When I trained with my teacher, Soryu, I watched him as closely as I could. I felt like the way he moved, the way he carried himself, had lessons for me to learn—lessons that might be difficult to put into words, but were significant nonetheless.
This post is about one such thing I learned from him, from his example. I never heard him speak directly about what I will describe here, but his actions showed it to me.
Soryu is an incredibly athletic person. He is religious about exercising every day. He is an excellent tennis player and cross-country skiier. In winter afternoons, I would see him hit the Vermont ski trails whenever there was snow on the ground. In spring afternoons, he would pack his truck with tennis balls and racket to practice on the court or play a match. And in the Fall, he would go on long bike rides on his mountain bike. Every single day, he would do some form of intense cardiovascular exercise.
I also saw this kind of periodization in his life. Over the years, I saw that he seemed to arrange his life in something like two or three month blocks: spending some time teaching at our Vermont monastery; spending some time trying to help get the California branch started; doing some training of his own—a solitary retreat, attending Sun Dance, or doing a bike pilgrimage. He would rotate between these endeavors, going straight from one to the next, month after month, year after year.
I didn’t see him take long vacations in the Caribbean, or sitting around wasting his time. If he was sitting around, it was because he was meditating, deepening his own practice.
Wherever I saw him, in Vermont or in California, I witnessed him throwing himself fully into what he was doing. I know that he had long days—sometimes eighteen, even twenty hour days. He would do this day after day, month after month, year after year, in whatever context he found himself.
He often talked about doing things completely. I know this was impressed upon him in his Zen training, and was something he has practiced throughout his life. He does not do things half-heartedly. He does it fully, or not at all—whatever it is that he does.
I admired the intensity with which he lived his life. I admired the tremendous amount of energy I saw him capable of using every day. And I admired that he just… kept going. He doesn’t stop. And as I reflected on that, I realized that it wasn’t exactly that he didn’t rest. He did. He simply took breaks from doing one thing, by doing another thing fully. He would rest from skiing season by playing tennis. He would rest from teaching and running a non-profit organization by fully throwing himself into doing a long, solitary meditation retreat.
In other words:
u can rest meaningfully from one activity by exerting urself fully at another. u can rest from one muscle group by using another. u can take a break from one kind of exertion by doing something wildly different just as fully, completely, mindfully
When I started my pilgrimage, I incorporated this principle into my life. Every chapter on my pilgrimage, every stay in a city or town, is a chance to focus on one thing. Every next chapter is a recovery from the last.
To name one simple example: for the last few years, I’ve done Inktober each October: focusing on making at least one drawing every day. For the last two years, I followed that up with doing NaNoWriMo, and produced a novella each year (Theodicy in 2022, and It Wasn’t in 2023—neither met the full word count goal people typically aim for, but I loved what I created).
It will never fail to amaze me that U can REST MEANINGFULLY FROM ONE ACTIVITY BY EXERTING URSELF FULLY WITH ANOTHER!
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The art in this post was created by Sílvia Bastos, and is licensed under a CC BY 2.0 license. You can support her work on Patreon.
