Zen and the art of self sabotage

One new years eve, instead of a party or a bar, i went to a monastery on a mountaintop.  

Yes really.

Lets give this a little context.

I am an autistic adult.  Formally diagnosed at 30 years old as having Asperger's syndrome.  Yes, i followed all the clichés about gifted kids on the spectrum.   I had very advanced iq scores, a savantism for language and spoke like a professor at a young age. I was speaking sentences at 18 months old. 

One might think that this sort of intense skill for communication would be a boon going forward in life, the ability to be a great communicator is often a very desirable and oft applauded thing.  Turns out the mouth the message is coming out of matters a whole lot.  When it's coming out of a young child, adults chaff at the idea of taking advice or gaining insight from "just a kid" and other kids... wellllll, they look at you like a cow looks at an oncoming train.  You end up looking like this to your peers,

Re: a young child with autism talking to kids his age

and like a mutant all adults observing you.   You may be wondering when this is going to tie back into the start of this story.  Trust me i'm getting there.

So it will come as no surprise to anyone that i was bullied a ton as a kid.  One of my uncles described me as a "Bully Magnet." Not that i could do much about that.  I didn't understand what i was doing wrong because EVERYTHING i was doing was wrong. How i FELT was wrong, how i problem solved was wrong, how i appraised social situations was wrong. Wrong, Wrong, Wrong. 

After a period of getting my ass kicked, running home from school, being let out early just so i COULD get home from school without getting beat up, i had a sea change, somewhere around jr high.  I got angry. REAL angry.  Sick of getting beat up by kids, ignored and given no assistance from teacher or my own parents, an orphan, a man on an island, i started to fight back.  I would just punch people down if they locker checked, throw them down and kick them, greet malice with even greater malice. I had nothing to lose. I would fight 3 against one, i would remain standing even with a broken nose and blood pouring out of me until kids knew to just leave me the fuck alone.  Upon the transition to a new school, high school, a place where no one knew me yet, i tried to lay low.  I was too strange for that to work.  My first day in high school, i went outside after lunch to smoke, there were a hundred or more kids out there already.  I walked to the other side of the street, and smoked alone.  Of course not understanding what i had done just drew an incredible amount of attention to myself without meaning to. I was adopted by some NT people who found my oddness charming, but the violent anger was still there.  When someone locker checked me my first week in i just punched him as hard as i could.  This sort of thing went on for a while, until once again this new school was made to learn, if you fight me, your gonna have to kill me. 

All of this anger made it hard to maintain friendships.  On top of the radioactive mess that was my autism i was now volcanic, on a hair trigger, and it wasn't going to end well for me. 

I took it upon myself to start studying stoic philosophy, and then zen, and bushido. The idea of detaching myself to better control my overflowing emotions made sense and appealed to me on a foundational level.  I can't solve all my problems by punching them, so i better figure out an alternative way to manage my overly responsive brain. 

I even wrote a book loosely about it, how apathy and detachment helped me survive myself.  

https://www.amazon.com/Life-Meaningless-Handbook-Erik-McCarthy/dp/1544264976

I was 15 when i started this practice and direction. 

I am 43 now.

So here i am, in a Buddhist monastery in the freezing cold, listening to the master speak.  I am at my utmost attention and excited for a chance to ask a question that has been bothering me for some time.

"what is the line between nihilism and Zen? How does one separate the two?" 

The monk smiled, a few folks gasped (and actually thanked me afterwards for asking the question, as they wondered as well)  Turns out there is no answer.  It's up to the individual to draw his or her own line.  I was dejected.  Defeated.

But no less committed to the practice and idea.  

A decade or more later, i can say i have largely conquered my anger. Like an alcoholic i don't know that i will ever be truly cured, but it's incredibly rare that i feel that instinct rising in me and if it does i am able to recognize and deflect it. 

Life has mellowed and much of the substantial challenges have been surmounted.  I am in good shape and work out routinely.  I seem to be well liked by most people who know me and interact with me on a regular basis. I have been with the same partner for over 20 years and things seem to be going well.  I own a home and my bills are low enough that it's virtually impossible for me to lose my home. I have a meager amount of spending money but enough to allow myself to indulge in multiple hobbies regularly. I have achieved most of my goals set for myself including getting to the Magic the Gathering Pro tour on my own, without a team, publishing my own book, an achieving my strength goals. 

I have slain the beast. Roll credits. I am done. 

I am 43.

My day to day presents no concerns or challenges at all. My cool detachment leaves me feeling both insulated and isolated from others.  

My partner joked i "did zen wrong." but did i?

I'm so detached, the very point of zen (to achieve no mind, or Mushin) that i don't really feel anything.

I've reached such a profound inertia that every day i feel like a robot executing scripting code that i have meticulously crafted for myself.  I feel completely removed from the timeline, alien to others as they are alien to me, devoid of any internal motivation and unable to feel any sense of external motivation.  I have enough food. I have enough shelter. I have enough money. I have enough love. 

I'm standing still detached and vacant unable to enjoy it all because the journey seems to be over.  A long endless winter of sitting atop the mountain awaits and i am struggling to know the answer to the only question that matters now.

What's next?

Have i done such a thorough job detaching myself that i removed myself too completely? What is a man absence direction, motivation, desires, purpose? 

I feel like a rocket with no thrust. Having achieved escape velocity and reaching my destination, a thing i would have not though possible, i am now drifting, dream-like in space, perhaps for all time, wondering if perhaps i have made some kind of terrible mistake.

Maybe i DID do zen wrong. 

So i'm doing all the by the numbers things humans do to try to fabricate a purpose, to simulate a living thing propelled by something, the simulacra of movement, the simulacra of a real live boy. 

As i listen to my partner list off ideas for a new "thing to do, goal to set" i am cold and gaunt as nothing appeals to me, nothing stirs me, no special interest is peaked at a suggestion and i wonder if i'm simply missing the circuitry required to "human". 

I say "i think we are attempting to address the symptom, not the cause. How do i FEEL? What, if anything, MAKES ME FEEL?"

So here i am, on the precipice of another abstraction.  A feelings inventory.

Good or bad, writing down what makes me FEEL at all, and if i can understand what makes me feel, perhaps i can make some kind of informed choice as to what a man of 43 should be doing beyond meditating on a mountaintop with the remainder of his days.

Perhaps i will come to the conclusion that like my question to the zen master, there is no answer, and that anything i do, is what i was meant to do, and anything i do not do, i was simply not meant to do.

I am a flawed gnostic, an autistic zen disciple, a man sitting in the cold vacuum of space staring at the stars wondering, 

Is this it? 

"enjoy it."

But what's next?