I Can Haz Enlightenment?

I don't know if I've ever been as tempted to impulse-join a religion as I was the week or so we studied Tenrikyō. And in answer to your question, no. It was only PARTIALLY because their food is the best.

Every morning for that week we attended a morning service at a nearby Tenrikyō church -- a simple service, about half an hour long, and totally fascinating, too. A priest, plus either three or four others, conducted the ceremony on a small stage at the head of a large Japanese-style tatami room. Each of them plays an instrument, and instead of chanting, they sing. Their songs sound like traditional Japanese folk music, and they make a glorious change when you've been listening to sutra-chanting nonstop for two months. The singers sit in seza position on small cushions, backs to the audience -- directing their songs and music toward three Shinto-style altars, all pale plain wood and mirrors, on the stage. Every day there were different offerings on the platforms -- one day a cabbage, another a bagged loaf of grocery-store bread. One altar is dedicated to their main object of worship, the Kami (deity) Tenri-ō no Mikoto (called "Prince Tenri" or "God the Parent" in English). Another enshrines Nakayama Miki, the peasant woman who founded Tenrikyō two hundred years ago (like I said -- a "new" religion . . . by Japanese standards). The third altar is for the veneration of ancestors. Tenrikyō is very, very big on gratefulness to one's ancestors. As the officiants sing and play, the other worshipers perform "hand dances" (just what it sounds like -- imagine if doing the Macarina was a religious practice) which mirror the meaning of the song. I quite like doing those.

All the people at that church (it feels weird to call it a "church" but that's the closest English approximation) were really, truly, genuinely good-hearted people. And I don't mean in an "our religion says we have to be nice to you, so we are grinning and bearing it and the muscles in our faces are super starting to hurt" way, like you get at some churches back home. No, these people were fucking magnificent. (Well, the abbot's son was a way hyperactive and liked to run around shining flashlights in people's eyes and hide under the table to grab your feet, but STILL. He was SO CUTE). OH AND LOOK I HAVE A PICTURE OF HIM.

Tenrikyō teaches that we are all brothers and sisters, and our goal should be to "create the Joyous Life" for ourselves and others. I could tell right away that this ideal wasn't just preached -- it was practiced. You won't find many people this good-natured, friendly, and joyful. On Friday night, the Kaichō (Tenrikyō abbot) invited our sangha to dinner at his house. It was a RIDICULOUS feast. They made Korean barbeque at the table, handed around beer (I noticed there was always lots of beer about this place). Immediately after dinner, without further ado or warning, the Kaichō lugged in a huge box full of instruments, which he passed out to us. Then he demanded we sing something.

So we played our instruments. We sang some Beatles songs (the default-favorite "American" music of Japanese people everywhere); we made things up on the spot; Ben beatboxed; Sam did a dance routine. We sang songs with made-up beats and wordless sounds. The Kaichō danced. We all smiled and laughed till our faces hurt, cheesy as that may sound.

It was a beautiful time. Some people really do know how to live. But before you think Tenrikyō is all about frivolous fun, let me tell you something else: this religion saved atheist Aimee-Sensei's life when she was twenty with an emergency operation at one of the many hospitals they build and run. The Kaichō and his wife have a daughter with Down's syndrome; their belief is that they were meant to have her because they have the means to take care of her like some families don't. Tenrikyō places great emphasis on healing -- on bringing life, health, and kindness to everyone.

The day before this dinner, we had gone to Tenri City (located near Nara), considered by some to be the "home" of the Tenrikyō religion. In any case, it is home to their headquarters, a massive sprawling temple complex bigger even than any Buddhist establishment I had ever seen. Their main worship hall was enormous; hundreds of tatami mats square. There were covered walkways leading from building to building in a massive square, smelling of lovely fresh wood and sparkling clean. There's a good reason for that, actually. When practitioners travel to this temple, many of them participate in the practice of cleaning the dust from the halls -- symbolic of clearing the dust away from one's own heart. A large box of clean rags was located at either end of the hall complex for the purpose.

In the main worship hall, we witnessed a Tenrikyō priest performing the sazuke -- a healing ceremony in which the hands of the priest on the practitioner's head become a vessel for the healing power of Tenri -- on an old man. We also saw, in the middle of the hall, a pillar marking the exact spot where Tenrikyō's cosmology teaches the first human beings were created.

Then we went to their cafeteria and had saba (mackerel -- my new faaaaavorite!) and rice. The cafeteria had infinite rice capacities. Are we seeing a trend here?

Our last day there happened to fall on a Tenrikyō celebration day, on which the sacred kagura dance is performed. Sam and I were both a bit late for the service because we had visited Jeff Shore, a Zen master who practices in Kyoto, to sit zazen and have dokusan (private instruction) with him. So that was intense, and wonderful, AND we made it for the last half of the Tenrikyō service. The dancing was beautiful, as was the music, and we saw several more people receive sazuke -- a young man with a broken leg, and an old lady.

AND THEN THERE WAS FOOD AGAIN. OH GOD SO MUCH FOOD. Apparently the Joyous Life involves LOTS OF FOOD.
Which makes sense, I guess, if you think about it.
They had to fill several rooms with tables (which was no big deal -- the Kaichō and his family live in this giant house, but there is plenty of room besides for any religious or social occasion they might come up with, or for extra people who might need to stay. Four to six people sat at each table, around a giant hotpot full of broth. We had noodles, vegetables, rice, chicken, mochi -- oh and, surprise, more beer. Nobody gets drunk at these things, though. It was kind of hilarious/disturbing/eh? to see these giant bottles of Asahi beer being toted around to the various tables by adorable four-year-olds who could barely get their arms around them.

There were tons of children there, running around misbehaving and generally being supercute. Japanese people really do not make much of an effort to discipline their children, past sowing the sneaky seeds of guilt toward the feelings every person and inanimate object they encounter. At the appropriate point in the child's life, these seeds will ERUPT into growth, transforming the naughty spoiled child into a painfully well-behaved, polite, hardworking person motivated by abject terror that they might hurt the feelings of a door if they slam it too hard. I do not THINK this method of parenting was ever used on me, but even so, oh god do I know how those people feel. Why does nobody care about the DOORS?! *weeps*

Two twenty-something girls named Nami and Mihi sat at a table with me, Aimee-sensei, Melanie, and Addie. They were incredibly friendly and talkative, and I actually managed to have legitimate (though limited) conversations with them in Japanese. At one point they asked me if I had a boyfriend, and I told them I didn't. They responded as if I told them my favorite hobby was Crusading and collecting foreskins. Specifically, they shrieked "EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH???!" Nami didn't have a boyfriend either, but she was determined to get married. Soon. To . . . some man, presumably.
Different strokes, I guess.

Several of the churchgoers got up to address the room at large during the dinner. One tall thin man who acted as an officiant during the morning services spun a zabuton (sitting cushion) on his finger, treating it like it was a veritable magic act and yelling good-naturedly at people he didn't think were paying enough attention to him. The Kaichō's father got up and addressed us (the students), making a really touching speech about the importance of gratitude toward one's parents. Overall, I don't know if I've ever been in a room more full of joy and love for near-strangers. They almost cried when we left.

They are amazing people, and by extension, I TOTALLY approve of their religion. Stop looking at me like that. It is NOT because of the Korean barbeque. No, that is NOT a "become Tenrikyō" brochure you see on my desk. You are hallucinating. You loony. HEY look over there at Tenrikyō's garden. ------>

WELL, I'm sure everyone is utterly shocked at this, but let me tell you a secret.

I procrastinated again.

Yes, I dropped the ball during my last month and a half in Japan. In my defense, we were all VERY, VERY BUSY. Writing research papers and going to class and attending Buddhist services. And ... a bit of aimless street-wandering. But I can promise you one thing; I WASN'T sleeping. Don't worry; I now intend to finish out this blog, aided by my extremely detailed travel journal. Which nobody else on earth can read, by the way. Pharmacists aren't the only ones with their own impenetrable fonts.

In early October, we visited Mount Ōmine to supplement our study of Shugendō, a Shinto-Buddhist syncretic religion centering around mountain asceticism. Shugendō is sometimes called the oldest surviving religion of Japan, since Shinto was never much of a conscious religious movement till the late 19th century, and Buddhist statuary and ideas made their way to Japan before the actual Buddhist texts. Ōminesan (Mount Ōmine) is the "headquarters" of the religion, the place where it was founded, and it's actually more of a mountain range. Its Gongen (Shugendō's kami-like mountain deities) is named Zao Gongen; the Ōminesan temple was founded in pre-feudal Japan by En-no-Gyoji, a devotee of Zao Gongen.

We stayed at a traditional pilgrim's inn called Hanaya Tokubei, located in the mountain village of Tenkawamura. It. Was. DECADENT. Aimee-Sensei's childhood friend was the owner. Of course. Its ofuro (bath) had big glass doors that opened onto a garden with a small shrine; the water came from a natural hotspring, and the bath was overseen by a statue of a friendly demon. The entire building was gorgeous and smelled like only the most amazing kind of wood -- which made sense because everything was made of amazing wood that was smooth and shiny and it all looked a bit like a very Japanese ski lodge. It was by far the nicest place we stayed during the program. You know what? I hate adjectives like "stunning." They are lame and don't mean much of anything. But god damnit, WHAT ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO SAY. WORDS don't mean much of anything.

It was easy to see, especially after visiting Koyasan, that there was a great deal of Shingon Buddhist influence in the Shugendō sect. The most noticeable example was Fudo Myo-o, a wrathful Shingon deity -- there were more images of him in the Shugendō temples than of any Buddha.
The village was small, charming, and surrounded by mountains. The view from any given spot would blow your mind.

After dropping our stuff at the ryokan, we were immediately taken to the Shugendō temple grounds for the waterfall purification ritual -- wearing giant wooden clogs ingeniously engineered to make one fall on one's face. There they gave us very thin white robes (I take note of this because it was already pretty cold out). The waterfall was behind a wooden partition, and the men and women had to perform the ritual separately.

The boys went first and the screaming made it all sound PRETTY HORRIBLE. Now, I love cold water, but the keening coming from behind that partition made me eeeever-so-slightly anxious, especially during the part where Sam started hollering like twenty ninjas were stabbing him in the face without asking first. For some reason when it was the girls' turn, nobody seemed to particularly want to go first, so I went ahead and did it.

The waterfall ritual serves to purify the yamabushi (mountain ascetic) or Shugendō practitioner before he/she/they goes into the mountains. The idea is to enter the pool, bow to the stone statue of Fudo Myo-o carved into the rock wall, then back into the waterfall and stay under as long as you can while reciting screeching Fudo Myo-o's dharani: "Nomaku samanda bazaradan / Senda makaro shada / sowataya un tarata kanman."

The water wasn't actually as cold as I expected, once I got under there. The troublesome part was that it was hammering down on my head so hard I could only remember the first line of the dharani. So I just screamed that out over and over again, until somewhere past the point of brain freeze to all-over HEAD freeze, when the sounds I was making no longer sounded like words because I wasn't quite sure I even HAD a tongue anymore. Also my head felt like death. But specifically the kind of death where somebody accidentally sets a whale down on your head and it kills you.

Aimee-sensei claims I was under there for five minutes; I don't know if that's true, but all SHE cared about was that I was under longer than any of the boys, thus proving definitively what she was telling everybody all along: women are just BETTER than men. She pushed this point especially when we were talking to the Shugendō priest, who she trapped in a verbal corner and demanded for an explanation of why women are still not allowed to enter the holiest part of the mountain.

Once the shrieks of encouragement died down, the first thing I heard from the rest of the girls was "*extended stare* ..... YOUR LIPS ARE BLUE." I did not believe that for a second until I looked in the mirror and HOLY SHIT IT WAS TRUE THEY WERE SUPER BLUE and then I started to shiver and then I went back to the inn and got in the ofuro and I was still shivering after ten minutes of sitting in 104-degrees-Fahrenheit water.

Probably I shouldn't do that very often in my life.

That night the group was actually encouraged to get the craziness out of its collective system because this was probably the most laid-back place we would ever stay, so there was accidentally far too much sake and plum wine in my life and I MAY have decided it was totally okay for me to sneak into the men's ofuro at midnight because at the time I was feeling like a righteous champion of the war against gender segregation but I DON'T REALLY WANT TO GO INTO THAT STORY because that was ABSOLUTELY NOT ALLOWED. AT ALL EVER. So let's go with "I didn't actually do that."

Do you know what it's like to wake up in the morning with the only hangover you've ever had, realize that today it is your turn to assume the responsibilities of Program Assistant, and then attend a lavish formal Japanese breakfast that requires you to sit in seza position staring down a slab of raw salmon? Someone inadvertently took a picture of me doing exactly that. I look MISERABLE. No, I am not posting it. I'm posting these NICE ones instead. (Photo credit: Melanie Pawlyszyn).

After breakfast, we went on a hike through the mountains that followed one of the yamabushi trails. I think Zao Gongen took pity on me and suppressed my gag reflex as I groggily tramped up his mountain, trying (and SUCCEEDING!) to appreciate the beautiful scenery without retching all over the shrubbery. The path was tough, full of roots and rocks and steep slopes, and the more I exerted myself the better I stated to feel. Funnily enough, the least sick I felt was on a 50-meter-high suspension bridge that swayed ponderously underneath us. The whole village was visible from there, and the range of sacred mountains surrounded us on all sides.

Side-tracking for just a second, I wanted to show this picture of the yamabushi's traditional outfit. Strangely enough, pretty much every part of this flamboyant thing has a practical purpose -- for example, there's an odd little black hat you strap to your forehead, but which also doubles as a drinking cup. There is also a pelt that hangs down from the back of the belt so the yamabushi can sit down comfortably anywhere. Yamabushi are AWESOME, you guys. I wanna be one.

Shugendō practitioners have a practice where two yamabushi hold another off of a certain cliff, face-first over the edge. The one being dangled over that lethal drop makes a promise to Zao Gongen to improve him/her/their self in some way. If they don't swear convincingly enough to hold to their vow, they are pushed further over the edge. They are only pulled up again when their promises ring true. Sadly, Americans have a reputation for suing everybody for everything, so we weren't allowed to do this ritual. But I made a promise to Zao Gongen anyway, and talked to the kami continually as we walked. By the time our hike was over, I felt teeth-baringly, maniacally alive.

_{One of these cliffs is the one they hang each other off of!}

No. Effing. Regrets.

Um so. Apparently for a while there I forgot I had to write blog posts, and was happily trundling across mountains and shit not remembering that my task does not end with writing in my journal. Damn. Now I have to write about a LOT of THINGS.

SEPTEMBER 19-28

The Monday we returned from Hokyo-ji we moved from our temple hostel, Hidatsumesho, to a secular inn near To-ji, a Shingon (esoteric Buddhist) temple where we attended morning services to compliment our Shingon studies. Here is our neighborhood:

Here is what I thought of To-ji:

"The Shingon service is bizarre. The priests and laity are worshiping in the same place at the same time, but they are all just doing completely their own thing. The main priest sits the entire time with his back to the worshipers, his long flowing sleeves hiding the secret mudras only Shingon priests can learn and perform. Meanwhile, the laity chants sutras and dharanis. Even this, though, they do at their own pace -- some chant slowly, some at a breakneck speed; some just have loud conversations with each other in the middle of the service. They're almost all old people. At one point in the service , one of the priests brings out a small red back that supposedly contains Buddha relics of some kind, and people line up on their knees in front of the railing, a lot like communion in a Christian service. The priest touches the bag to their heads and their open palms while chanting something I don't recognize. After the service, everybody goes around the side of the building for tea and gossip. Basically I'm like, 'Okay, I guess I'm back home in Virginia now.'"

The second day we went to To-ji, I moved to the railing to be touched with the relic bag. The bottom of the bag was stiff, so I couldn't feel the shape of what was inside. It smelled earthy, like patchouli. After, I felt a lot more ... something. Clearer, maybe? More aware of my surroundings? Whatever the feeling was, it was unusual for 6:30 AM.

To-ji, incidentally, has a flea market every two weeks. But this is no ordinary flea market, my friend. No, it is simply THE MOST AMAZING FLEA MARKET I'VE EVER SEEN (and I've seen a few). It covered the entire grounds of To-ji and spilled outside its gates onto the sidewalk. They had EVERYTHING there. Food, handcrafted things, clothes, antiques, jewelry, books, art, phallic objects ... everything. I panicked. And I am not at liberty to divulge most of what I bought, as it was the majority of my gifts for people.

Saturday I decided I was tired of planning and meeting and rushing around. Ben and Jake and I started to wander about Kyoto aimlessly, but then decided to visit Fushimi Inari shrine -- the one with the endless tunnels made of orangey-red torii gates. It turned out to be a short, cheap bus ride away.

The place is so vast that over the course of six hours I did not even get to see the whole grounds. There were too many white people in the main shrine area so we ran away down some stairs and discovered a deserted graveyard straight out of a ghost story or possibly Spirited Away, the path to which was littered with half-buried, broken fox statues and offertory vessels.

Then we discovered dirt paths to nowhere. They took us up a hill, by a lake, past a bamboo grove ... and then back to the main Shrine path.

Ben left and Jake and I hiked up a bajillion stairs at the suggestion of an old Japanese man who stopped to bow at every altar along the way, whenever he wasn't accosting energetic couples to tell them to climb "yukkuri!" (slowly). At the top we found the promised "nice view," and it was glorious. So we sat there for a long time and I drew the cityscape.

In other news, Melanie and I disgraced ourselves by reflexively bowing to a young Japanese guy we had just had drinks with. It was really super fucking awkward and he was freaked out and we felt like doofuses and so on the way home we bought ourselves pastries at a Circle-K and defiantly ate them while walking to prove we were actually rebels.

SEPTEMBER 29-30

This entry begins: "I was sopping wet and full of wonder for such a large percentage of today that I had almost forgotten it was possible to live otherwise. Mount Koya was incredible."

We arrived on a Saturday afternoon and dropped our stuff off at a temple complex where we stayed with a bunch of other lay pilgrims. Then we were whipped off on a dizzying high-speed tour of Koyasan by Brian, who had a terrible cold but insisted on talking a lot anyway. First we visited Kongobuji Temple, which was huge and full of beautiful art. As per usual, we were given something utterly stupid like an hour to explore a place that deserved at least one whole day. I was about to lose it at any given moment as I was dragged bodily past dozens of gorgeous shoji screens and paintings and rock gardens and barely given the chance to stop and stare. We had to get to a Dharma talk on time. FUCK THE DHARMA TALK I screamed inwardly, I DON'T SPEAK JAPANESE. ....Well, they did teach me how to order at McDonald's and ask for directions. *facepalm.*

Then we visited the Great Stupa. Oh. My. Jizo bosatsu. It blew my mind. Inside were statues and painted pillars arranged to form a 3-dimensional mandala, at the center of which was a huge golden statue of Mahavairocana Buddha. I was effectively rendered speechless. I just sat in front of the altar staring. His eyes were terrifyingly alive -- the light made them shine like real eyeballs, and his facial expression was similarly terrifying -- in the most positive sense possible. He was so colossal, yet so calm -- exuding rolling waves of power that turned all my organs over inside me.

Then suddenly it was evening, and we were rushed to the gates of a gigantic cemetery (Okunoin), at the far end of which Kukai (also called Kobo Daishi), the founder of Shingon, has his mausoleum. He doesn't use it for being dead in, though. Oh, no. He's far too cool for that. He attained Buddhahood and entered into eternal meditation in 835, and has been sitting there being better than everybody else ever since. But seriously. This graveyard. I couldn't STAND how majestic and beautiful it was. It was Hokyoji's grounds times fifty -- massive, literally thousands of mossy crumbling graves, most hundreds or a thousand years old. Giant, weathered five-element stupas towered on both sides of the path, and little stone Jizos with their faces worn away huddled in the hollows of trees or stuck half-buried out of the dirt (every one, incidentally, no matter how worn or broken, had been adorned with a little red bib by a visitor). Everything was glazed with a thick coating of a vivid green moss which seemed to own the place.

Brian did not allow us to stop or take any pictures because we had to get to Kukai's mausoleum before it closed and I wanted to THROW HIM OFF MOUNT KOYA. The mausoleum was beautiful (though not as much as the rest of Okunoin), and we lit incense and candles and chanted him the Hannya Shingo (Heart Sutra). It's got to get old, you know? I bet Kukai wishes somebody would throw a performance of a Florence + the Machine song his way every once in a while. After that, we stopped by Aimee-sensei's ancestral grave (yes, of COURSE she comes from a famous ancient warrior clan who have a large and impressive grave plot on Mount Koya. Of COURSE she does) and chanted the Hannya Shingo there too, and donated the merit to her ancestors.

The temple where we stayed fed us entirely too well at every meal. I found it pretty suspicious, after Zen -- almost like we were on a movie set instead of a real temple. But then, we were staying as guests there, rather than trainees. In the morning we got up early (well -- not so early for us) to attend the Shingon service and goma ritual (a fire ritual where wishes are written on sticks of wood and then burned by a priest in a complicated ceremony). I sat in seza for over an hour. I INCAPACITATED myself. It took me five minutes to get enough feeling back in my legs to make a sake offering at the altar. I loved the service, though. The room was small, close, dark, and very smoky (the epitome of esoteric). There were a lot of monks there to chant, so the chanting was much better than at Toji -- it was mesmerizing.

After the service, we had free time. The shops were fairly homogenous and boring, so I took advantage of that time to return to Okunoin to make up for my wrathful deprivation of beauty the previous day. It was raining heavily; we had been told a typhoon was approaching. I took a raincoat but no umbrella. The Okunoin was even more beautiful than before in the rain. I touched everything I could, to ground myself in the moment and the place -- moss, puddles, the cracked faces of Jizos, the rivers running through the cracks in tree bark. I picked a clear spot in front of a fenced-in group of eleven great stone stupas, lay down on the soaking sponge-like moss, and let the rain soak every bit of me it hadn't found already. I just kept my eyes shut and lay there for a very long time, until I felt like the moss had grown over me, too. It struck me how perfectly beautiful and satisfying it would be to be dead in a place like that. I wish I could die there and never be moved.

I walked back so soaked that my clothes weighed me down. I couldn't even go into a store to buy lunch due to a (very Japanese) mortification over the possibility of dripping on their floor. So I bought some mochi and bottled coffee from a street vendor and went back to our temple to meet the group.

I had arrived at Koyasan in a state of isolation and crushing depression. I left feeling better than amazing. Koyasan is where I broke through to being able to FEEL Japan all around me, and I remembered that alone is essentially what I'm here for.

Yes, I realize this is an obscenely long post, but DEAL WITH IT.
...Please.

Brian and Eimi-sensei built up the tension for Hokyo-ji so much that, by the time we arrived, I was ready to call us badasses for making it through the first day. Much to my confusion, however, I did not feel like dying of mortification in the slightest -- despite the fact that training at Zen monasteries feels very much like how I imagine military boot camp. Hey Dad, you think you were a badass swimming through a pool full of sharks? Well, I did a few hundred prostrations the other day and sat in seza position every time there was a table in front of me. Beat THAT. I bet I've venerated more ancestors than you have and I've definitely eaten more takuan pickles. YEAH. BE proud.

So basically, we were lead to believe that the food was going to be made out of arsenic and pond scum and we'd never ever figure out the eating routine or how to use the oryoki (Soto eating utensils/bowls set) anyway and starve and we'd be beaten bloody if we so much as swallowed in the meditation hall. Well, good news: it was NOT that bad. It was not bad in any way, shape, or form.

DAY 1

We took the train on the morning of the 12th to a town called Ono in Fukui prefecture. On the way we passed Lake Biwa and many Princess Mononoke-worthy mountains. In fact, I knew the universe would not forgive me if I didn't listen to Princess Mononoke music while I gaped at them. So I did.

Three monks met us at the station, promptly ushered us into a couple of SUVs, and proceeded to drive us up a narrow mountainside road. The entrance to Hokyo-ji was flanked by Jizo (bodhisattva responsible for children and travellers) statues and a small Shinto shrine dedicated to the Kami of the mountain -- the reason for this is that every time a Buddhist temple is built, it is acknowledged that the land already belongs to a Kami, so a shrine is a way of gaining/confirming the Kami's approval of the temple.

Hokyo-ji's grounds are GORGEOUS. Okay? Gorgeous. No, you still don't understand. YOU. HAVE. NEVER. SEEN. This level of gorgeosity. Towering trees; hundreds of cracked little stone boxes of Jizos and other bodhisattvas and Buddhas scattered liberally around the place; everything that should be covered in moss IS. And the inside was no exception, although I almost hesitate to call it "inside" -- the architecture of the temple makes it almost unnecessary to distinguish between inside/outside. During the day all the doors and windows (of which there are more than walls) are open, so that there's a constant breeze wandering through the place and dragonflies are always flitting in and out without a second thought. I couldn't help but roll my eyes every time I walked through the hallway leading to the zendo (meditation hall) because of the view out its giant windows. I'm like, "Dude. No view is that good. PLEASE." And when I saw the view of the fog-shrouded mountains from the front courtyard? "PSH. THAT is a BACKDROP." You know you've reached critical Gorgeosity Processing Capacity when everything is so pretty you refuse to accept that it hasn't been Photoshopped. I swear I spent 50% of my time in between activities at Hokyo-ji hanging out a window or sitting on a step staring intently at the view and TRYING TO FORCE MYSELF TO ACCEPT that it existed on the same plane of existence as me.

(Top left is the building where the kitchen and eating rooms are located, as well as a shrine for Idaten, the kitchen god. Top right is the Zendo where the monks meditate).

The monks were all very welcoming and helpful, and not frowny and yelly like the Rinzai ones. There were eight of them, not including the Abbot, Docho Roshi. The first day we learned such things as how to wash our feet, how to brush our teeth, how to wash our face, and how to eat food substances out of vessels with utensils. All things we figured we already knew how to do. HA. HA. HA. That is all I have to say about that.

Gaze upon my bowls, ye clumsy, and despair.

The women had two surprises: we had been told by Brian and Eimi that we were going to have to meditate outside of the zendo, because women were not allowed in the room where the monks traditionally slept as well as meditated (although they don't sleep there now); we were also told that we would be sleeping somewhere at Hokyo-ji. But on arriving we were told that we would be sleeping at a lay retreat center a little down the road -- a huge building where we had all the feral geckos and cold showers to ourselves, plus a beautiful view of the stars. But! We were also allowed, despite our gender -- as far as I know, for the first time in Hokyo-ji's history -- to meditate in the zendo with the monks and the male students. That was pretty exciting, to put it mildly. As Docho Roshi later told us, he had left the matter to a vote among the monks, and the majority voted to let us in the zendo. Score one for AWESOME MONKS.

DAY 2

The next day, the 13th, I only had time for a Cliffnotes version of a journal entry. I include the highlights here:

-Woke up at 3:30 AM, driven to temple complex by monk in SUV. Morning zazen rocked. Didn't budge an inch the whole time.
-Breakfast iffy. Monks very helpful but Buddha bowls and utensils and cloths entirely too complicated and rituals too random.
-Samu (work/cleaning) disappoints Brian because the monks have us pulling weeds instead of cleaning toilets. Brian asks if they will make us clean the toilets. Monk asks "....why??" We don't end up cleaning the toilets.
-More meditation for AN HOUR AND 20 MINUTES. Legs do not fare well.
-Sutra recitations for morning service and dozens of prostrations. Chanting much more fun with monks present.
-Snack and tea AMAZING BANANA CAKE AND GRAPES DONATION from parishioners
-Lunch, BOWLS STILL ALL WRONG AND CLOTH ALL WRONG WITH THE FOLDS AND THE KNOTS
-More sutras, not enough room for prostrations and everybody gets too friendly
-Free time and I wander around the grounds gaping at the MOST BEAUTIFUL BEAUTY that looks like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke had a supermodel baby covered in moss and mountains and Jizo statues and tadpoles
-Monks make jokes. Language barrier does not prevent me realizing that these dudes are awesome.
-Dinner is least stressful meal because they have to pretend to the Buddha that they are not actually eating after noon
-More meditation that goes far too long and I have to meditate on pain and imagine my mind and my pain as bickering roommates inhabiting the dormitory of my body and that helps sort of but is a really weird image
-It bothers me that a group of people so obsessed with perfection of ritual would wash dishes with cold water and no soap and also no attention to detail.
-Back to our place and shower in the bathroom that sounds like an abattoir because of all the screeching resulting from showers that fluctuate wildly between arctic and searing
-Alex tries to save a gecko and it bites her. We name it Percival in retaliation.

This is what you see when wake up at a Zen retreat center at 3:30 AM. Only not blurry, because you are not a frustrating camera trying to operate in the dark.

DAY 3

I wrote this journal entry while sitting on the steps of the Buddha Hall looking out at a perfectly-preserved Edo-period peasant hut that for some reason Hokyo-ji has on its grounds, situated against the backdrop of the mountains, their peaks blurred by roiling clouds. You could almost pretend that the last 400 years never happened (if you're good at ignoring telephone poles).

During morning zazen, Docho Roshi unexpectedly broke the dark and silence in the zendo to tell us a story about how he came to be a Zen monk. I guess you could say it was a Dharma talk. He told us that when he was 19 or 20, his close uncle died, and he studied dozens of religions looking for answers. He couldn't understand through his grief how people could still want to talk to each other and laugh when death was so inexorable and interaction with others makes you lose your true self. He told us that silence and zazen were the best ways to know ourselves and stay connected.

After the usual sutras and breakfast, Alex, Jake, Addie and I were taken with two monks and Ray -- a former monk who spoke English and had come to stay at Hokyo-ji to facilitate our visit -- to do takuhatsu. Takuhatsu is the tradition of alms-collecting begun by the Buddha himself, which originally consisted of "begging" door-to-door for food, but which now consists of going from shop to shop and house to house in the town, chanting sutras and accepting money donations. However, they still wear the traditional Japanese takuhatsu garb -- black robes, a large straw hat, and wicked straw sandals that rub your feet raw and don't extend under your toes and suck up any water you walk over.

< This is the little shrine by the front entrance for Idaten, the kitchen deity. They chant him the Hannya Shingyo every morning.　I guess he likes that.

After we had puzzled our way through tying on the sandals, we piled into two SUVs again and drove down the mountain to the town. Jake and I were alone in a car with a monk named Kosho who didn't speak a whole lot of English. He told us in Japanese we were going to chant the Hannya Shingo (Heart Sutra), and then it was like an awkward car sing-along where only one person knows the words. Every once in a while we would feebly interject "hannya haramita shingyo" or "gya tei gya tei hara so gya tei!" But essentially we had to leave the merit-generating up to the expert.

Then we all parked, split into groups, and went around from door to door. As we walked we would sort of chant loudly and wordlessly, presumably to alert people of our presence. It was 7:30 so a lot of the shops weren't open yet, but a lot of people were up and about (trust the Japanese to not lie in till 8 AM like SOME lazy people we all know). Stopping in front of a house, we would stop and chant a disaster-preventing Dharani (chant for which the original meaning of the words has been forgotten). Eventually, someone would come out of the house and give a donation, and we would hand them a leaflet from Hokyo-ji. If nobody came out of the house, the monk would pronounce a benediction anyway and we'd leave a leaflet in their mailbox and move on. People on the street were very curious about the gaijin doing takuhatsu. I was reasonably convinced that most of the people who approached us on the street to give money were really doing so to get a closer look at us. One lady leaned over to peer under my straw hat. We asked Ray if people ever get annoyed having monks chanting outside their doors. He said a lot of people do. I know I'D appreciate it, even if it was at 7:30 in the morning, but that's just me.

After takuhatsu the monks drove us to a little wooded area with pure stream water to drink and a little hut where Jakuen Zenji, the founder of Hokyo-ji (~800 years ago), apparently liked to visit. There we sat on stumps or the ground and had tea and snacks with the monks and Ray, who translated for us. Kosho (the Hannya Shingyo car-chant-along monk) was very talkative and did a hilarious impression of Ben when the monks woke him up that morning. Kosho asked us all our hobbies, and when we asked him what his were, he said "being one with myself." He then explained that whatever our hobbies were -- athletics, writing, art, etc. -- whenever we work to become skilled at something, we become distanced from our true self. This made a lot of sense in my mind. It made me think of how I present a different facet of my personality to cater to the people I'm with, and how in large groups I feel uncomfortably incapable of being my true self, even in the privacy of my own head -- although I don't I necessarily want to commit to the opposite practice of silence and distance. Still, I had the most incredible sense of respect for his words, because they were so obviously full of experiential wisdom. Watching this big, tall, fun-loving-uncle-type guy sitting on the ground, perfectly at ease in his monk's robes and our presence; his perfectly contented expression as he talked, set against this unreal backdrop of tall, straight trees, burning with late-morning sunlight -- it was profound to realize what an incredibly COMPLETE person he was. I mean, this was a guy who five minutes earlier had been singing to himself in a baritone "Tiny Kangaroo Dance!" (Apparently a song he used to sing when he was three), and doing flailing impressions of people in our group. Oh, and in the car, asking me what the English word for "yatta" was, so we ended up saying "yay" about everything until the car stopped. And in the clearing, we kept seeing these little frogs everywhere and every time one hopped up all the monks would point and advise us sternly, "don't eat!"

So anyway the moral of the story is that monks are the coolest, because they can be profound one second and hilarious the next and also they get to live at Hokyo-ji which makes them the winners in my book. Also, in the kitchen later when we were washing dishes, one of the monks asked us "Why your teacher talks SO LONG?!" I nearly died.

Kitchen, where non-self and non-soap are one and the same.

Dining hall, with oryoki stashed on a shelf above the table.

Evening zazen that night was great. I was in a lot of pain, but after our discussion with Kosho I decided to try and meditate on the self. At first I got some really weird mental images -- I was trying to trace my idea of myself over time when I suddenly saw me holding a five-year-old version of myself affectionately in my lap. Then, somewhere, a bell rang twice and I took her face in my hand and turned it both ways and realized that she was bruised and dead. That was unpleasant, but it improved from there.
The shooting pains in my legs got really bad. For some reason, though, meditation is more productive for me when I'm in pain. I continued to try and trace my self. Somewhere in the course of my meditation, I managed somehow to incorporate the pain I was feeling into my conception of myself, so it became a part of me -- pretty much the opposite of what I was trying to do yesterday by imagining my pain as a temporary inhabitant of my body, separate from myself, sure to go away soon. This time, though, I surrendered to the pain in my legs and hips and relaxed into it. The hurting didn't go away, but somehow I became comfortable WITHIN it, and when the bell was rung, I really didn't want to move.

When I came out of this meditation, I felt like I had been given some kind of necessary jolt. I became a slightly different person entirely, and I think that's stayed with me. I finally felt like I was really THERE at Hokyo-ji, and the mountains didn't seem too perfect to be anything but a backdrop anymore. The view out the windows was beautiful, but it was REAL and present to me. I felt genuinely peaceful and happy and glad to be where I was. Sure, my legs hurt all the time and I got a max of 5 hours of sleep a night, but I realized that Hokyo-ji is the first place I've ever managed to feel completely at home after only a day of being there. Who would have thought that that one place would be a ZEN TEMPLE where you have to bow to a bodhisattva before you can so much as enter the bathroom and some of the stairs you have to go up sideways for reasons unknown to me and every meal is like disassembling and rebuilding a rocketship and you aren't even allowed to walk with your arms hanging at your sides?

DAY 4

This day was one of the most amazing, by far. The night before, our whole sangha of 8 decided that, in order to get the most out of our experience as possible and get into the true spirit of Zen, we would spend the day not saying a word unless it was entirely necessary (e.g., "What time is the evening service tonight"). Being silent among other silent people really heightens all your senses and keeps you in the moment. And I began to really understand Soto Zen's founder Dogen's teaching that practice and Enlightenment are one and the same. The most boring daily task at Hokyo-ji, done in silence, feels like a profound spiritual experience.

On this particular day I came to appreciate Hokyo-ji even more than before. In silence I could experience the miracle of the place to the greatest extent yet. I not only noticed the beauty of the architecture and geography more keenly, but also the beauty of their community. The whole day I was just filled with an overwhelming sense of fondness for the monks: joking, laughing, serious, chanting, meditating, everything -- and the temple: creaking floorboards, lingering smell of incense, strenuous ritual, difficult-to-open doors, everything. Just as I feel sullied and horrible when I'm surrounded by hateful, negative people, in the presence of the people at Hokyo-ji I felt peaceful and purified. Despite the fact that we could never have mastered all the necessary decorum required from us over just five days, I never felt stressed out when I did something wrong and was corrected. The correction was done with all compassion and understanding. Also, prostrations and sutras just started to feel FUN (something Docho Roshi, the Abbot, had previously claimed about the Oryoki at breakfast).

This is the Buddha Hall, where the magic happens; and by magic I mean "a lot of fucking prostrations and sutras."

While group II went to do takuhatsu, we were taken to the Zazen Rock in the back of a tiny truck by a sarcastic 37-year-old monk named Shingen who was not what I would call a safe driver. He stopped on the side of a mountain road and we got out to walk the rest of the way up to the cliff where the rock was located. The four of us broke our vow of chatter-less-ness to talk to Shingen, because after all he was a badass and we only had one more day to enjoy him. Along the way he would stop and show us things, make jokes, teach us vocabulary, and ask about where we lived. He picked up an angry praying mantis and handed it to Alex. Then he made us eat a plant (still no idea what it was). He told us he decided to become a monk after travelling all around Asia and the States and finding no answers.

The view from that mountain road was incredible, leading far down into a valley and up to high mountains swathed in churning clouds.

We took a narrow path through trees up to the Zazen Rock, where Hokyo-ji's founder apparently meditated regularly for 19 years. It was smaller than I expected, but the five of us could comfortably fit onto it and look down on the incredible view it afforded. In the valley below we could just make out the roof of the retreat center where the girls slept.

We asked Shingen questions about Zen and life and such, and he did impressions of Brian scolding Jake and Eimi-sensei talking on the phone and took pictures of us on the rock. I noticed at one point he had one of the Shinto protective amulets (omamori) I had noticed for sale in the Buddha Hall. I guess it's true what they say -- you really can't separate Shinto and Buddhism in Japan.

On the way back to Hokyo-ji Shingen stopped in front of the gates and conspiratorially told us we should hang out there for a while because midday sutras were at 11:00. Yes, we skived off the midday service with a monk. THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT.

After finishing our last full day at Hokyo-ji, I had SUCH FEELINGS. Namely, the feeling of I DON'T WANT TO LEAVE. I didn't want to part with such wonderful peace. It was the first time I've felt that kind of contentment -- the kind that isn't in danger of being taken away any second, because it isn't based on sense-pleasures. But what really puts the icing on the cake is that now that I've left, I don't want to go back. I miss it, but I'm okay with not going back. This may be the first time in my life that I've been able to feel love without attachment.

The next part of this story is fairly intensely personal, and not just for me, so I'm going to have to gloss a little. That evening, we had personal interviews with Docho Roshi where we were allowed to ask him a question. That was probably the most stressful part of our retreat, because there was so much specific, ritualistic etiquette for meeting with him that we were doomed from the beginning to forget something. It was also the first time we had talked to him face-to-face (although we weren't actually supposed to meet his eyes).
I'll be honest: I bumbled through the etiquette. I was incredibly tense. When I started speaking my voice shook. Halfway through his answer, I was sobbing. He seemed to be expecting that and had a box of tissues covered with a crocheted puppy-shaped cozy at the ready. I was mortified. I had a formal interview with a Zen master, told him something intensely personal, heard in return something intensely personal about him, was given advice, and CRIED MY FUCKING EYES OUT. Yes. That happened. My life is absurd.I cried to a Zen master about my life. And then he said "presento," and smacked me on the shoulder with the kyosaku. It was beautiful.

Later that night, there was a little "party" where we presented gifts to the monks and we all shared our reasons for being there (the monks as well as us students). The monks' stories were fascinating -- despite the fact that most Zen clerics in Japan today are the sons of priests, bound by family obligation to live the religious life, every one of these men was there by choice and not a single one for reasons other than the spiritual. One had been a policeman, one a school teacher, one a volleyball player, and one was sent to Hokyo-ji by his master to train because he kept falling asleep during zazen (TOO perfect). Then, unexpectedly, they gave us all a present: locally-made cloth folders inside which was written a certification that we had trained at Hokyo-ji, plus the same Shinto amulet I saw Shingen with earlier that day. It was the best thing they could have given us (aside from that smack with the Stick of Encouragement). I have rarely been that moved by people I'd only known for five days.

The next day we had breakfast and sutras and samu (work practice) as usual, but we had to leave by the late morning to catch our train. We had only half an hour to run around the place taking pictures, because it was forbidden to take any photos until that point (for which I'm grateful, or I would have gone mad being torn between my need to take pictures and my knowledge that that would have been an incredibly shallow and unfulfilling way to spend my time there). But god, it wasn't enough time. Here are some more photos of the interior and grounds I managed to take:

Then they rounded us up to take a group photo with the monks and Docho Roshi. Then they stood in front of the main gate and waved us off as several monks drove us off for the last time in their ridiculous SUVs. In front of the train station, we took extremely silly pictures with Kosho and Shingen.

Kosho explained the towel over his head and the weird facial expression thusly: "Bodhidharma!" (The first patriarch of Zen Buddhism, usually depicted as a terrifically grumpy Indian man).

Then we talked to them up till the last minute when our train came. Everyone felt so strange to be separated from them and from Hokyo-ji that our vow of silence sort of extended until we were far away on the train. At some point while I was sitting staring out the window I realized I was still holding my hands in my lap in hokkai join, the meditation mudra.

And I thought, oh. That's why I'm not sad. I'm taking Hokyo-ji with me, forever.

Last view of Hokyo-ji from the back of the car.

Although a variety of events have conspired to keep me from writing this post for two weeks -- no free time, lost USB drive, forgot travel journal, kidnapped by brigands -- today I say Fuck it I am ad-libbing this thing.

Two weekends ago, the eight of us plus Brian-sensei headed off to Myoshinji, a Rinzai Zen monastery where a two-day retreat for lay practitioners was being held. I would really like to describe it to you in rich and vivid detail, you know, set the scene so you could be just as in the moment as I was. Well what actually took place is that everything happened so comically fast, I am going to have to provide you with weird, disconnected, blurry details and you will have just as good an idea of what went on as I did while I was experiencing it. I would say close your eyes and let your imagination take over, but that would be awkward because then you couldn't read the screen, and you would probably just be watching The Last Samurai behind your eyelids and I'm sorry but that would be wrong.

Naia's Memory:

5-something PM. Arrive at Myoshin-ji. Find that we are late because Brian had to stop and explain everything along the way as we were walking, such as "This is a rock and the inscription says Myoshin-ji" when there was in fact "Myoshin-ji" written in romanized letters under the Japanese. Try to put on awkward straw sandals as quickly as possible. Find that they are designed so that they can be worn on either the left or right foot and as a consequence feel horrible on both. Run up stairwell while attempting not to let shoes make flip-flop noise. Enter meditation hall, shooed insistently by stern old ladies who thrust teacups at you. Rush to find a seat on meditation platform. Sit down only to notice there is a monk zipping by with a cloth to dust the platform in front of you. Barely finish noticing that before noticing that there is another monk running at you with a teapot. Accept tea, notice everybody is prostrating selves. Prostrate self. Unaware that the people who know what they are doing have stopped bowing, look up to see old lady frantically miming drinking at you. Drink tea. Meditate for thirty minutes. Get rushed out of hall to attend information session.

Attend information session which is conducted in Japanese with Brian translating.　Information session is patently unhelpful, both to us and to the bewildered Japanese teenagers also there for the first time. Get shown to small room which you are sharing with Alex (another girl from the program) and a terrifying lay woman who has been practicing at Myoshin-ji since the Buddha was an embryo. Attempt to decipher shouting and gesticulating of several lay women who do not speak English. Establish awkward Japanglish communication system. More yelling and commotion ensues from which we understand that we are all late for meditation again. Run back to hall, this time entering through a different door. Perform Three Prostrations so fast I swear nobody could have been doing it right but it didn't matter because if you're doing it slow enough to be right you're doing it wrong. Lots of clappers and bells happen. Thirty more minutes of meditation. Monk with large bamboo stick (keisaku) begins stalking around room.

At this point time slowed down to the point where I could actually notice things other than incomprehensible shouting and blurred Japanese people. The meditation hall was dark and totally silent. Across from me was a really intense layman wearing a track suit who could sit full-lotus with the pros. I swear he never twitched a muscle the whole time and I never saw him crack a smile the whole two days. While counting breaths and staring at a spot on the floor, I noticed a huge cockroach skittering around down there and briefly wondered if I should come up with a plan of action (inaction?) in case it decided to crawl up on me. It didn't.

The monitor walked with a strange cadence that was, oddly enough, perfectly suited to the stillness of the hall. If he had just sauntered around at a normal walking pace, it would have ruined the entire atmosphere of the place. Instead, he would step forward very quickly with one foot and then freeze, looking to either side while balancing on the ball of his foot, before taking a step with the other. In this way he was able to look individually at every meditator on each side of him and determine whether they needed to be whacked with the keisaku. Now in this lay retreat, nobody really got whacked unless they specifically requested it to help them focus (unless they were actually falling asleep or their posture was truly egregious). But even before we arrived at Myoshin-ji, I had decided to ask to be struck. I wanted to know what it felt like, and besides, getting thrashed by a Zen monk is not a thing that everybody gets the opportunity to experience. So when he came around to my side of the room, I put my hands together in a gassho to indicate I wanted to be hit. He stopped in front of me, held up the keisaku horizontally, and we bowed to each other. Then I leaned over till my head touched the platform, hugging myself with my arms.

He taps you on the shoulder once, first, to let you know he's about to strike you. Then he winds up like a baseball player and SMACKS THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF YOU. Twice. Then he does it to the other shoulder, twice. I have to say, I was wondering how much it would hurt, having heard the colossal cracking noise it makes. So yes, my discovery was, it hurt a fucking LOT. I straightened up we bowed to each other and he moved on, and it was the strangest thing: I. Felt. So. Much. Better. There was no more pain in my legs and the sting in my shoulders faded to almost nothing after a couple of minutes. And I could FOCUS. It was insane. The only thing is, I then proceeded to make the uncomfortable realization that the keisaku is kind of like coffee. It totally helps you wake up and focus, but it works so well, after a few minutes you're like "Man I need another one of those." There was a short break after which we meditated again and I asked for the keisaku that time too. The moral of the story is that I want a monk to follow me around with a keisaku every time I have to focus on anything, for the rest of my life. I am a little bit disturbed at how big a fan of it I was. And yes, you may now commence the BDSM jokes.

Then everything started to speed up again. The army has nothing on Rinzai temples in terms of efficiency. Scary old Japanese ladies start barking at us again, we brush our teeth and pee with a speed born of fear. The lay women are briefly super-impressed with us when they tell us we will have to wake up at 5 AM and we respond that we've been doing that every day for two weeks. Then we dive into some very thin bedrolls (these pillows do not have beans; I feel cheated. Instead they feel like they are semi-full of awkward pubic hair or something) and hit the lights. Alex and I have silent fits of hysterical laughter (for no particular reason) on the floor until the intense old laywoman comes back and gets in bed. About 20 minutes after we get in bed I open my eyes to see that the laywoman is sitting bolt upright in bed, her spine at a 90-degree angle to her legs, presumably meditating but all my sleep-confused brain can think is "JAPANESE HORROR MOVIE" (I mean give me a break my spine doesn't even do that). Then I got to sleep and wake up again, open my eyes; laywoman is walking across the room naked and squeaks when she sees me and I go "MAH! Gomen nasai" and hide under my blanket. After she is clothed she awakes us by turning the light on to its brightest setting and shouting "OHAYOGOZAIMASU" as if she were Thor, God of Thunder.

Then we go to the meditation hall, grab our zabuton (the round meditation pillows) and sutra books, and proceed out the door and across the temple complex in a long, silent line behind the priest, wearing yet another type of sandal that is designed to torment both feet equally. The moon is still out, and for some reason there are a ton of people out walking their dogs at 5 AM.　It is a bizarre and surreal scene. Tramp through parking lots and cut across lawns of buildings that don't look like they belong in a temple complex at all. Then we come to the Buddha Hall where we meditate some more and chant some sutras none of us can read because the sutra books they gave us are in hiragana. I become confused and think we're leaving at one point because there is a bathroom break, and when I follow people back I end up walking around the Buddha Hall three times behind some guys who are obviously doing it for a reason but I just follow them because I don't know what the hell is going on. More sutras. One enthusiastic man points enthusiastically upward for our benefit and I notice that the ceiling is Fucking. Amazing. It's a giant painting of a Chinese dragon hundreds of feet square, and it is so incredible I basically gape at it for the rest of sutras.

Then it is breakfast. The time we had all been warned about, because if you drop your chopsticks you have to burn them and make a donation to the monastery. These people have got fear down to an art. It makes me tired just thinking about describing the whole process of eating breakfast here, so this will be choppy:
Everything is done at 5x its normal speed!
Do not eat until you have donated some grains of rice gruel to the hungry ghosts!
Never ever put your chopsticks down until the head priest is done eating!
Do not put any of your food into a different little bowl than the little bowl it came in! (Head priest broke this rule!)
Do not ever let your chopsticks point toward someone else!
Do not make noise when you eat your excessively crunchy takuan (daikon radish pickle)!
Yes everything is pickled in Japan. DEAL WITH IT!
Eat ALL THE THINGS because if you do not you are a bad person!
Remember all complicated hand gestures for asking/refusing/stopping the influx of more food, because you will not talk!
Whatever you do, DO NOT BE THE LAST PERSON LEFT EATING! No one wants to be that guy.
Accept the fact that the people who serve food and wipe tables will do everything running and you will have to cling to your little table to keep them from accidentally taking it with them as they whizz by!

Fortunately for us we have been having zen breakfasts every morning since we arrived in Japan, just with slightly less rigid rules, so we were pretty ready. The turning point for me was when I realized you actually CAN drink the rice gruel. Before that I was panicking because they made it so watery at Myoshin-ji that I was struggling to figure out how chopsticks could ever actually do the trick.

After breakfast time slowed down to normal speed again. There was a farewell tea at which all the lay participants introduced themselves and we presented a gift to the officiating monks and were allowed to ask them some questions. Suddenly everybody was nice instead of glaring at you. It was otherworldly.

The strange thing about this whole experience, I realized after we stepped out of the temple blinking, dazed, and physically unbalanced, was this: I had not been stressed out at any point during this whole experience. I, who have in the past, through sheer force of will, contracted high fevers to get out of summer camp. I was fine the whole time. I just drifted through it. Even when Japanese people were yelling instructions at me and I was just standing there trying to figure out what the hell they were saying, even when naked old ladies were squeaking at me, even when I was getting hit with sticks and watching cockroaches scurry across the floor in front of me... nothing. I just remember observing everything with a detached air of interest. "Oh, some intense lady is yelling at me and pointing and I have no idea what she wants me to do? That's really interesting; I'm sure the situation will resolve itself momentarily." And you know what? It always did. So now I understand why Rinzai Zen demands that you do everything so fast. There is really no time to be anywhere but in the moment. I'm not sure if I exactly agree with this approach to life, but I definitely understand the reasoning behind it now. So I guess next time I'm freaking out internally because I'm at a fencing tournament and experiencing performance anxiety, I will hearken back to this and probably paste that terrifying laywoman's face onto my first opponent. And I'll be all "YO I'm not afraid of you!" But also "Thank you for prodding me along." Because that's the thing -- no one there was the least bit cruel. Through the scowls and raised voices and wild gestures you could easily sense that no one was trying to humiliate you. They just didn't hold your hand every step of the way, and they didn't sugar-coat anything. And I will always be extremely grateful for that experience.

Back to the present:

So, that was a long post, and totally unpolished because I am writing at Rinzai-speed to get this done. Yeah. But I had a lot more even than that to say; there just isn't ever enough time.

Tomorrow we're leaving for Hokyo-ji, a Soto Zen monastery, for a five-day retreat. This time we are training not with lay practitioners but with the monks themselves, and it is going to be much longer and harder than Myoshin-ji. Soto practice does not insist everything be done in fast-forward, but it places much more emphasis on complicated ceremonies for every daily action, so we'll have a lot to memorize. Also I'm pretty sure getting hit with the stick (in Soto called a kyosaku instead of a keisaku) is not on an optional basis at this place... but let's be totally honest I am more than okay with that. We'll be working in the garden there and also walking out with the monks to collect alms from people (which I am UNREASONABLY excited about -- anybody can attend a lay Zen retreat if they really want to but how many people get to go out and 'beg' with monks? I'll tell you who -- only people who have Eimi-sensei's mad connections with every important person in Japan. I think she is secretly related to the imperial family).

And now, some pretty pictures of Myoshinji's grounds and gardens:

See you in five days!