A Buddhist priest helped me through my divorce
Stressed by the end of her marriage and her mother’s death, Anna Magee turned to a Zen Buddhist priest for help
I’m sitting cross-legged on a little round cushion in a Zen Buddhist temple in Yokohama, a city south of Tokyo. It’s 5.30am and along with 40 Japanese people of all ages, I am meditating. A monk sits by my side, chanting in Sanskrit to the sound of ancient songs played on drums and wooden blocks.
My nose itches but scratching is not allowed. I’ve been told I must sit up straight and when thoughts come, to let them go, out through the top of my head. But for every thought I let go, another flies in. My wrinkles. My cold feet. My pins and needles. My ex-husband. What monks serve for breakfast.
Suddenly, I feel the hard, quick blow of a wooden stick being whacked on my shoulder. It comes from Shunmyo Masuno, the head priest of the temple. Later, he tells me, chuckling, that a loud shout or slap from a head monk is “a form of encouragement on behalf of the Buddha” – focusing the energy and encouraging me to sit up straight.
The blow stings, but I stoically carry on. About a year ago, I lost my mother to cancer and my world exploded into pieces. A month after her death, I told my husband of 20 years that I wanted a divorce – and I meant it. I’ve travelled here to see if “monk therapy” can stem the avalanche of negative thoughts that have been overwhelming me every morning.
Buddhist monks – the original mindfulness gurus – are big news. Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh was the first to bring mindfulness to a Western consumer audience, and has written more than 100 books on the subject.
Andy Puddicombe, the English creator of the wildly successful meditation app Headspace, is a Buddhist monk turned millionaire (money is not a bad thing in Zen Buddhism, as long as you’re making it in the pursuit of good).
Earlier this year, New Yorkbased Haemin Sunim – dubbed the “megamonk” – released his second book, Love for Imperfect Things, the follow- up to his international bestseller, Things You Can Only See When You Slow Down.
Shunmyo’s new book, Zen: The Art of Simple Living, brings the spirit of Zen Buddhism to everyday life. There’s no striking of any kind, I promise: just 100 snack-size Zen activities you can do daily to add more calm to your life.
Meeting Shunmyo – not only a Zen priest but also a university lecturer and landscape architect who’s written 18 books on Zen garden design – I notice that his skin seems lit from within. There’s a contented look on his face akin to that seen on the Dalai Lama. There’s a comfort about him that’s arresting.
Shunmyo’s philosophy is claimed to help us slow down and find calm in the chaos of the modern world, something
I’ve never needed more. Haunted by grief about
Mum, my commute has felt like walking through treacle. But on top of that, I’ve been living with a low-level terror about the future, translating into a barrage of constant “what ifs” that hit me at the first sign of a stressful email or event.
After the meditation session with Shunmyo and three other Zen monks at the Kenkoji temple, a young man who has been coming every Sunday for four weeks, bows and says to Shunmyo in Japanese: “Thank you, my heart doesn’t hurt any more.”
It spurs me on to continue the recommended practices for three weeks when I return home. Here is what I learnt…
If you do nothing else, meditate
Who knows why meditation makes being human easier, but it starts with the often terrifying idea of doing absolutely zip. “Making time for not thinking about anything is the first step towards a simple life,” says Shunmyo. “If something is in your mind, it will stay and grow… and that clouds your judgment on everything else.”
While 40 minutes is optimal, 10 minutes daily is enough to benefit, he says. Without any electronic guidance – he says it’s not real zazen (meditation) if you use Youtube – my first attempts at meditation are horrendous. I find the stillness quite terrifying, nagged by the urge to be doing something. But I keep coming back to my breath, and within three weeks it feels like I’ve had a focus bypass. Rather than mindlessly multitasking, I do one thing at a time, sometimes for two hours without stopping, and recently went an entire day without checking my social media – a first. The result is a new feeling of being comfortable with life and myself. I’m learning to let go of the things in life I can’t control.
Line up your shoes when you get in
This is as simple as it sounds, but for me it also translates to hanging up my clothes when I take them off, instead of throwing them in the spare room until Saturday, when I moan about the pile I have to tidy on my day off.
“Enlightenment comes not all of a sudden but only after you add up small things,” says Shunmyo. “These may, over time help you become more attuned to noticing tiny changes in your mental state.” In other words, if you feel anger you might be able to realign it before it blows up.
Take your headphones off
“Thanks to the advancement of social media, humans now have a lot of visibility of themselves and each other, which opens the way for comparison, the enemy of contentment and happiness,” says Shunmyo.
Focusing on doing one thing at a time (that means no music while you walk, I know), getting up 15 minutes early, and taking time in the evening to watch the sunset are practices that can help us be grateful for what we have.
I can’t watch the sunset (commuting), but I do get up at dawn and take a walk outside. Feeling at first bereft without my headphones, I am struck by the dawn chorus and, in the blue morning light, I realise my constant filling of every moment with phone, music, email, whatever, has made me miss out on life.
When in doubt, clean
“Cleaning hones the mind,” says Shunmyo. “In Zen temples, monks do cleaning every morning and evening. We clean with all our hearts, even if the temple isn’t dirty. The purpose is to polish our minds. The key to keeping your mind invigorated is to first put the things around you in order.”
I hated cleaning until I was forced to do it day and night by Shunmyo’s book. But after decluttering my bookshelves – I even got a skip and threw away years’ worth of debris – my home was sparkling and I felt like I’d lost emotional weight, too. You don’t need to go full Marie Kondo, but the mixture of fear and joy I feel at my new empty living room makes me want more.
‘Zen makes you able to live with – love, even – the life you have, in all its chaos’
Feeling angry? Say thank you three times
During meditation, Shunmyo holds a long chain made of 108 beads, each representing a kelsha, or poisonous emotion, as a reminder to not be a slave to them. The worst of these are anger, greed and ignorance.
When you feel anger rising, Shunmyo suggests taking deep breaths into your tanden – that’s the area just below your belly button – and saying three words to yourself. This could be “arigato” (thank you) three times or any other innocuous word. “During each exhale and by the time you finish, the anger or other poisonous emotion will not have reached your mind,” he says.
This one is a challenge for me. When I get a pressured or angry comment or email, my immediate response is to get defensive, though I know it’s not always useful.
I start forcing myself to smile, and whisper “thank you” instead.
In a difficult final divorce mediation, I watch as my husband stands, waving his hands around, angrily shouting. I feel the familiar surge of adrenalin, but breathe, and try instead to see his terrible hurt and shock. Suddenly, for the first time in a long time I feel safe in my life; grateful it is all almost over.
Zen doesn’t necessarily change your life, it makes you able to live with – love, even – the life you have, in all its chaos. The feelings that used to overwhelm me – negativity, future panic, insecurity, grief and anger – still visit me each morning.
But now I look them square in the face, say “hi” and send them on their merry way. Where they used to haunt me on/off all day, now I might not see them again until the next morning.
After three weeks of doing Shunmyo’s daily practices, I feel… happier? Not quite. Enlightened? Certainly not. Peaceful? Yes, definitely more peaceful. That’s the best reason to keep going.
Zen: The Art of Simple Living (Penguin, £12.99) is published on April 18