A week before our vacation in Eastern Europe, I get a text from my mother. Translated from Chinese, it read:
“My dear daughter, I have loved you and been proud of you since your childhood, but now you have broken my heart, because you have actually publicly announced that you have forsaken the true God who loves us and chosen the idol of destruction. I hope you remember that during my urgent prayer for you, God brought you out of trouble, showed you a wonderful hope to this point, and led you with a step of divine light. You and you will quickly turn around.”
This comment is in response to finding out about the my last essay I wrote for Tricycle. He didn’t read it; it was enough to see the word “Buddhist” on my Instagram post.
I love my mother deeply. He is one of the most amazing people I know. His generosity and kindness ripples outward, and people in the congregation have often told me how he has helped them through some difficult situations. And without her support, I would never have survived the breakup of my marriage twenty years ago.
When he was 9, he met Christian missionaries in his hometown of Xian, shortly after his older sister died of a rare blood disorder. The grieving child heard the message, “Jesus loves you,” and was deeply touched by the message that even he could have a personal relationship with God. He brought his six siblings to church and eventually helped convert the rest of his family, even his parents, to Christianity. That is, his religion is a central part of his identity.
I understand your devotion. Life is beautiful, confusing, and fragile, and it’s no wonder so many of us feel called to a spiritual retreat to find solid footing. My own Zen spiritual practice, which I turned to for comfort, guidance and community during my divorce, kept many trials. It has helped me stay open when I want to close and stay present when I want to turn away.
We’re actually more alike than you think.
So how do I stay true to my experience without losing my mother? How do I speak from the heart without hardening my views? How can I meet your belief that there is only one way to the divine without abandoning my own path?
And why does life always throw such tangled difficulties at us? As if the world wasn’t already heavy enough with conflict and suffering?
I ask these questions docspersonal meeting with my teacher, Valerie Forstmanat the Mountain Cloud Zen Center.
So, okay, it’s like what Buddha says: Life is suffering. We face it, we don’t turn away from it. We see cruelty, confusion and error. We gradually learn to accept that nothing is permanent.
Damn, that’s a load.
That’s why I ask: How do we get up in the morning in the face of all this? How to find joy and strength to continue?
Forstman offers a Zen koan:
In the undug well, the water ripples from the unflowing source;
Someone without shadow or form draws water.
Deep inside all of us, he says, this wellspring lives. It is an inexhaustible source of renewal that transforms the mud into fertile soil from which the lotus bloom arises. And listen to every word: someone is “pulling the water”. This is a deliberate act. This is what meditation practice is about: We must learn to draw from this inner source while sitting in silence. Otherwise, we look outside ourselves for answers, “like one in the water crying out for thirst,” as the Zen master Hakuin so vividly put it.
It is interesting to think that there is a deep, abiding and regenerative power that can transform pain into light. But how do I know that this well source is really there? Is it real or just a fun little puzzle?
With this koan in my mind, we fly into Budapest two days before a historic election. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has consolidated his power over the past sixteen years and has become a role model for emerging authoritarian movements. Our taxi driver speaks frankly: he is disappointed, but doubts whether change is possible. As we drive into town, every lamppost is covered with propaganda attacking the opposition candidate. The overwhelming visual display of control feels frankly insurmountable.
After a short stay, we head to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ruled successively by the Ottoman Empire and then by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, this ancient city has a split personality. Walking down Ferhadija, the main pedestrian street, we come to a literal dividing line painted on the pavement, labeled “Sarajevo Meeting of Cultures”. Looking east from this marker, you will see the Turkish bazaar, its narrow streets winding between low-lying wooden and stone buildings with baklava stands and shops selling Turkish coffee supplies, the Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque and hidden courtyards where merchant caravans traveling between Europe and the Middle East stopped to rest. Looking west, you can see huge 19th-century European-style multi-story brick and stucco buildings in pastel colors, as well as the neo-Gothic Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. And just to the south is the Neo-Moorish Ashkenazi Synagogue, inspired by the Spanish Alhambra. For centuries, Sarajevo was a model of peaceful coexistence. Then, in the 1990s, during the Bosnian War, sectarian violence swept through the city, turning it into a bloody war zone, resulting in the longest siege in the history of modern warfare. Neighbor turned against neighbor on ethnic and religious grounds. Nearly 14,000 people died.
Walking through the city, we come across vivid memories of the war, when an average of 329 mortar shells hit the city every day. The explosions left definite physical marks on the pavement throughout the city. A jagged crater marks the point of impact, and exploding shrapnel radiating from the center splits scatters. Residents started calling them Sarajevo Roses, a sarcastic joke that somehow stuck. Instead of paving over the scars of war, the artists filled them with red resin, literally turning the instrument of death into a flower. It is a brave choice to actively process the trauma of the past, not to erase it.
As we head south on a bus to the city of Mostar, I research the sights of the area. I happen to come across a mention of Blagaj Tekija, an impressive 16th-century dervish monastery built directly into a sheer limestone cliff where centuries of Islamic mystics have gathered to perform spiritual ceremonies.
And what is this? It floats on top of a cave from which a water gushes out actual well source.
I feel the clamor to visit this mysterious place and the next day I take a local bus to the site. The Buna River roars softly as I walk along the path to the monastery, past roadside stands selling rose, pomegranate and elderberry syrup.
Inside the monastery grounds, I walk through the main courtyard and come across a metal gate along the outer wall. It opens onto a few steps floating just above the river, and walking over the threshold I can feel the temperature drop as the water rushes past.
There it is, just a few meters away. The well source, Vrelo Bune.
Clear, turquoise water flows from the dark mouth of the cave at the base of the limestone rock: pristine, bright, vital.
Over the centuries, snow and rainwater seeped into the crevices of the weathered limestone and sank downwards. Deep in the dark earth, he carved vast subterranean waterways that flowed freely until he found an opening to the surface. As the clear cold water rose, gravity trapped the heavy sediment and debris beneath. What erupts at a rate of about 30,000 liters per second is pristine, naturally purified water. I breathe in its crystalline brilliance.
Moving away from the water’s edge, I put on a headscarf to enter the sacred inner chambers of the monastery. The rooms are small and covered in colorful carpets. Every window faces the well source. I enter a prayer room, sit on a stool in the back, and begin to meditate. Inhale, exhale.
Just outside the window, the immaculate water flows from the hidden spring. A family enters and begins to pray. The father stands with his palms together as the child clings to his leg. A young couple rolls up small prayer rugs. The young man kneels and begins to chant softly under his breath. He raises both hands, spreads his palms, and swaying gently, turns towards the source of the well and Mecca.
We listen together. He is not Muslim, Buddhist or Christian. Just people reaching for something sacred. We will be Sangha.
At that moment, something loosens. Not exactly an answer, but a realization, as if the water I’m looking at has always been moving inside me. A quiet joy begins to rise.
Upon returning home, we learn that the Hungarian elections freed the entrenched autocrat against all odds. Change, however unlikely, will happen.
In Sarajevo, people commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the end of the war with healing actions. My favorite is “Our Family’s Garden”, a project in which a women’s collective planted a thousand marigold flowers in the former war trenches, reclaiming the soil where so much blood was spilled with yellow and orange soft medical blankets, a living memorial that honors the sacrifice of the dead and the resilience of the living.
Healing occurs over time. And I think: the way we treat ourselves and each other, even in the smallest degree, is how the world starts to take shape.
As we treat ourselves and each other in even the smallest way, the world begins to take shape.
I am sending my mother a story she once told me, the parable of the blind men and the elephant. A group of blind people meet an elephant who visits their town for the first time. Each touches a part of the elephant and describes it. One feels that the ear says that the elephant is like a big fan, the other, wrapping his arms around the legs, says that the elephant is broad and firm like a tree, the other by the tail says that it is thin like a rope, and so on. As they fiercely argue and fight over who is right, a wise man walking by reveals the truth: they are partly right, they just don’t see the whole picture.
I follow this with: “Dear Mother, God is greater than any of us can imagine, and we all experience the divine in our own way. My spiritual practice is as meaningful to me as yours. It has carried me through all the challenges of the past twenty years… Life is short, let’s just love each other.”
We may never come to a resolution and I have to accept that. My instinct is to retreat, to protect myself. But my practice asks for something else: to stay open.
So I’m sitting. I sit with my love for my mother and all beings. I sit with the difficulties that have no easy answers, the pain of not being understood, and let it sink into the deep vortex of my being. It ripples in the core of the well spring, does its silent work, dissolves everything. Sometimes I raise my hands and sway a little like my sangha brother in the monastery. I keep practicing, drawing from that wellspring, knowing that one day the clear waters will burst forth like an icy song, pure turquoise breaking through the surface again and again.
