Going Nowhere

"Going nowhere... isn't about turning your back on the world; it's about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply."

                                                             ~ Leonard Cohen

In 1994, Leonard Cohen moved to Mt. Baldy Zen Centre to embark on five years of seclusion, serving as a personal assistant to the great Japanese Zen teacher Kyozan Joshu Sasaki, then in his late eighties.  Midway through his time at the Zen Centre, Cohen was ordained as a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk and given the Dharma name Jikan, Pali for "silence".


"We’ve lost our Sundays, our weekends, our nights off — our holy days, as some would have it; our bosses, junk mailers, our parents can find us wherever we are, at any time of day or night. More and more of us feel like emergency-room physicians, permanently on call, required to heal ourselves but unable to find the prescription for all the clutter on our desk.

Not many years ago, it was access to information and movement that seemed our greatest luxury; nowadays it’s often freedom from information, the chance to sit still, that feels like the ultimate prize. Stillness is not just an indulgence for those with enough resources — it’s a necessity for anyone who wishes to gather less visible resources. Going nowhere, as Cohen had shown me, is not about austerity so much as about coming closer to one’s senses."

                                                                                            ~ Pico Iyer