I am armed with a can of coffee (the vending machine variety—expecting it to be horrible, I am surprised to find that it’s rather good) and an apple at one of the café’s tables. I have sat in the back in the hopes that they will not notice my outside food and drink. I have a little over three hours. The check-in counter isn’t even open yet.
It’s funny how when you’re going through a life-changing experience, you don’t realize it. It takes a little while for the magnitude of our experiences to sink in—our classic human inability, or delay, in recognizing the good stuff.
My time in the meditation hall was much needed. It was by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I don’t think words can really encapsulate what happened, and I’m still not sure how far-reaching the changes in my life are going to be. Maybe some time soon I’ll be able to actually put it in words, but for now it’s something that I’m still processing.
The cultural tour, too, is sort of beyond words—I think in this case I’ll leave it up to the photographs to speak for me.
As the van pulled away from the monastery, I realized that I’d left a little piece of me there. That place saw me through a lot. The Chan hall, in particular, knows me quite well. And I know that I will always feel some-kind-of-at-home if I ever go back.
But even when you leave pieces of heart everywhere you go, you have to realize that it’s not so simple as you losing bits of yourself. When I moved a lot as a kid, I used to think that way. But now I’ve come to realize that when you leave a piece of your heart behind, you also take something back from that place. We may feel that when we have to say goodbye, we are emptying our cups—which may be true. But we forget that, when we open our hearts to the places we go, we in turn we take something new with us, a little piece of that place, faint memories that float like ghosts behind us, a few drops of fresh tea.
It’s an odd little exchange, but when you realize it, things are actually pretty fair. And in return for that sudden ache, that being wrenched away from something, you gradually build a wall of safety around that place in your heart—it provides a sanctuary, it opens your eyes, it keeps you warm on a cold day.
When you think about it that way, goodbye isn’t really so bad.
And if you’re really, really lucky, it may just be a “see you soon.”
