Girls Gone Zen

There isn't an awakening as important as the one that came on the 26th year of my life.

I had felt an undercurrent of unhappiness and dissatisfaction for the most part of my 20's. I was aware I wasn't happy but I didn't know how to start being happy. Logically I understood that I ought to be thankful of what I had - an education, a job, friends, and family. But happiness is in the mind. So is unhappiness - and it plagued me.

My unhappiness stemmed from the discrepancy between the Sandy-I-want-to-be and the Sandy-I-am-now. I was standing at the foot of the mountain and all I can think of is how much better it must be on the top. I started feeling angry at myself for not being able to scale this mountain. I didn't find my job challenging, I didn't feel like I was getting ahead in life, and I didn't feel like the awesome, worldly girl I thought I should be by this age.

In 2005, I reached a boiling point and decided to quite my job and take 4 months off to "figure things out." During that time, I asked Anny, who has always been Buddhist, if she wanted to go to a retreat in Santa Cruz at Land of Medicine Buddha - a Tibetan Buddhist temple. We spent the retreat weekend learning, talking, meditating, and hiking in the mountains. I experienced a peacefulness that came not from achieving goals, but just from letting my mind calm down and stay still. I think I had my first taste of living in the present.

Since then I have been trying to practice Zen in the big city of New York. Some times I get caught up in the busy-ness; some times I'm disciplined and meditate often. With Zen, I know there is no need to feel bad about lack of practice or over confident about progress - it's just there.