Finding ZEN: My Journey

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles led me to study Karate then Japanese and also my love of pizza. I thought pizza was gross until my stepdad said I should like it because it’s the turtle’s favorite food. Who would have known that a comic book turned into a cartoon would set me on a spiritual journey?

I studied Karate at my local YMCA in Auburn, Washington on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Thursdays was my favorite, because that’s when we would practice sparring and learn how to fight. I would often skip Tuesdays because that was the day we learned Kata.

Kata is a set of memorized movements which have been practiced for hundreds of years and take years to master. You can not progress in Karate without performing your Katas correctly.

When I was awarded my green belt in Karate, my Sensei gave me the book, Moving Zen: One Mans Journey to the Heart of Karate (Bushido--The Way of the Warrior). I read this book almost 30 years ago, but it had a huge impact on my life and began my search for what the Japanese call, Zen.

Being able to speak Japanese a bit after 3 years in highschool helped me to become a linguist in the U.S. Army. To become a linguist you must pass this insane test the military created called the DLAB or the Defense Language Aptitude Battery test. This is a crazy ass test were you learn a made up language on the spot with grammar rules a bit different than in English and weird pictures that mean things in the made up language.

I actually failed the DLAB the first time I took it and settled for becoming a Civil Affairs Specialists. Luckily for me I was in Basic Training and my job training, AIT or Advanced Individual Training, in 1998 when the Army wasn’t at war and had “use it or lose it money.”

One day I was hiding in the bathroom stall to avoid cleaning the baracks when I heard my last name being repeated over and over again so I came out of my hiding spot. When I found out I was on the Sergeant Major’s “list” I was terrified because all the other lazy shitbags were on the same list.

The Sergeant Major looked like Skeletor and there were two people who some soldiers thought were CIA. When my buddy made fun of me for not knowing what the CIA was or meant I replied, “See? I don’t care.” Nobody thought it was funny.

When it was explained to us that we’d all been chosen to become linguists (I passed the DLAB on my second try in AIT.), I wasn’t sure if I could learn “Thigh” because of it’s weird looking characters. “It’s pronounced THAI not thigh you stupid fuck. I don’t know why they chose you!” Was one of my instructors insults.

In Basic Training there is a lot of sit around and do nothing time. It’s not like in all the boot camp movies. Well mine was anyways because it was the late 90s and at the easiest one, Fort Jackson. I would later learn it had the nickname, Relaxin Jackson.

While sitting around for almost a month just waiting to start boot camp I made friends with a cool 29 year old Japanese American. I’m sorry, but it was 1998, so I totally forgot his name, but he was the person who converted me from an atheist into a Buddhist. He was a linguist from the beginning so we both went to DLI at the same time.

DLI is in Monterey, California and is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. It is also one of the top surfing spots in the world. Most military personel got their Associates degrees while at DLI. I wasn’t an active soldier, just a reservist, so I continued my college education immediately after DLI.

Thanks to all of the college credits I earned from my Army training, I only needed 8 more months of university to get my 4 year degree.

Doing half of my degree in the military and the other half in a liberal art school full of hippies and pot heads was the ultimate example of Yin and Yang. I studied film and graduated in 2001. I am only now in 2019, using what I learned and making videos for people. It even got me a job at a resort called, Zen. I know I’ve been searching for Zen my whole life, but never thought it would actually be called, Zen.

Have you ever been so depressed that you wanted to kill yourself? Well I have and I’ll save that for another post, but listening to Alan Watts brought me closer to Zen than anything else I’ve been writing about. The man was a true genius and better described Zen than anyone esle. If you are searching for Zen, and I imagine you are since you read my story this far, I highly recommend listening to ANY of his talks on Youtube or anywhere else you can find him.

This post may seem super random, but that’s the point. I don’t know if I’ve truly found Zen yet, but I feel better than I have ever before, so maybe I have. Alan Watts said some search for Zen their whole lives and take 30 years to find it while others can find it in 3 seconds. May the Zen be with you.

Image Source:

http://anarmylinguist.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-do-i-become-linguist-part-1-taking.html
(DLAB)

The rest of the pictures were my own.