I saw a wonderful movie for you samurai fans, called Bushido, the Way of the Warrior. It’s about a samurai who had to leave his master because of others’ shenanigans, lives an impoverished life with his daughter, and finally regains his honor. It’s well done and worth seeing even if you’re not a fan of this genre.

Two things stood out for me. First, the game Go. The game plays a big role in the movie and appears in the very first scene. Bernie was a devote of Go and had been given a beautiful Go board as a gift years ago. The movie, too, shows a beautiful Go board and how, as one character puts it, it gives up its life in the end for the sake of two human beings.

Each time I saw the characters play Go—and in one situation the game decides life and death—I thought of Bernie. He would have loved this movie, I thought over and over during the movie, almost in tears. He would have loved how, among other things, the movie uses the game as a metaphor on how to live.

Second was the last scene. The first scene shows a Go board. The last scene shows the samurai, in Japanese thongs and head under the rice farmer’s conical hat, with a small snap sack and a staff, walking into the barren wilderness, having left his daughter, his friend and neighbors. Having left home.

That too reminded me of Bernie. When we had arguments, Bernie would say that he’s off to the streets and never coming back. Others might talk of separation or divorce, he’d threaten to do a street retreat for the rest of his life. I would yell after him that he should take his 50” TV screen with him (he loved big screens).

He loved his family, he loved his wife and children, but in a certain way I could see him leaving home, too. Not in that peasant garb with the conical hat, but in his old Hawaiian shirts and falling-apart jeans with suspenders, a give-away jacket and the old brown knapsack, and cigars. Always cigars.

This morning, talking with some other teachers, I thought of the word home. Instantly I remembered what it felt like the first time I meditated (at the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois). The posture wasn’t good, I had no idea what to do, all that came later. But instantly I felt I was home.

What did that mean? I felt connected to the ground, I didn’t care about what the world had to say to me that minute, what anybody expected or wanted, in fact didn’t care about anything. All the pulling and pushing, the buffeting around—all ended. I had landed, and I was never going to leave.

Indeed, I’ve joked that I sat down that time in 1983 or 1984 and never got up. Many meditation practitioners invoke home when they talk about the practice. When they sit, they’re home.

But what is home?

Back then, home meant basic security. It didn’t matter what anyone else thought of me. It didn’t matter what others did or what social expectations existed. Comparisons disappeared. Fear didn’t show up, even when I considered my lonely life. A basic confidence showed up instead, a confidence I didn’t know I had, not in me so much as in life, or in how the two meet. The act of taking conscious breaths and paying attention to my body rather than to the activity behind my forehead brought life, well, to life. Here it was, just this.

It was as if I’d come across the greatest secret in the world. Who knew? I mean, who knew it was that simple and profound?

At the same time, home can come with lots of attachments. Bernie and I used to work from here, people came and went, he had assistants working and even sleeping here, there were gatherings, it was a busy place. The house itself always took work: the grass had to be mowed, the flowers maintained, birdfeeders filled, the basement monitored for humidity, the many furnishings and technologies that age, die, and need to be replaced, a kitchen clean-up last thing at night, floors to be swept due to the dogs, everything homeowners know about.

I felt fortunate then, but now, every once in a while I look around me and think: I’m still here? There are a housemate and 2 dogs, that’s all, so why am I still here? What keeps me in a house bigger than what I need, with so much to do and even fewer resources and help than before? The answer is simple: It’s home.

It’s attachment to photos on the walls, to altars with Buddha statues, to the wooden Kwan-yin in back who continues to be eaten away by rodents, the big red painting of an angel child in the bedroom, Stanley’s grave in back, the memories, the gatherings, the laughter all those rooms contained. It’s home.

And I think of the samurai who, just when his honor is restored, his daughter happy, his once stingy friend now relaxed, generous, and wishing to play Go with him, his fortunes rising—he leaves home. Not to return to his old master, but to continue the wandering of a vagrant samurai whose simple ways and generosity will make their impact on others he’ll encounter in his wanderings.

So many of us have the wonderful benefits of meditation, of the feeling of home that it gives, but what about the attachments that come with it? Meditation frees us—but to what? To enjoy this sense of ever-renewing confidence in our life? To feel stable, grounded, less prone to emotional extremes? When does home become a hideout, a haven from hardship, a sanctuary from life rather than in life?

I have no issues with its wonderful benefits, so important to me over the years, and as the Zen teacher Yasutani Roshi said, there are different reasons for coming to Zen practice and they’re all valuable.

Tomorrow evening, I am scheduled to give a talk on Martin Luther King’s Beloved Community. Why is it that so many members of Zen’s beloved community are educated, middle class, and tend towards white? Is it that many of us got trapped at home, in a closed net of safety, connection, and stability that doesn’t encourage us to step outside and walk away, as did the samurai?

Yes, yes, I know the rhetoric of taking refuge in the moment—but what moment is that? The moment of taking care of ourselves and those close to us, contentedly keeping up with our job and a mortgage? And if you tell me that the job consists of taking care of patients and clients, it’s service, I’d like to ask: Do you ever go out on a limb? Do you ever enter a no-man’s or woman’s land without the certainty of routine and peers’ approval?

When meditation brings us home, does it keep us there? Have we found the ground under our feet and won’t let go?

I’m not talking about material comfort or stability, but rather what’s inside. After all, we’re told to go inside, aren’t we? “Turn the light inwards,” as so many have said. How ready are we to do that? Maybe all too ready? Sure, when we do that we often face difficult issues, sure we learn to let go more, rely less on labels and definitions, rely less on knowing. But how many of us, including me, are ready to walk out that door and leave home?

“Brave discomfort,” T. Marie King told us in Alabama. That doesn’t mean physically leaving home, but it may mean going out to talk to folks completely different from you, who even talk a different language from you.

It may mean leaving English, where you’re the master, and fumbling your way through Spanish, which I find myself doing more and more. My brother, a religious Jew, goes to Saudi Arabia and then Morocco in 10 days, and while he feels safe, he’s surrounded by a language, customs, and people he was conditioned to suspect and even hate. I marvel at his ability to walk that no-man’s land, and to keep on walking even now, after he’s lost friends due to the Middle East conflict.

It doesn’t have to be something that big, but even small things. Have you ever asked for money? Not given money, asked, which we must do when we go out on the streets? Have you ever asked for support, not for organizations you love (I’ve done plenty of that), but for yourself, help to attend a retreat you wish to do, or just help at a time when you’re low?

“We have all the wealth of the Buddha available to us,” Bernie used to tell me even at times when we were broke. How do we find it? We could stay home, make drastic cuts to our lifestyle, live on canned beans. I can do that fairly easily. We could also go out, meet new people, talk publicly of our vision, and ask. Just ask. That’s come harder for me.

Brave discomfort. How does meditation help us do that?