In the Realm of the Gods

by Zoe Kaufman

All of us “spiritual seekers” are looking for ultimate truth while living right here in the material world. Through the practice we are finding the way. Here is what it’s like for me.

I live in a part of suburban Chicago referred to by Sensei as “the Realm of the Gods” because abundance is everywhere. People here possess everything that can be possessed. Sensei would add, “Except for peace of mind!” because in the Realm of the Gods attachment and anxiety are always intrinsic to abundance. That’s why, lovely as it is here, this is not an Enlightened Realm.

It’s very easy to understand this realm if you come to my neighborhood. Through no fault of my own, I live in a very affluent suburb. The cars are more luxurious and the houses here are bigger than in other places. On the whole, the people who live here are more beautiful, too. They all seem to have perfect bodies and can afford to wear very flattering, fashionable clothes, even in the most ordinary situations. Even the workout clothes they wear here are adorable!

Where I live women wear makeup and regular visits to the plastic surgeon are considered “routine maintenance” and are no more exotic or indulgent than a decent haircut, or massage would be somewhere else. It really is the norm here to deal with almost every sign of aging as just another unpleasant blemish, something easily, even imperatively reversible. Consequently, generally speaking, people here look quite young no matter how old they are. I predict that with technical advances and falling prices, what is currently considered “normal” here will soon be the norm everywhere.

Make no mistake, this really is a very pleasant place to live. Nevertheless, I ask myself, “What am I doing here?” because, like most spiritual seekers I’ve never felt completely at home where I live.

When I joined the Zen Center, I said, “Ahh. Yes. Now, finally, I am home.”

I practiced diligently, came to regular sittings and attended my first sesshin. As my practice deepened, my intuitive mistrust of the material world deepened into a conviction that things really are not what they seem to be. And more, that this swirl of what things seem to be, while dangerously enticing, is evanescent, and in the end is a meaningless dead end.

Imagine my horror, then, when spring rolled around at the end of that first year and I found myself wanting new clothes! How could it be? I hate shopping, I never watch television and I do not receive fashion magazines. I’m a practicing Zen Buddhist! I’m hell-bent on enlightenment! How could I want new clothes?

I was so disgusted with myself that I talked to Sensei. He, of course, answered me with wonderful compassion. “Look,” he said, “you’re a female. Females like clothes. How about following the middle way?”

But as the years passed and the seasons cycled, I noticed again and again, with terrible disappointment, the wish to look good and to wear makeup and fashionable clothes, the desire to stay thin and to stay young. All this attention to the body! What a betrayal it is! When will I ever be free? And I wonder if the practice is working...

I live in two worlds. I’m a Zen practitioner. The real world is at the Zen Center, but I sleep and work and socialize in the Realm of the Gods. I go back and forth, back and forth. It’s so exhausting!

But wait a minute. Where are these two worlds anyway? If I ran away to a monastery (Oh enchanting thought!), where would the two worlds be then? Do all spiritual seekers struggle with versions of the two worlds? After all, all of us at the Zen Center have family members who are not Zen Buddhists. We all work and eat and play outside the Center. We all buy clothes and look in mirrors. We all exercise. We wear lipstick. We diet. We all have wished for the single-minded clarity we think abides inside the monastery, but we all remain right here in the midst of the teeming conflict, living out our Bodhisattvic vows.

“It’s all so complicated!” I think. “It’s so much work!” Besides, this kind of thinking is arousing my suspicions. This kind of thinking is awfully reminiscent of Western Religion wherein God divides reality into two halves and then declares one half unholy. Who could think straight let alone navigate in such a universe?

Are there really two worlds? Are we really divided into spirit and body or spirit versus body? If we acknowledge one do we really diminish the other? Does it make sense that they coexist somehow as two separate, fighting halves of a harmonious whole?

Or is the world really one and only one, as the teachers say? Is body the same as spirit? Is emptiness the very same as form?

When I ask myself “What am I doing here?” I want to answer, “I am taking my teacher’s advice. I’m finding the middle way. I’m trying to do what is appropriate in all circumstances. I’m learning to do that which sustains life where it is lived, neither worshipping nor discarding the things of the world.”

Why then should I be more (or less) at home in one place than another? Am I not supposed to be equally at ease in all places, free to act for the sake of all beings?

It dawns on me that I cannot go “someplace else” to resolve this conflict not because it is unresolvable but because there is no “someplace else.” And if the conflict is undone only from where I am, right now—well, then, the possibilities are endless.

I think: “I live where I live because that’s where I live.” It’s a lovely mystery that I gratefully accept. I’m female because I’m female. We females have cared about our makeup and our clothes from time immemorial, whether living in Alaska or in Maoist China or in the Realm of the Gods.

I wonder: Maybe all of this struggle and all of this anguish is just another distraction.

My teacher always says to come back to the practice. When has the practice ever taught us to deny the body or to punish the body (or the mind)? Instead, aren’t we practicing in order to see through the body by harnessing the mind?

“Girl,” I say to myself, “you think too much! Just put on your lipstick and sit. Just sit.”