Tunnel

I have been practicing zazen, a Buddhist approach to look at the self, for the past one year. As I breathe, I often get reminded of the suffering from the past. Tunnel is my path to reconcile with my inner child and to live in the present.

One of the most haunting memories from my childhood is of me hiding inside my father’s cupboard whenever my parents fought. I would be waiting inside for someone to come find me. To hug me, to comfort me. I would hold my breath, thinking that it would stop all the chaos happening outside. In the end, I would come out myself. I don’t think my family knows, to this day, of what I did to myself during those fights. 


This work began just like a tunnel — dark and cold and descending. I was going through a period of unending grief. I had lost a few very important people in my life, suddenly to accidents. Death seemed like a constant repetition, a reminder. I was unable to stop the feeling of its threat on anyone and anything that I touched.

In 2019, I took long walks on abandoned roads on the outskirts of a foreign city. I kept walking until the end of the night. I sought comfort from the darkness of the night but when night fell, all I could think of was the fragility and uncertainty of life. One night, I sat under a scaffolding of a huge building in a Buddhist Monastery to rest. When I returned back to the same place the next night, that building had collapsed. I heard 3 people had died. That night, I sat next to the rubble and waited for the night to end. All I could sense was my own beating heart, my breath in panic. 

The breath brought me back to myself. I felt that life is just a long tunnel that we have to pass through. Perhaps, there is nothing at the end. The presence is the only truth.