How can I begin to write of an experience that is a hole in my life, an absence that hangs around me like my own ghost refusing to let me move on? What meaning for myself, myself as I am now and as I was before, can I capture from the gap in-between, in which I lived an entire lifetime? Which selection of impressions of the place where I went at that time can I elect as sufficient to describe it? Each that comes to mind begets several others.

Doorways lead into hallways leading into other doorways that frame the garden → the city → the people shuffling in and out, that open into wide rooms taut with the wise magnitude of tiny bronze statues → the claustrophobia of cots jammed side by side → the clang of the wake-up bell → silence → feet on the textured mats stepping into the spaces left by the feet walking in front of them, copying them uniquely → half-open eyes on the back of the person ahead, whose eyes are on the back of the person ahead, unseeing in their meditation → a circle → a center → a center in a city of doors that lead to other doors, some closed. And behind those doors, dust maybe, but also statues → statues to be dusted → beds to be made → people walking in each others' footsteps, cleaning up the dust and ringing the bells for wake-up time.

I walked among these passageways with my broom, servicing them as instructed. I swept dust from the wooden floor of the room leading out to the cobblestones of the garden, where I swept leaves out through a gate onto the gutters of a street that I swept up and down between the crowds filtering up and down, stepping onto my little piles that scrambled with the wind. The visitors and residents inside stared through the windows that I sprayed and wiped and inspected, their faces fuzzy behind my narrow focus and mine distorted by Windex.

We chanted the unknown memorized names of those in the lineage going all the way back to first, who was only the first of the list that we chanted. We copied one another pushing our heads down to the ground in supplication. We prayed for others, which presumed that others would at some point push their heads to the ground in supplication. We welcomed ourselves to the community, to eat and hear our talks. We became lost on our way to lunch after hearing the bell, hurrying through doorways leading into other doorways until we found ourselves in a line where we prayed that others would also find their way.

I found my way one day into the doorway of a plane through which I looked down at the monastery disappearing into the city, into the past, and I never looked back.