Author: dorakuan

The guesthouse of the International Zen-Dojo I stay for these seven days is an old Japanese house surrounded by a beautiful garden. I love it, although at night it is as spooky as you just can imagine, and freezing cold. In daytime it is heaven to sit on the veranda (where I am writing right now) while enjoying the beautiful scene of the garden.

Japanese houses can teach us westerners modesty and awareness for details. Especially if we, like myself, are taller than the typical 1,80 meters height of doors and horizontal beams. The paper sliding doors are easy to destroy, everything is fragile and has to be used with a certain skill and care.

This morning, while waiting in the garden for his guests to wake up, the Roshi talked with me about the benefits of this kind of old Japanese architecture: it makes us human beings live closer to nature than any modern insulated apartment made of concrete and steel. A wood- and paper house surrounded by a garden opens our heart and helps us feel and understand that we are part of nature, not separated beings.

An old friend and student of Roshi, a high ranked martial arts teacher, was announced to arrive with his wife, baby and two students for holiday. I wondered if it might not become challenging to combine a Zen Dojo’s busy schedule with that of a group of tourists, and I was a bit worried about sharing the house with people who go to bed late after pub and get up half a day after the rest of us. But unexpected interference is always a good Zen exercise …

The morning after his guests arrived the Roshi came three or four times to the guesthouse for discussing the sightseeing schedule, though in vein, all of them were still sound asleep.

Since it was our free day, I just did some cleaning inside the house, very silently not to wake up the sleeping ones, so every now and then I had the opportunity to talk a bit with the Roshi. He took me to the neighbour’s house, a cultivator of bonsai trees, and we had some interesting exchange concerning architecture and living in an old Japanese house.

When his visitors finally made it out of their futons around eleven, he asked me to translate. The Roshi did not show any anger, just slight astonishment, and I concluded he really must be a very generous character. Though, he asked all of them to join next morning’s service at 5 am, and I had the impression that his friends did not really trust my translation at first …

At a Zen-Temple or Dojo one is usually quite busy from dusk to dawn. A good chance to go to the supermarket, do ones washing or just relax a bit is the “day off” every two weeks. The schedule is much relaxed, after Morning Service, Zazen and cleaning (all finished around 7:30 am) the meals are free-style, and no other program points.

Stream with bamboo near the Temple

First I was disappointed to hear my seven days at the Zen-Dojo will be interrupted by a day off, but now I am happy! I have time to write a bit, explore the neighbourhood and take a few pictures, eat a relaxed meal with my friends outside on the veranda. And I can enjoy the lovely guesthouse and garden in the sun! 

With all the strict schedule and work, it is really good to sometimes just relax. Too often in my daily life I tend to forget the importance and pleasures of taking a break …
 

The formal architecture of a Zendo or Temple comprises a main entrance where only the Roshi is allowed to enter. On the webpage of the Tekishinjuku I read that it is “strictly forbidden” to come through this gate, so I never ever did it.

Not strictly forbidden seems to hang around at this Roshi’s exclusive entrance and enjoy a morning coffee, once Sutra Chanting, Zazen, cleaning and breakfast are over.

I asked K-san if the way we make use of this sunny but possibly somehow forbidden place is really o.k., and he replied with an ambiguous, “yes, maybe o.k. …”. An answer which did not fully comfort me, until one day the Roshi unexpectedly came back in the morning, and just smiled when he saw us sitting on “his” stairs enjoying the sun.

So, maybe, it is o.k. …

In a Zen-temple it is not possible to enjoy a hot bath or shower every evening. The only place for a quick daily wash at our guesthouse is the old outdoors basin providing cold water, not too inviting at temperatures slightly above zero …

But each couple of days (at very traditional places every two weeks) is bathing day, and today it is! After three freezing cold nights and four days wearing all the cloths I brought with me to Japan, I was much looking forward to soak myself in hot water.

Several times during my trips to Japan I stayed in lovely old onsen-ryokan where the night costs a fortune (usually neither booked nor paid by myself), with baths comprising splendid tubs from exotic wood or giant stones, filled with natural hot spring water said to have certain healing effects. But today’s bath in the Temple’s small metal tub filled with hot tap-water was without doubt the best and most joyful soak I ever had in my life!

I like Sutra chanting. Not being a great singer myself, this is a good way for me to unify breath and body through voice, together with others. But I must admit that chanting a text which is the Japanese pronunciation of a Chinese translation of something coming from India I do not really understand, is not fully satisfying.

A copy of the Heart Sutra at Tokoji Temple

So another activity I enjoy doing here at the International Zen-Dojo during the afternoon „free practice“ hour is Sutra copying, a practise called shakyo (写経) in Japanese. For someone who likes calligraphy, this is a pleasant exercise! And a Sutra-text does not really start making sense, unless one seriously tries to discover the meaning behind it’s underlying Chinese characters, instead of just reading nonsense syllables in Latin alphabet from a sheet of paper. Even more, slowly writing the characters while rehearsing their pronunciation, helps me a lot to memorise the text.

K-san suggested I might want to offer my copy to the temple, maybe the Roshi will accept it for their collection. But it was J’s birthday the next day, and I didn’t have any present … so I had a better idea what to do with my hand-brushed copy Hannya Shingyo.

Ever wondered why Japanese gardens look so beautiful and spotlessly clean? It is not a specific Japanese self-cleaning kind of moss, it is lots of work, day by day …

During today’s Samu, the daily working period after breakfast, we had to pick the fallen leaves and pine-tree needles from the moss and carefully pull the omnipresent weeds out. About two square meters took two of us about one hour. 

Right after rain in the evening it looked as messy as before, and we had to start all over again the next day. A good lesson about impermanence, and my aching knees let me feel once more that in Zen doing something is considered more important than any enduring outcome of our activities.  

I am sure, next time I visit Ryoanji in Kyoto I will see the vast extend of spotlessly clean beautiful moss with different eyes.

After the Roshi’s demonstration how to operate the gongs during Sutra chanting, he asked us to follow him to his Zendo one more time. We did one short round of Zazen, then he wanted to explain us more about his understanding of Zen. During his lecture, the Roshi was not just sitting on his pillow talking, he accompanied his words with lots of gestures and action while walking around in his Dojo.

In the middle of his talk he suddenly opened a door under the Altar and put three footballs out. Happily he started playing around with these balls for some time until we all had to laugh, then he told us from whom he got them and so on. 

Eventually he came to the point: that emptiness in Zen, or the KU (空) in the Heart Sutra, is not “nihilism“, but more like a kind of “energy” or Ki, the basis of life. The football can jump back, although there is “nothing” inside but air, but without that “nothing” (throwing a deflated ball towards the floor), there is no energy which lets the ball jump back. The funniest and most clear hands-on explanation about the concept of “emptyness” in Zen, and the related misconception concerning nihilism, I ever witnessed …

Later K-san remarked that the Roshi is always so funny and tries to make one laugh, but sad enough we are not allowed to laugh during his talk. Well, isn’t Zen also about breaking rules? I can’t help laughing even now, when I call back to memory the image of the Roshi playing soccer in his Zendo …

During sutra chanting there is a lot of ringing and gonging and clapping going on. It seemed almost impossible for me to learn how to do this correctly by just watching and memorising, while being busy with chanting and following countless lines of unknown syllables in the Sutra book.

Today the Roshi came to our temple while I was doing Zazen on the veranda outside the Zendo during „free practise time”. I could hear him explaining to K-san some details of how to chant and how to use the gongs properly, and he corrected and humorously imitated his way of performing today’s morning ceremony.

I politely asked K-san later, if he maybe could show me what he just learned, and he replied that it was a very unusual event, the Roshi never instructed him this way before. He let me try a bit with the big Mokugyo and the gongs, and corrected my handling and timing. “Maybe Roshi will show you later!” he concluded his lesson … a privilege I silently doubted the short-time guest to his Dojo will be granted. 

To my big surprise, in the afternoon we were sitting next to the Roshi in his temple, and he demonstrated for us in all detail how to use the gongs of different size while chanting. Several times he jokingly mentioned that foreigners cannot do this correctly. In the end he gave me a Japanese book with all relevant Sutra and explanations in, “日本語がわかる …” he said, overestimating my still far from fluent language skills. 

I am very happy about this unique chance to improve the Sutra chanting at my Dojo from the Roshi’s first hand explanation. Though I will stick to a much reduced schedule concerning the number of Sutras and length of the ceremony. Not just because I am “foreigner” … I guess it is important, next to a good performance, to also have the chance to really understand the meaning of what you are chanting. How much of your life-time you really can spend to memorise, copy, translate and deeply reflect ancient Indian texts you learned in a Japanised version of ancient Chinese pronunciation …?

Ikkyu-san helping us

After cleaning and raking the rock garden outside his temple for about one hour, the Roshi explained to us that this kind of working together and helping each other makes us strong. In modern times, he said, everyone follows his own ideas, setting priority to the own benefit. But together we are much stronger and can live, this is the meaning of Sangha.

I must confess that my ideal image of a Zen-life often has been much closer to a hermit’s dwelling high up in the mountains, and joining other people to help or teach, or for having some fun together, was more or less an exceptional time off, if not some duty. So I always feared Sangha as a too tight community of people following some potentially repressive rules and censored ways of thinking, in cases even blindly following an abusive leader, all of this contradicting the development of a free and healthy Zen spirit and life.

I was wrong. After eating and cooking day by day, all of us together, the food donated by the local farmers, the Roshi’s simple explanation after cleaning and raking his garden made me understand … nobody can live alone.

I feel that the three of us sharing this short time at the International Zen-Dojo, together with the Roshi down at his temple, are a pretty good mini-Sangha. And gratefully I admit that we really do enjoy our days here!