It was in South Korea in 1975 that I decided to become a Zen nun. I had wanted to see if meditation would enable me to change my mind. I’d been idealistic from a very young age: from 11 onwards, I’d wanted to save the world. I became an anarchist and read Bakunin; then I dreamed of taking the Magic Bus to India from rural France. But at the ancient age of 18, I realised it wasn’t that easy to change the world, let alone myself. So when I read a Buddhist text that suggested meditation might help, I decided to find a teacher and a practice. I ended up in a Zen Buddhist monastery in South Korea where, for 10 hours a day, I silently asked the question: ‘What is this?’
The Zen word ‘koan’ is sometimes used in common parlance — as in ‘What is the koan of my life?‘ Or ‘Is this is a koan for me?’ The hero of Ben Lerner’s novel Leaving the Atocha Station (2011) realises that his lack of Spanish enables him to speak in ‘enigmatic koans’. At the University of Warwick, there is a six metre-high sculpture called theWhite Koan by Lilian Lijn, which rotates and is illuminated by fluorescent lights. On MTV, Skrillex, the American electronic musician, recently introduced a DJ duo from Bristol who call themselves Koan Sound after their unusual bass sound. And in June this year, the Marketwatch.com columnist Paul B Farrell wrote an article headlined ‘The ultimate Zen Koan? Your retirement’. They all used the word ‘koan’ to signify, among a multitude of ideas, a question, a mystery, a concern, an enigma, a riddle, something strange.
‘What is this?’ is one of the most popular koans used in Korea. It is not a riddle with a definite answer. Traditionally, it is seen as a method of radical questioning that will enable one to see one’s true nature and thus become a Buddha. But it is not as easy as that: it takes more than just a weekend meditation intensive to attain the way. It requires years and years of sitting on a cushion and asking until you develop a sensation of questioning so powerful that it ‘explodes’, as the tradition says. In Korean Zen, they say that to accomplish this you need to have great faith, great courage and great questioning. However, I was not so interested in slowly awakening to my own true nature: I wouldn’t have minded if it had suddenly and unexpectedly happened to me. I wanted all along to cultivate wisdom and compassion and, more than anything else, dissolve my restrictive and painful habits of mind and heart. (...)
After a few months wandering in India and Thailand, I arrived at the monastery of Songgwangsa in South Korea. At the time, this was the only temple in the country that accepted foreigners. I showed up while the largest ceremony of the year was taking place. So I went to help in the kitchen, washing vegetables. During a break, a Korean laywoman asked me about my life. When she realised that I had no ties — no work, no husband, no children, no study — she was delighted for me. If she were me, she said, she would become a Zen nun. I pondered this for a while. She’s right, I thought. Why not stay here for a year or two, and do something totally different? Maybe in this place and tradition I could find a way to stop repeating the same painful mistakes. So, as is customary for meditation monks and nuns in Korea, twice a year, in winter and in summer, for three months at a time, I started to ask ‘What is this?’ for 10 hours a day. Rather than experience the ‘whizz bang’ of enlightenment, I simply found that a greater awareness and compassion were growing within me. This is why I ended up staying in Korea for 10 years.
Two things happened early on, which convinced me that this was all worthwhile. A month into my second three-month retreat, I was sitting on my cushion asking ‘What is this?’ when I suddenly became very aware of what was going on in my mind. It was all about me being at the centre of the universe — what I wanted, what I hoped for, what I did not like, and so on. At the time, I was practising with four other young women, and I realised that they too were doing exactly the same thing. Self-interest was the basis of our identity. This clear awareness did not make me sad or upset. Instead, I found it funny. It exposed my fundamental mis-perception of myself as an incredibly compassionate and selfless person. This experiential awareness led to a deep self-acceptance. I saw clearly for the first time the obstacle at the centre of my suffering and what was needed to transform it. This made me feel lighter. I wasn’t in the dark any more about the conditions that had caused me to keep making the same mistakes again and again.
The second thing happened a few months later. This was during the ‘free season’, when instead of meditating one could travel about in Korea and take care of errands in town. I went to a bank to change some money. The bank teller made an error and gave me more than I should have received. My first thought was to take the money as it would be one against the capitalist system — and more for me, of course. But I stood still, unable to move. I could not do it, could not take the loot. I gave the excess money back. I did not want the bank teller to get into trouble for his error. I was so surprised that I had not reacted in my old habitual way. It had not felt like an intellectual or rational act — forcing myself to do something out of high-minded Zen idealism — but an experiential one. Something seemed to have arisen unbidden as a spontaneous response to the situation.
I came to see that meditation was not about suddenly lighting up like a Christmas tree, but about releasing something and letting go. It became clear that meditation functioned in a subtle subterranean way. At the time, I could not have explained how or why. It was only after I left the monastic life and encountered Buddhist vipassana meditation that I understood how this process worked.
by Martine Batchelor, Aeon | Read more:
Photo: Martine Batchelor
