The Question That Stayed With Me

One evening, on the second day of a retreat at a Soto Zen monastery in Japan, I walked into the room angry and irritable. My knees hurt, my groin hurt, the muscles in my legs hurt. All I wanted was to put my head on the pillow and fall asleep, to disconnect from the feelings inside me. The fear that maybe I didn’t belong in this place suddenly felt real.

I put my head on the pillow and closed my eyes. The last thing I wanted was to make eye contact with my roommate. I didn’t want him to talk to me, I didn’t want him to see me like that. I heard him come in, arrange his things, and I kept my eyes shut. Eventually I fell asleep.

The question that arose that evening didn’t stay on the pillow. It kept accompanying me through the whole retreat. It came up before the meditations, during the sitting, after them, and even while we worked in the field. Again and again I returned to the same question, hoping to find an answer that would settle my mind: why go through this pain?

After the retreat I met with my Zen teacher, Yuval. The question that gave me no rest followed me into that meeting too. We had lunch together and I told him about my experiences at the monastery. I shared the good moments there, and the difficulty I’d gone through. I said my mind kept asking, over and over: why go through pain like this?

Yuval gave me his answer. The air went out of my body and my shoulders dropped. My mind didn’t accept the answer I’d been hoping for. The question stayed with me.

Two weeks passed and I found myself at another retreat. I hadn’t known in advance that we’d be sitting for so many long hours. In the retreat’s final hour, participants shared what they’d been through, and to my surprise, one of the practitioners asked the very question my mind had been wrestling with ever since the retreat in Japan.

“Why go through this pain? Why sit for so long? Why not just scroll through Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok all day and skip this suffering entirely? Why not just repress it all?”

I could see she was shaken. I felt a closeness, as if someone had finally given voice to the question that kept accompanying me. I wanted her to know she wasn’t alone.

My heart started racing. For a few minutes I hesitated over whether to speak or not. Silence is my safe place, and at the same time I felt I had to speak. In the end I pressed the button, and for the first time since the course began, I asked to share.

I said I’d come back from a retreat at a monastery in Japan, that my mind too kept asking why go through this pain. I shared that I’d met Yuval, and hadn’t found the answer I was looking for there either. I said I understood that I’d have to find this answer myself, and that something in me knows this is part of the path I’ve chosen for myself.

Today it seems to me that I’m less in a hurry to find an answer. The question is still with me, but my relationship with it has changed. Maybe one day I’ll find an answer too.

Maybe it’s worth taking a moment today to ask ourselves: What question has been accompanying me during this period? Do I really need an answer for it, or is it maybe enough, right now, to just stay with it