or wrong, and the way we reacted to that. This moment will never come back in its
present form, and it is gone before one can think about it. My drinking this water is
already long ago by now. Many of the people who were involved in it have died. The
shortness of the moment, with the consequences for the future of what one is doing
now, makes it very precious and important. Precious and important enough to be
awake, to have full attention for what one is doing right now, whether one is eating
or drinking, housekeeping, watching TV, or talking with a client.
The realization of this makes one grateful for everything that happened in one’s
life, even for the unpleasant things. I remember how intensely grateful I was—on a
particular moment in my first four-day retreat—for the most awful thing that ever
happened to me, even to the one who did it, because without that event I would not
have been sitting now here on my cushion, so I thought, and I would never have
wanted to miss this very moment. Afterwards it surprised me: how is it possible to
be grateful to someone for the harm he caused? But it was possible, evidently, and
later the surprise disappeared and it became a common experience: to be grateful for
everything, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant which, by the way, does not mean
that one shouldn’t set limits sometimes or should accept everything.
A new nestBy now I have clients again, although not as many as before, because I cannot work
long hours because of health problems, and because I teach courses in Zen meditation
as well. I experience the therapeutic work differently now, having been away for two
years, although the difference is difficult to describe. In so far as it appealed to
motherliness or sometimes to fatherliness previously, I feel more like a grandparent
now. Grandparents often enjoy their grandchildren more than they once did their
children, because the upbringing of the children required so much of them. It was a
duty, being parents they had to do it well, and the children should live up to their
expectations. With grandchildren, they don’t have to worry about these things, and
they can just be with the children, at the same time having enough experience of life
to help them when needed. With my new clients I feel a closer bond, which doesn’t
interfere with the necessary therapeutic distance.
Primarily, I attribute this to my ability to experience directly what is connecting
us as people, how we are the same in our deeper layers, besides role, age, and status.
We long for esteem and love, we grow up, find friends and lovers, generate something
or someone or leave other traces, we lose our loved ones, get old and sick, and die.
Our deepest fears and longings are the same. We drink the same water, it is the same
sun that gives us warmth. Rain and sun do not discriminate.
Secondarily, the new closeness may result from a different form of trust both in
myself and in the other and in the therapeutic process. It is a reliance on that deeper
layer I called home, a home we all share and from which the natural life cycle springs.
Something arises from it, grows, and develops until a maximum is reached and then
decreases and ceases to exist. As the sun is shining behind the clouds always, in the
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