The Bus to Enlightenment

My Weekend at Zen Mountain Monastery

When I read about the Introduction to Zen weekend at John Daido Loori Roshi’s Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York I knew I had to go.

This was years before I moved to New York City and I’d never traveled on my own before. I was working in a little poster kiosk in the lowest level of Cleveland’s famed Terminal Tower, selling cheap posters and learning framing. The day before taking the bus to New York City I was framing several smaller Ansel Adams’ posters.

I wrote a message on the back of one and then finished sealing it. I don’t remember what I wrote and wonder if anyone ever disassembled the piece and found my note.

I boarded the Greyhound in the evening and don’t remember sleeping at all; I was so excited. New York City and then a weekend up at a Zen monastery in the Catskills.

And I was doing it all on my own!

When we crested a roll in I-80 and I got my first glimpse of Manhattan in the haze ahead it may as well have been the Emerald City to me. It was beyond magical. I was all but bouncing up and down in my seat. Has the Lincoln Tunnel ever been experienced as such an enchanted transition?

Who am I kidding here? Countless wide-eyed kids like me have emerged from that grimy endless tunnel with unuttered dreams plastered all over the insides of their mouths.

Then I hit The Port Authority.

This was 1996, not that that pit is much less chaotic and noxious in 2019, but this was a very different New York City than the one we walk today. I didn’t know how to get to my Trailways bus and approached what looked like a bullet-proof information booth.

I shouted my question and got a shrug and jerk of the head in response. When I successfully located my next bus I felt inordinately proud of myself.

The bus to Mount Tremper went up to Amsterdam Avenue and on into the Bronx and northward from there. I stared out the window, rapt, at…

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