I haven't kept up with your blogs--I don't spend all that much time here these days--too busy with my three classes that I teach (Tao Teh Ching in my own translation, Plato's Republic, a little of my own and a lot of Thomas Taylor, and the Katha Upanishad all my own translation also a WIP)

I just want to say to you that I spent 3 very important years of my life in a zen-like monastery. Left the grounds 4 times, only my dad came to visit me of my immediate family--in fact I invited him to stay for a few weeks, which he did. Perhaps the greatest gift he ever gave me. He was a born-again Christian but also a very loving man who managed to keep his Christian trippiness to himself. He just came, prayed when we meditated (which was long and often) kept silence from dawn to dusk and then had his own interview with our roshi-type guy.

Staying there cost me some progress and position in the world of career--or so I expected when I went in. As it happened I went in a computer tech guy and came out a full-fledged astrologer, which I've now done professionally for quite some time.

Thanks to those years my practice got grounded for life; I now sit 2 hours a day minimum and up to 6 hours at a time on weekends. I make my students sit for at least 3 hours with me every other week, and an hour the rest of the time. (Don't want any breakdowns or false breakthroughs--if they want the latter, they'll have to learn to push like that on their own, even as I did). My teacher beat the living shit out of my will, ego, and mind. It hurt like hell and I lived half the time in a fog of confusion and resentment and the other half in a state of clarity.
When it finally had to end--a big death in the family and a few other events made it clear that I was beginning to just recycle--I was just relieved and hardly cared.

it was a few years before the existential change in my nature began to really show, and from that moment forward there was no longer any content or baggage around the stay; it came forward with my life, and more often than not lives slightly ahead of me, if that makes any sense.

so all this is to strongly encourage you (BTW I planned on a three month stay!) and to stick with it until the fruit ripens and falls by itself. there is really no better way to spend a few years. bon voyage and keep your knees well-oiled!

Thanks for that. Seriously.

Peace,

-zt