow.”
Even though the retreat was not much about Zen, it was deeply about compassion. And I saw then that the practice of Zazen was the route to compassion. Profoundly affected in my inner depths, I felt I should commit myself to develop a strong regular practice to nurture my compassion and to aspire to walk what later I would come to know as the way of the bodhisattva.
Buddhism was not new to me. For the past years, I had been practicing at the karma Kagyu meditation center in my hometown. I, as well as my wife and kids, had taken vows and received our Buddhist names. But for reasons mentioned above and some others I was yet unsure of, I knew, now, I would make a shift in my Buddhist practice.
At the end of the retreat, I approached Roshi Joan, and expressed to her briefly what my relationship with Buddhism was back home. I talked to her about my willingness to become a student of Upaya, a student of hers, if she would have me. She was very clear; she didn’t make any promises. Of course, she didn’t need one more student, but I definitely needed a teacher. She mentioned the first step was to talk to the teacher at the Buddhist center I used to belong to and request permission to leave the group, which I did as soon as I came home.
By the fall of that very same year, I returned to Upaya. This time, I had the opportunity to talk more extensively to Roshi Joan, to be more open about my aspiration and expectations. I asked if I may receive the precepts. She agreed and gave me the first instructions, then put me in contact with people from her team to guide my process. It was more than a year-long trip that I shared with several people from Upaya. One of them was Shinzan Palma, whom I had already met at my previous activities at Upaya. He patiently, largely from a distance, guided me in the course of sewing my Rakusu and supported me in my readings and training. It was a tough undertaking fraught with the difficulties of living abroad and not having local assistance. However, I had discipline, eagerness, and conviction. Having made a life-changing decision, I was committed to it; my effort was there.
The Jukai ceremony came. I initially felt kind of lonely since there were so many people I hadn’t met before, but I felt something else. At that moment, there was, again, an atmosphere, a new one here, now. Something great was happening. It was indeed, the first step in a journey still to come.
