I Want More Zen in My Life
“When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety; if I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me, and without pain. From this I understand that what I want also wants me, is looking for me and attracting me. There is a great secret here for anyone who can grasp it.”
I’m sitting in an ice bath. The first few minutes of suffering have passed. My breathing has settled. The sky above me is brimming with vibrancy. I hear a few distant crows. I can now feel the peace as it seeps into my body and penetrates my heart.
I’ve got a slight grin on my face.
I know what I feel is the peace that I’m always seeking. I don’t know how to describe it truly. It’s not happiness but something different.
I also know it won’t last for too long. So, I will linger a bit more in the ice bath now that I’ve stopped shivering.
The word ‘Zen’ flashes in my mind.
I then recall a revelation in my journal a few months back. Instead of achievement, I now craved equanimity. I wrote that all I hoped for myself was to live with inner peace and calmness, good health, and freedom from anxiety and overwhelm while satiating my curiosity about life and the world. That’s all I want from the remaining years I have left.
I then went back several years and reviewed the goals I’d chased and achieved and how I felt afterwards.
Take my goal to make a million dollars before I was thirty, which turned out to be more complicated than I’d ever know. Yes, I made it and more, then lost my soul and felt ambivalent and depressed. Then, I lost much of my millions but regained my soul. However, I did (and still do) enjoy creating a business out of nothing, running a team and building brands.
Take my half marathon, where I felt ecstatically relieved the following day when I knew there was no more racing. A feeling that far eclipsed crossing the finish line in just over two hours. But I did enjoy the preparation and the actual running in the mornings leading up to the race.
Likewise, when I spoke at TEDx Accra, that feeling of relief after I finished grew into one of liberation, and my joy of not having to suffer anxiety again stayed with me for weeks. Again, I enjoyed preparing and curating the presentation for the weeks before the event.
Perhaps I seek not to climb a mountain, win a competition, or reach the NYT bestseller list with my upcoming book but to live with equanimity and inner peace, where I don’t feel any anxiety, overwhelmed, or need to do (or be)anything and where I’m doing the things that I enjoy whether that be running my company, writing, meditating, or playing Padel Tennis, which is my latest movement obsession.
After reading much about Zen Buddhism, I am drawn to its secular form, devoid of rituals and ceremonies. Its bare logic makes perfect sense, promising calm and solace that is hard to find anywhere else—apart from those last few minutes in the ice bath.
The practicable parts of it include meditation, self-discipline, and mindfulness, which are also part of my core values. Focusing on the present moment and being aware of my thoughts and feelings without judgment or attachment is undoubtedly the way I aspire to live.
Monk and teacher Shunryu Suzuki describes the practice by saying, “Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.”
So, I’m not looking for enlightenment or reaching Nirvana but rather a diligent practice that I can be consistent with throughout my life. I want to slow down and notice life as if I’m living in a movie, where I can push pause or slow down the frame.
I want to be able to quiet my monkey mind and stop identifying with my thoughts. It's tiring, and the more I complicate my life and busy my mind, the more restless I become. To make matters worse, I have become aware of my thinking and overanalysis, which makes it even more exhausting.
I must remind myself that I’m not my thoughts, which can often appear from thin air and disappear almost as quickly. The best way to stop going back to the past or projecting to the future is to focus on the present and to lose oneself in activities we enjoy.
Mindfulness is when we zero in on the present thing we are doing, such as watching a sunset, playing with our children, or writing poetry. (I’m now playing Padel.) We lose ourselves completely, and every minute becomes joyful and soul-nourishing.
Time stops, and nothing else matters. There is a stillness, and a specific form of inner peace engulfs us. We stop talking to the outside world, and more importantly, we stop listening to our incessant inner voice.
Buddha’s real intention when he said he taught suffering (Dukka) was not to say we are meant to suffer all the time. Instead, he taught that as we separate from our true nature, we are inclined to be dissatisfied. We return to our true nature when we are present and more mindful.
If we dig deeper, Zen is the Japanese for the Chinese Chan, the Chinese Lexicon word for translating the Sanskrit word Dhyana, which means meditation. However, through the centuries, these words began to signify both the path( Meditation) and the Goal( Enlightened state as in most of Mahayana, including Vajrayana, the Path is the Goal).
Zen becomes both the path and the goal, a way to live by.