We wake up around 4:50 a.m. and we would crawl out of our bunk beds, in the cabins uphill from the monastery. For me it took a lot of effort, never in my life being naturally inclined to wake up early. I’m not quite human yet at this point, and probably wouldn’t be for another couple of hours. The sky is still full of stars, and there is frost on the ground. It’s hard on my knees, climbing down the flagstone pathway to the main building, armed with a rather weak flashlight. If I wasn’t chilly, or grumpy, or anxious to get to the zendo in good time I would have appreciated the view of the stars in the early morning, when they were out. But the schedule begins upon waking up and it doesn’t stop.
We must be in the zendo by 5:25 (or 4:55 once March started), ready to begin morning zazen (sitting meditation) at 5:30. We do zazen for two periods of 35 minutes each, with a ten-minute period of kinhin (walking meditation) in between –about 80-ish minutes total. As I mentioned, the zendo itself, is chilly at this hour, and the silence shared by dozens of meditators is punctuated by the sounds of the heaters turning on, rattling and clanking, as if there were hundreds of mice crawling about in the walls around us. The lights are very dim. For the first few weeks I struggled just to stay awake during these morning periods, and started to wonder what was wrong with me, as it didn’t seem to affect the other new residents as consistently. But it is what it is. I also felt very self-conscious about how much I was surely nodding my head and snapping back to sit up. After sitting, we had a morning service, which involved different chants, including the Heart of Perfect Wisdom Sutra, which is the core sutra in virtually all of the various schools of East Asian Buddhism. Then, we did prostrations toward the altar. By 7 a.m. we finished up, and moved on to the next part of the day.
During February, morning zazen would be followed by an hour of academic study in the dining hall. There, each resident would take up whatever text they were reading to deepen their knowledge and understanding of Buddhism (or whatever spiritual tradition they belonged to). I was almost always struggling to keep my eyes open while I inched through Thich Nhat Hanh’s book “The Heart of The Buddha’s Teaching.” Tea and coffee were both blessedly available.
Starting in March, this same hour would be dedicated not to academic study but to Body Practice (which in this case was yoga), or Art Practice (which could be virtually any artistic medium each resident wishes). Both of these practices are to extend their meditative mind into other activity beyond the cushion.
After that, breakfast in the dining hall at 8 a.m. This usually consisted of a kind of hot cereal, and fruit salad. Breakfast was always delicious after being awake and active for nearly four hours beforehand. And by then the sun has just risen over the Catskills and come streaming in through the windows of the dining hall, illuminating the potted plants and flowers on the windowsill, making the salt and pepper shakers on the large wooden tables sparkle. It is very pleasant when that happens. The gloomy mornings on rainy days did not diminish that feeling for me either.
Before you go somewhere like a monastery, you may have certain expectations of what it is like. I know I did. Some of them are confirmed, while others are totally upended. One thing that surprised me was how loud the dining hall could be during mealtime. The whole room is abuzz with conversation, something I assumed would not be the case. Another thing that I didn’t realize would surprise me until I witnessed it was that everybody eats together, regardless of their “rank”, including the abbot and senior teachers. I would sit side by side not only with my fellow new residents, but also the monastics as well. We’re all just people, and I greatly appreciated that. It gave me the feeling of what I imagine “agape feasts” of the early Christians would have been like.
Caretaking
After this and breakfast clean-up, we would do “Caretaking”. This was a period after breakfast that is devoted to some simple task that is to be performed in silence, for roughly an hour. It could be anything from cleaning the toilets, to vacuuming, to polishing brass (and this place has many altars, so there is plenty of brass to polish), to sewing, to cleaning and replacing the bedsheets, to filling the soy sauce bottles and salt and pepper shakers in the dining hall. It would change every day. Of course the purpose of this was to do the work as mindfully as possible, to put your whole self into whatever it is you were doing. I have a long way to go in that regard, considering basic menial tasks are often my favourite time to daydream and get lost in my own ideas. I had to, and still have to, learn to reserve that kind of thinking for other more appropriate occasions.
What I felt most special about this though, and which is implicit in the act of mindfulness, is how you relate to the task, and to the thing you’re taking care of. That’s the heart of it, right in the name, Care-taking. It’s one thing to be chopping carrots oh-so mindfully, and being aware of how much pressure you’re placing on the knife, but I think it’s important to think about the carrots themselves. This period turns simple tasks into a way of relating to the inanimate world around you as if it were alive, as if there was no meaningful separation between you and your environment (which, of course, there isn’t). We must take care of the grounds that take care of us, say the monastics. Even if those window-screens are not living sentient beings, it does change the way you scrub the dirt and dust off of them when you endow them with some kind of life of their own. They were, at the very least, made by another living being somewhere, somewhen, and it’s the chance to show respect to people who mined the materials, manufactured it, sold it, shipped it all the way to the monastery, installed it. Perhaps that’s just my own idiosyncratic way of interpreting care-taking, but I found it helpful to think of it that way.
After that, we do two more hours of work, but the silence is lifted and we can speak more freely (although we should still work mindfully). Then, lunch, then an hour or so for people to shower or rest, then more work in the afternoon (in fact work probably took up the majority of our time in the day), then dinner, then evening zazen, then bedtime and lights out at 9:30.
There were variations on the schedule, so it never became unbearably monotonous. Wednesday evenings were open to the public to come and sit, and then we’d have milk and cookies afterward (just before bed, to boot). Thursdays we might have a more open discussion with Shugen Roshi about some aspect of the teachings. Almost every weekend there was a retreat of some kind planned, which residents would attend alongside folks who had come in from the city, or from further afield. Sundays there would be a service in the morning (like Sunday mass, but 2 hours longer), and then from Sunday afternoon to Tuesday afternoon the schedule was lifted, and residents could have a little more freedom to do their own thing, take care of their personal affairs, go on social media, etc.
Liturgy
Obviously while meditation is at the core of the Zen tradition, one thing I appreciated is the ritual aspect, which is infused throughout the monastery’s daily rhythms. It’s powerful, and moving. The meditation period begins and ends with the sound of the kesu, a huge bowl-shaped gong. When it’s struck it creates a clear and pure tone, ringing throughout the zendo. However, other percussive instruments are used as well, including a woodblock to keep time during chanting, two small bells (or chimes, I’m not sure), and a great round drum, struck with a deep, resonant, heart-rattling, goose-bump-inducing BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! If this practice is all about “waking up”, they sure use every tool in their repertoire to make it happen! Each percussive sound is supposed to bring us back to the present moment, like a heartbeat. As I mentioned, we do several chants. Before breakfast and lunch we chant a gatha (a kind of short verse) to make ourselves mindful of where we are getting our food from, and expressing our gratitude for it–basically a way of saying “grace” before a meal (an imperfect analogy, but I think you get the idea). It’s not a prayer to anyone or anything in particular, but it is still deeply religious, and also simply another way of making ourselves more mindful of our eating. Maybe it’s just some vestigial Catholicism in me, but it does satisfy a deep desire for some kind of liturgy. We’re creatures of ritual after all, whether we know it or not–so why not do it on purpose? And with GUSTO?!
So anyway, that was basically the rough shape of my life for those weeks spent at Zen Mountain Monastery.
However, the schedule would change again in the final week of February, when we would turn the dial up on our practice, and participate in the week-long silent intensive, known in Japanese as sesshin. More on that in the next post…
Liam Volke 