Last year Bruce Stevenson took himself off to Japan for a period of practice in a Zen monastery. This was not Bruce's first such expedition but it is the first he has written about for us. Let us continue this issue then with a further account of experiences in the distant East. Bruce tells us Sogenji is, as far as he knows, the only monastery in Japan full of Westerners - well this includes a Taiwanese nun and an Indian monk etc, etc.
The day begins ---
3.35am --- the alarm goes off in the tiny room I have in the guest quarters up the hill. Pull clothes on and stumble down rocky path in the dark; stand to one side of the Hondo, waiting for the head monk to arrive with a posse of monks at his back. Get my stool (thank God I don't have to kneel on the ground like almost all the others). Crow honks in the dark, maybe a bull frog is booming.. The Roshi arrives --- looking as always very solid and dignified, and steps into the wooden square let down into the tatami in the centre. He bows to the Buddha. We start off chanting the lotus sutra. I can never keep up. Several pages in I find myself staring at my little book full of almost identical sino-Japanese phrases, and searching and feeling inadequate. The chanting of a number of different sutras, the heart sutra, the dahishin dharani etc., etc., goes on for nearly an hour. Sometimes the Roshi seems almost like a mad dog, barking out the chants, his head jerking with energy.
Then, at breakneck speed, we file out of the Hondo, down a long passage with moss gardens on one side, and halberds still resting in racks on the wall, round a corner on polished wood walkways and into an annex off the kitchen, for three more breakneck-speed chants. We finish. And the Roshi regards us all gravely. He bows and we say Ohayo Gozaimasu (formal Japanese for 'good morning') to him. It feels a bit like being his personal retainer in a medieval setting --- and that he is our boss---Then off again, this time to the Zendo. I sit in the Gaitan, a corridor that runs to one side of the main Zendo where not all the rules have to be observed, which means I sit on a raised bench like everyone else, but I can have my feet on the floor. We enter the Zendo chanting Hakuin's song of Zazen.
After the fourth strike on the clackers, suddenly everyone (but me and maybe one other --- we don't have sanzen privileges) jumps to the floor and starts tearing towards the exit, running and jostling like a football crowd, off to see the Roshi for sanzen (interview). One hour and a half later, after three breaks, it is time for breakfast. More chanting. We eat whilst sitting on long benches alongside a table in the kitchen, the Roshi at the far end. Bowls of rice and fried vegetables get passed along the table.
There is a demanding etiquette, about passing the bowls and bowing if you don't want any food from them. After breakfast there is a little free time and then we get to grab a straw broom and a 'gomi'- a plastic dustpan for picking up leaves, and a bamboo rake. We start off raking up leaves, and combing the gravel into precise furrows at the entrance to the monastery.
I like to sweep the leaves near the lake, they are scarlet. The lake is beautiful and full of koi fish. Sometimes a heron is sitting on a rock in the middle, with his mate in a tree nearby.
Guan-san, the head monk, who is Swedish and has been here some 23 years gives a big yell when he judges it is time to finish. I lug a bag of leaves on combed paths up a rocky staircase and past a beautiful glade of tall green bamboos to the edge of an ancient cemetery to dump the rubbish.
Now it is time to go back to the guest house for more cleaning. I sweep the main room, whipping myself mentally for not being more on target or more willing but I am tired by now, and want to get to my room and lie down for thirty minutes or so and bury myself in a book.
At around 9a.m. it is time to start work again, maybe sweeping leaves in the tiered cemeteries which contain beautiful, strange pillars marking tombs of noblemen from three centuries ago. I might get to natter with Eric, a retired American lawyer who comes here regularly, or Darius, a sweet Polish surgeon here for three months. Guan-san comes up and gives me instructions I can hardly understand, his English is very peculiar, and although he is maybe very intelligent there is something possibly autistic about him. Can I just let him be, and not worry about what this means for practice here?
Three or four times a month, we go on 'Takuhatsu'. It is a challenge to find and put on layers of monks robes, rice straw sandals around the feet, which only leave 6mm. of straw between my feet and the road, a 'rakusu', and a giant belt. We all line up in front of the Hondo, hats in our hands, and bow. The Roshi, even though he is 67, walks at a fantastic pace and I have to half-run, dreading that my sandals may fall off or my robe fall down.
We queue up at the bus stop and stand upright on the bus glimpsing schoolgirls, people fanning themselves, schoolboys with yellow baseball caps. We walk or is it march through the mall, yelling " Ho " (Dharma) at the top of our lungs, bowing in front of each shop, opening our rakusu to receive a few yen, then chanting a short thing that I can't remember --- I have to haul a piece of plastic out of my bag where it is printed. I feel like a fake monk, faced with the sincerity of those who make offerings. One time we are chanting to help the victims of the floods in China, another time to help the victims of the floods in Myanmar, someone (thank God not me) has to hold a banner with Chinese characters on it proclaiming what we are doing.
If it is not sesshin time (and it is nearly always sesshin time, there are kosesshins with only 4 hours of straight sitting at night, and then there are the Osesshins with some 12 hours of sitting during the day, plus yaza1 at night), then we get a break in the morning. At times, these tea breaks can become mini orgies. Someone may have donated chocolate rabbits for the Sangha - and we scoff several each, plus swig bottles of donated coffee.
During Takuhatsu also, if we are lucky, there is a supporter waiting for us somewhere to offer us bottles of orangeade, and maybe bean paste cakes coated in rice flour.
Time for lunch at 1p.m., more chanting, then rice, and noodles, vegetables and sometimes surprisingly to me yoghurt and fruit - even a cake if it is someone's birthday.
Then finally, unless it is Osesshin, there is time for rest. Maybe we have from 1.45 off till say dinner at 4.30. This is technically medicine, so consists of leavings from lunch.
Evening sitting from say 6.00 to 8.30, followed by tea being served in the Zendo, and a little cake. Then back to the kitchen for evening chanting - the Roshi looking solemn as he says "O-Yasumi-nasai", and we say it back to him.
Out of the 25 or so residents at any one time only a few are here long term, Guan-san, Jiao fussy nun, blind nun, Shin-so, young monk: Jion, ex-pro sportsman monk, French monk, angry US woman.
There are two senior nuns here both Swedish, one of whom has been here about 20 years and has been given permission to teach, another who has maybe been here 15 years and also given permission to teach. The first is, Jiao, with whom I went to stay in Sweden, where she is setting up a monastery and we spent nearly two days talking; largely about how so many people have gone through Sogenji and some have just got worse, the more they have stayed there. Jiao herself seems great. She is solid and unpretentious and really listens. The other nun feels brittle, and is always carping and insisting you do something some other way. After about the fourth time of this, I managed to stand up to her in a really clear way. It reminded me of wanting to hug Kristina (my teacher in Almaas's school) years ago and Kristina drawing a line in the air between us and saying 'This is what it's all about' Afterwards I felt aligned (with the will?). I was weeding at the time, which my mind certainly thinks it hates, but actually I felt completely relaxed supported by space. The weeding just seemed to happen all by itself. It was like I had been made up of ice cubes and suddenly the ice cubes were aligned with each other and able to melt, rather than in submission and opposition to the world.
Another time, Zhou, a Canadian-Israeli visitor who had been living in very Spartan conditions in a Soto monastery in the mountains in Japan, was talking with Jion. We were supposed to be cleaning the drains from the kitchen which I certainly found irksome, and as they nattered on, I became increasingly cross. In my mind I became angry with them and was wondering what is practice? Somehow I fell out of the bottom of my nest of thoughts and was just the witness. I could observe the thoughts I had been wrapped up in but was no longer identified with them. I felt at one and gently compassionate to everything. Oddly this felt quite Theravadin, exactly what Ajahn Sumedho all those years ago used to point to, just watch the changing conditions.
Another time the head monk, Guan-san thought I'd taken his tools when we were up ladders cleaning fallen leaves from gutters and he whispered to me something about how bad this was and how he could be violent. Again the scales fell from my eyes, and though shocked it was exactly as if I had fallen into the hara out of my habitual trance of fitting in and agreeing with others.
Another time, during Osesshin I found myself really imagining the death of my mother and experiencing the loss that this would be, seeing (again) how I swallow down her desperate anxiety and that I am like my father and therefore must imprison myself and then, to my astonishment, falling inside and coming to as a beam of pure love. .
Later given a one-off sanzen to report this to Roshi.
Jiao told me that all sentient beings are inside each one of us - maybe this is why so many difficult incidents with others became grist for the mill of practice - as I forgive the other who was actually in me.
Near the end, Jiao (who had been there the whole month), told me there was space on the sesshin in Latvia - and if I went I would get sanzen privileges.
In Latvia in a very beautiful rickety Zendo on the edge of a huge lake with nothing but forest between us and the Byelorussian frontier. Expected Roshi in sanzen to be like my experience of Japan the last time: a remote wall on which I could find no toe hold.
Actually he was very engaging. He talked about Beginner's Mind, and suddenly I felt right there with him and at that moment a cat appeared in front of me and I grabbed its tail: felt like some free action. He said to me at one point that normally at my age there was no possibility of becoming a Zen teacher but for me there was and that I'd been born to see the reality (Shobogenzo) beyond body and mind. I can still see him twinkling at me.
1'yaza' is supposedly voluntary but actually compulsory meditation after the end of the day in Osesshin - where we go sit outside at night - under the eaves of the Hondo or wherever.
