Spiritual practice is not what I thought it was. It's better.

If you look to popular culture for an image of what spiritual practice looks like these days, it is usually in some form resembling a blissful tranquility; rolling fields of light and joy pouring through my smile and washing away the troubles of the world.

This is not my happiness. Over time, I am coming to better understand that spiritual practice is about encountering the sharp edges and the dark places in a way in which we remain grounded, seeing the impermanence of what arises and holding lightly the good and the bad.

The light and joy is part of it as well, but it is akin to the skills we gain sailing on calm seas. It is not likely that such skills will hold our bearing or even keep us afloat when the storms come.

Zen practice can bring us to these skills that will keep us afloat, but it will not control the weather that may come.

At the core of Zen practice is zazen, and the great arena of zazen is sesshin. Generally, I can't wait to go to sesshin, but last month I found myself with a great dread of going. I wasn't concerned that my legs might hurt. I wan't worried what liturgical or training positions might be asked of me, and I wasn't anxious about Dokusan. I've encountered those feelings, but they are not that far inside the door.

I didn't want to go because I was angry. I didn't want to go because I was sad. I didn't want to go because I was caught in a pattern of behaviour in which I was holding on to these things as though they were my right. I did not want to go because I know what sesshin does to those things.

When I hold on to anger, anxiety or some other wrong view, I can only hold on by dancing around it. Never looking at the whole picture, I can justify and rationalize little slices of a situation. From the outskirts, I can tell tell epic tales of injustice, frustration and irritating people.

I can't cultivate these poisonous delusions when I face them head on. That is why I go to sesshin. That is why I went to sesshin.

Often, I can see where I am clenching. Usually I feel the gravity that pulls towards poisonous delusions. But when I get caught - when I am hooked by my own mind, I can still go to sesshin.

At sesshin I can not hide from these things. I see the bodhisattva holding up the mirror to my face. I hear the teacher telling me to open up my own hand. I hear these as messages that I already know, but have failed to heed.

Once you learn to navigate the forms of sesshin, a different kind of practice takes hold. It may look like you are walking, chanting, sleeping, cooking, or planting. What are you are doing is zazen.

I met Daido Roshi exactly once, in interview, at the end of my first retreat. I was starting to get a handle on counting my breath and I asked him how I could get the focus of mind that was coming up in zazen to show up in the rest of my life. He told me to sit more and promptly rang the bell to send me away. It has been a rich teaching for me and I see it in its purest form in sesshin.