The Dry Place

Note: The following excerpt is from the chapter titled, “Stages of Monastic Life,” from When You Greet Me I Bow, by Norman Fischer. We pick up about halfway through the stage Mr. Fischer calls, “the dry place.”

Fear arises. Fear of never realizing or even glimpsing the path; fear of the world we have left behind; fear of what we ourselves have become. Sometimes none of this surfaces. We go about our business in the monastery, feeling OK, but actually dying a little bit more every day. Up until now our path may have been difficult at times, yet we have always been growing and learning. But at this point we have few difficulties and we have stopped growing and learning. This is exactly the problem. And we have mistaken the laziness or dullness that covers our fear for the calmness that comes of renunciation. It’s true that our mind is calm, but it is a dark rather than a bright calm. Our creativity, our passion, our humanness, is beginning to leave us, little by little, and often we have no idea that this is happening. 

This is the hardest stage to appreciate and cope with. Often  no one, not even the elders and teachers of the community, can recognize this is happening to us. Indeed, those very elders and teachers may themselves be in the midst of such a stage and be unaware of it. In this stage what we have seen as the cure for our lives, what everyone in the community has affirmed and has devoted their lives to, now becomes the very poison that is killing us off slowly. 

I have tried to discern the signs of this stage in myself and in others, and it is not an easy thing to do. In oneself it may be too subtle to notice, and though it is easier to see in others, they do not want to hear about it from you…

Norman Fischer
from When You Greet Me I Bow; Notes and Reflections from a Life in Zen