By day five, I’m ready to join the convent. On the far side of Chiba, cut off from all stimulation, climbing what looks like a never-ending slope to the end of my own suffering, I think about the life I have in Tokyo. I run through the list of what’s waiting at home: salt, meat, booze, internet, clothes, books, parties, chatting, intellect, expression. I crave none of these former pleasures. I sort of miss my bike. I have an urge to check on my plants. Sex still hovers at the edges. Nothing else seems particularly appealing. How mad would my mom be if I decide to become a nun? I’m vaguely aware that a week after I get out I have a flight to JFK. I’m acutely aware that a few weeks prior one of my most important relationships broke in two, with each left feeling like the other was the one heaving the cleaver. I feel sick from the severance. I worry I won’t be able to sleep. But night after night after 10 and a half hours of nothing but sitting, lying in my little doorless cell I plug my ears and knock out.
Twelve days of silent meditation pass with pains of every kind, new and old, deep and shallow, and when I get back to my apartment I sit on the couch and stare at the wall, overwhelmed. The place is full of distractions, and I haven’t even turned my phone back on yet. I’m amazed by how many things inside these four walls have nothing to do with the questions I’ve been asking myself. I check the plants, exfoliate, poke around in the freezer for something palatable to my dulled palate, stare at all the tiny plastic bottles in my bathroom. I put laundry in, take it back out. I sit down again, at a loss. The opportunities to faff are endless. I open my laptop to search for one fact. The internet is completely unusable. For every block of text there are six to twelve blinking ads, and all the people look CGI. I keep getting asked to prove I’m human. I close the laptop again.
Everything is so bright and so loud.
In the following days readjusting to life as a salaried city dweller I’m taught the words 出家 and 在家. Shukke, leaving + house, zaike, staying + house. They’re not, as it appears, related to being home or going out. Shukke is to go forth from the house to enter the monastery, as contrasted with zaike, to remain home, referring to a lay devotee, someone (probably a man) with the responsibilities of a householder but who’s taken Buddhist vows. Strangely I don’t find leaving for shukke daunting. To bail on society, to enter the convent, to let someone tell me what to believe in, how to live my life, to opt out of capitalism and devote all my time to the pursuit of emotional freedom — sounds simultaneously lofty and comforting. To live in society and pursue a material life with no spiritual investigation, to continue the thing I’ve been doing, to stay in the place where I know the rules and I have friends — sounds fun and reasonable. But both of these — leaving and staying — seem easier than this third option, zaike, to remain in society surrounded by all its faffs and temptations and demands and performances, and to still seek truth. In any case ignorance and truth both seem dire, though with divergent consequences. Run this way, run that way, run down a third path, all the while checking over your shoulder for the heavy hand of grief.
Hi, thank you as always for reading. I’m working on something new and more intimate. If you’re interested in reading, or if you like the grief and want to support my work more generally, please consider a paid subscription. You'll receive small batch grief, high quality experimental sadness for a smaller audience. The first batch will come out in June.