The Dharma Follows You Everywhere

 

By Warren Rosen

When I first came to New York City, I thought of myself as an artist, chasing the wild dream of creating something lasting. I didn’t imagine that one day I’d also be a fugitive.

The shift wasn’t instant. It happened in little choices, mistakes, and the consequences that followed. Before I knew it, I was living in fear, always looking over my shoulder, always on the move. People imagine being “on the run” as some kind of thrilling outlaw adventure. In reality, it’s exhausting. You never sleep deeply. You learn to read every stranger’s eyes.

You carry fear like a second skin.

And yet, even there—in my most unstable, frightened moments—the Dharma found me.

Dharma in Disguise

At first, Zen teachings came to me in fragments. A line from Suzuki Roshi that lodged in my mind: “Each of you is perfect the way you are… and you can use a little improvement.” Perfect? I hardly felt perfect. My life was unraveling. Still, those words pressed on me. Maybe “perfect” didn’t mean clean and flawless. Maybe it meant “whole,” even when broken.

That seed stayed with me as I stumbled my way to a monastery. I didn’t arrive because I was noble or wise. I arrived because I was tired of running.

Stillness Reveals Everything

Monastery life stripped me down. The bells rang before sunrise, the cushions waited, the silence pressed in. Sitting there was harder than running ever was. Running gave me distractions—adrenaline, excuses, movement. Sitting gave me nothing to hide behind.

Every regret I’d carried came knocking. Every memory I’d tried to bury surfaced. Zen doesn’t let you look away. It doesn’t say, “heal first, then practice.” It says: sit anyway.

I learned that stillness is not about comfort. It’s about honesty. And in that honesty, for the first time, I began to see that what I’d really been running from all along wasn’t the law—it was myself.

Prison as a Zen Hall

Eventually, my past caught up with me. I landed in prison. At first, it felt like the death of everything: freedom, dignity, hope. But the Dharma didn’t leave me there. In a strange way, it deepened.

My bunk became my cushion.

The clanging cell doors became bells. The chaos of the yard became a mirror, showing me my own anger, my own fear. I remembered the Dhammapada: “All experiences are preceded by mind, led by mind, created by mind.” Prison walls could contain my body, but not awareness. No guard could lock up the breath. No bar could imprison the present moment.

That realization—that freedom was already within me—was the Dharma’s greatest gift

 

Warren Rosen’s journey has taken him from New York’s art scene to Zen monasteries to prison cells; now he writes about the Dharma that carried him through. Please go to www.monkontherun for reviews of my memoir Monk on the Run, more info and a photo journey.

10,000 bows

 

 

 

Photo: Pixabay 

Editor: Dana Gornall

 

 

 

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