As soon as I walked out of the building after meeting with Paul I literally said to myself, "Holy s@#! what have you just done?"
You just asked the former abbot of the zen center to be your teacher. I get why you did it. It seemed like a really good idea when he said that you would discuss your practice and how it plays out in your life. 'Yay you' for being in the moment and doing what you thought was a good idea at the time. But now you're in this moment. You are his student and he is your teacher... from now on.
"I don't think this was a very good idea," I thought to myself.
Then I reassured myself. I knew that if I really wanted to, I could always say, "This isn't working for me. I don't think I want to be a student anymore." And I was pretty sure that Paul would just say "Okay," and that would be the end of it. But I was also really terrified because I thought that I was a "student" now. I didn't know what that meant but it scared me.
As I turned the corner and walked past the front steps of the building, I had to laugh at myself.
"Remember when you were afraid to even come in to the building? Remember how much you wanted to be a part of the community but you couldn't seem to let yourself be a part of it because you were so afraid of what that meant?
This morning, you asked to be a student. That's really funny."
As I rode home I thought about writing a blogpost about what had happened: how I had made a decision in the moment that I ended up having to live in forever after. I also pictured myself telling people about it after the dharma talk that afternoon: how I went in to dokusan with absolutely no intention of being a student and walked out with a bunch of lessons and even some homework. I really thought that this was a decision that I had made in the moment and that I was going to regret because I thought I was stuck, that I was now at the mercy of whatever Paul had in mind for me as his student. I thought that I might end up doing all the things that I didn't think I needed to do: reading, studying, being a "student" at the zen center.
But I have to tell you that as soon as I got home, I told my room mate all about it, and with a big smile. I was giddy with the experience. When I got to the dharma talk that morning, I eagerly grabbed a zafu so that I could sit zazen during the talk, just so I could practice the posture and breathing that Paul and I had talked about that morning. And after the dharma talk, the first thing I said to anyone I knew was: I asked Paul to be my teacher this morning!
I have no idea why I wanted to tell everyone. No one was as giddy about it as I was and this surprised me. I thought that other people who had a teacher would say things like, "I remember when I first asked my teacher to be my teacher," but no one offered this. Honestly, it doesn't make sense that I'm so giddy about it, I'm not looking forward to my next dokusan, I don't feel like there's some change in my practice or anything but I'm also not feeling regret. I'm just feeling happy.
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