Mugen sensei's unbearable choice

Unwavering.
calligraphy by Soen Nakagawa Roshi.

I'm back!

This is my new situation: My husband, who also is my teacher (and, unfortunately, still my beloved) is filing for divorce. He has closed the monastery, which I (also unfortunately) own, and moved. I am receiving unemployment benefits for the next 4 months, max., unless one of the jobs I apply for pans out or my business, Indra's Net, takes wing. 

My heart is crushed. I dreadfully miss this man with whom I expected to spend the rest of my life. I can't afford to buy food, clothing or even heat the house I live in, from this month on. My physical health limits what I can do around the house and the property. I have no longer a teacher here that I can trust, no place to formally practice. My daily meditation practice gives me no peace.

So, life IS suffering, I am overwhelmed by dukkha. Samsara's wheel is being driven by by my greed and aversion: I DO NOT LIKE what is going on, I WANT everything to go back to WHAT IT WAS. I am hurt and angry. This person, Mugen, feels that all of this is really real and that I will go on hurting forever.

On the other hand, there was a full moon filling the heavens last night with light. The sun is shining right now and the frost has made a flowery pattern on the windows. My friends have rallied around me, showing support, coming with ideas about how I can and will go on. A wonderfully direct, compassionate and insightful Soto Zen master has helped me to see that I can do nothing about, as he put it, "getting dumped" or running the monastery; he suggested that I stopped beating myself up, that I give myself time to grieve, that I find and accept help that can get me through the worst of all this, that I digest what I can, as best I can, in my zazen, that I find a new teacher and a new place to attend sesshin and training. 

I examine these Three Marks of Existence,

• All compounded things are impermanent.
• All compounded things are unsatisfactory.
• All dharmas are without self.

 these Four Seals of Dharma,

• All compounded things are impermanent.
• All emotions are painful.
• All phenomena are empty, with no inherent existence.   
• Nirvana is beyond concepts. 

and the Four Noble Truths:

• Life is unsatisfactory, suffering.
• The cause of this is craving.
• There is a way to end this suffering.
• Practising the eightfold path will bring an end to suffering.

Sesshin after sesshin, koan after koan, life experience after life experience, all of these have revealed themselves, these insights growing deeper and deeper. Why, then, would I choose to ignore what I know? Why do I choose suffering over liberation?

Any number of friends in the Dharma have reminded me that I must have faith in the universe, that anything else just doesn't make sense. But how do I accept these changes with open arms and see my way through these challenging times?

The Third Patriarch, Sosan Ganchi zenji, wrote Faith in Mind Inscription. It starts:

The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.

When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction however and heaven and earth are set distinctly apart.

If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinions for or against anything.

To set up what you like against what you don’t is the disease of the mind.

When the deep meaning of things is not understood, the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail.

So, all my answers are here and I MUST integrate them clearly in my life.