And then suddenly it came to me, one cold rainy day in December as I sat alone in a McDonald’s in Kyoto, eating my last Fillet o’ fish.
It was time for me to go home.
My parents had returned to America from our memorable two weeks together and the days were now growing darker, wetter and colder. It seemed as though I had done everything I came here to do and I had lived what seemed like a year within the span of seven months. Time becomes fluid when you take a year out of life to leave the familiar world and step away from the attachments of work, phone, structure. My experience of solitude and reflection in Japan have felt more like a lifetime of its own.
I came to Kyoto to completely step out of the cultural mindset and way of doing things I had been conditioned to and simply pause for a year. I did that while living in my tiny Japanese house. I came to immerse myself in the beauty and simplicity of Japan’s culture and arts. I did that through studying tea with a master teacher, calligraphy, sumi e painting, tai chi, meditating in Zen temples, chanting with monks. Each of these are practices people in Japan for a lifetime, passed down through generations. I got a deep taste of each of these to carry with me and practice going forward. It seemed I was ready to go.
One of my driving reasons was the immense challenge it had been for me to connect with people on a significant level. The fact that I have mastered extremely little Japanese has not helped my cause. I also wanted to escape winter. And so I was at peace and content with my decision to leave. I decided I would go to Thailand for the month of February, gave notice on my house, and planned to round out my trip toward home in March.
Then things changed. As is so often the case, life had other plans. As I was enjoying my coffee one morning at the Kyoto Imperial Gardens I saw a woman meditating among the trees outside my window. I was captivated as this is not a common occurrence in public in Japan. I waited patiently for an appropriate time to introduce myself. Her name was Mayumi . Immediately, it seemed there was a recognition in my conversation with her.
We connected on many common threads from meditation to yoga to energy healing to Thich Nhat Hanh. As it turned out, she worked with Thich Nhat Hanh and was also the facilitator of the Plum Village Sangha, which is Thich Nhat Hanh’s community in Kyoto. We spoke briefly and agreed to meet again for coffee. Shortly thereafter I was invited to dinner in the home of Mayumi and her husband, which was the first time for me to personally have dinner in the home of someone in Japan.
Within the next few weeks I had visited the group in Kyoto and was welcomed by some warm and inviting people. Through my new friend, Mayumi, I was able to connect with a young Zen monk who is head a small temple in Kyoto, where I was able to spend a day, then join him the following day for martial arts training, which was something I wanted to do while here in Japan. This opened up the door for me to spend more time exploring. From there I met two other new friends, Noriko and Keiko, and was invited to spend a day with them touring Mt. Koya, which is one of the most significant places for Buddhism in Japan.
I took a step back and observed once more how we so often work diligently to make our plans and then if we are listening and open, the universe often quietly has another way. Around this time, the news began to reach me about the virus that had been spreading in parts of Asia, so I intuitively felt more comfortable with not traveling. I was fortunate to be able to keep my house for at least another month and then a door opened for me to stay in someone’s home for most of March.
At this point in the journey, I have learned not to predict or plan too far out in the future, so my adventure continues to unfold with a life of its own. It was quite a beautiful experience to pack up my house which I have become quite at home in, prepare my things to ship home, be within a couple of days away of departing, say my goodbyes and make my peace with leaving Kyoto, and then be able to return again. It was like arriving again for the first time. Everything seemed brand new.
Perhaps this is how we should live our lives every day.
Some say that the first half of life is spent acquiring things, and the last half is letting them go. That’s generally true I suppose, but it’s different for travelers, who from the start of their journey begin to let things go. One of the unsung benefits of travel is learning how to do this, how not to invest too much of your presence in static physical things.
If you’ve been traveling long enough, you know the deepest meaning of goodbye. As to physical things, you never accumulate more than you wish to carry; since your first day of wandering you’ve been working to pare even that down, give yourself maximum mileage; you’ve learned to reduce all that matters to practicals, minimals, symbols, essences, thoughts, memories, things you can take with you when you go-as you always do, or at least always think of doing.
In your latter travels you physically settle down somewhere, in spirit you still treat time like a traveler, still live like a traveler, eye your surroundings like a traveler, always thinking maybe next month, maybe next year, viewing your possessions with a jaundiced eye, plotting what to do with them at departure: give them to friends who might need or enjoy them, then pass them on; for you know what anchors such things are to passage on the endless river-known only to travelers-that runs through the world and has carried you here, the marvelous river that you’ve never really left, that runs now inside you, calling the boat of your soul.
The traveler journeys through life letting go and going onward, and at death it is the same....
Traveler by Robert Brady
for Kyoto Journal
Zen and Ink Journals represents hundreds of hours of writing over the past decade, sometimes from a train in remote China or a coffee shop in Kyoto, a hammock in Costa Rica or a simple cabin on a mountain in Boquete, Panama.
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Zen and Ink was born over a decade ago out of my own personal journey to find peace and tranquility amidst the ever-increasing chaos of our modern world. In the last ten years, the pace of our modern world has only accelerated and we have moved further out of sync with nature and the rhythm of our souls. Zen and Ink offers a quiet space for anyone along their journey seeking more balance and Zen in their daily lives.
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