The Bus to Enlightenment
My Weekend at Zen Mountain Monastery
I had it bad. I was a hardcore little zazen fiend who never missed sesshin, began each day reciting the Heart Sutra and sitting for half an hour, and who was completely confounded by her one and only koan (hint: MU!).
When I read about the Introduction to Zen weekend at John Daido Loori Roshi’s Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York I knew I had to go.
This was years before I moved to New York City and I’d never traveled on my own before. I was working in a little poster kiosk in the lowest level of Cleveland’s famed Terminal Tower, selling cheap posters and learning framing. The day before taking the bus to New York City I was framing several smaller Ansel Adams’ posters.
I wrote a message on the back of one and then finished sealing it. I don’t remember what I wrote and wonder if anyone ever disassembled the piece and found my note.
I boarded the Greyhound in the evening and don’t remember sleeping at all; I was so excited. New York City and then a weekend up at a Zen monastery in the Catskills.
And I was doing it all on my own!
When we crested a roll in I-80 and I got my first glimpse of Manhattan in the haze ahead it may as well have been the Emerald City to me. It was beyond…
