Movie review: Angry Monk (2005)

An overlooked corner of modern Tibetan history is revealed in Luc Schaedler's Angry Monk, the fascinating story of Gendun Choephel, regarded now as one of Tibet's leading intellectuals of the 20^th century but once reviled and imprisoned for daring to dream of a society open to democratic development.

Disillusioned with a culture that worshiped tradition and feared innovation, Choephel left the stifling regimen of monastic life in 1934 in the company of Rahul Sankrityayan, an Indian scholar of Buddhism and communist activist for Indian independence. Traveling to India, Choephel stepped into a world of wonders, a land criss-crossed by trains, peopled with merchants and businessmen engaged in trade with the outside world, and united in throwing off British imperialism. Enraptured and eager to experience it all, Choephel shrugged off his monastic habits and began an inner exploration of sensual pleasure through tobacco, alcohol and women. All the while he was writing in his diary, painting, sketching, completing the first ever Tibetan translation of the Kama Sutra, publishing a pilgrim's guide to the sacred Buddhist sites of India, contributing reports on the outside world to an emigre newspaper, and beginning work on a non-religious history of Tibet.

Arriving back in Lhasa, Choephel found his reputation had preceded him and was promptly thrown into jail, tortured, and left to rot until being released only months before the Chinese invasion of 1950. With any hope for reform crushed by the arrival of Mao's army, Choephel entered an intense period of inebriation from which he never recovered, passing away in 1951 at the age of 48.

Swiss director Schaedler works matter-of-factly, tracing the travels of his subject from his birthplace in eastern Tibet through to India and back to Lhasa, weaving together interviews with Choephel's surviving contemporaries with voice-overs describing his own journey. Anyone interested in modern Tibetan history should not miss this film, especially as it is the only document about Choephel's life currently available in English.

• Director: Luc Schaedler

• DVD Release Date: September 2007
• Run Time: 97 minutes

+Review in Himal Magazine
+Critical review at Cinematical, including a reply from the director
+Angry Monk website
+Order DVD

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Dalai Lama to visit Fukuoka in November

Mutsumi is very excited. Too bad I'll be in Nepal.

For those that might be interested, the date announced here is November 4th, at the Kitakyushu Media Dome. According to this article, tickets for the event will be available from October. There is as yet no official mention of HH's Japan visit on the official website (English or Japanese).

A couple of news items in English are here and here.

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Dazaifu Tenmangu Sentomyo

The description in the local foreign language publication sounded interesting, so Mutsumi and I wandered off to Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine last night for the Festival of a Thousand Candles. The nearly empty trains were a clue that others knew something we didn't.


This turned out to be little more than Dazaifu's summer festival. There was little to see beyond the locals dancing, eating, and drinking. The advertised attraction consisted of three strings of candles hung on both sides of the path leading into the shrine, a pretty site but hardly impressive enough to justify the trip.


The relative absence of human beings, though, actually made for a pleasant evening out.


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Book review: Thank you and OK! (1994)

Do it yourself enlightenment

American Zen practitioner David Chadwick went to Japan in 1988, lived in a monastery for six weeks, taught English for two years, then went home and wrote a book. His description of monastic life is a fascinating account of a world about which little is written in English, the rest of his life less so. Chronicles of language teachers in Japan fill the cut-out bins of discount book sellers.

There have been some small changes in the twenty years since Chadwick trained at Shogoji, a Soto Zen temple in Kumamoto prefecture (which the author makes a thin attempt to veil by changing the name to Hogoji). A sodo (a dedicated mediation hall) and shuryo (study hall) have been added, and cooking is now done with gas instead of wood. But otherwise life on the mountain remains much the same. There is still no electricity, the kitchen is dangerously dark, poisonous centipedes are hunted with murderous intent, and practice remains remarkably sterile.

One of Chadwick's Zen mates, an American monk with a decade of Japanese Zen experience, confides that “the purpose of training in Japanese Zen temples isn't to help you along the path to enlightenment – it is to cultivate you into a refined and obedient Japanese priest for Japanese temples.” Having attended the 2008 training at Shogoji, this reviewer can verify that the purpose of the training remains precisely the same. (See my entries here on the 2008 Shogoji Ango.)

Chadwick's memory of an incident at the San Francisco Zen center is particularly revealing of the decline in Zen training. A gathering of senior American priests requested Katagiri-sensei, an important player in the introduction of Japanese Zen to the United States, teach them how to do dokusan, the practice of private interviews with students. Katagiri-sensei said he couldn't help them. That he had never been taught himself. That his teachers never taught dharma. They would have to figure it out for themselves, as he had.

There's certainly something to be said for being the source of your own enlightenment. The Buddha said as much in his parting message. But where, then, is the need for temples and priests?

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Athlete Wanted

Students for a Free Tibet has begun a new initiative to bring the Tibetan genocide to the attention of the 2008 Olympic audience. They are soliciting donations to pay for the following advertisement in the NY Times (click the photo for a larger image).



I think Americans can be justifiably proud that the organizers are advertising in US media. If you need someone to make a bold and brash move, ask an American. (Of course with one of the world's largest Olympic teams, they're statistically better off targeting the USA.)

Wouldn't it be wonderful to see an athlete on the medal podium pull out a Tibetan flag? Or in a live interview mention the suffering of the Tibetans? Bjork put her future Chinese earnings on the line by making a statement at a concert in March in Shanghai. Maybe your donation will help an athlete make the choice to make his or her own statement.


Donate
Students for a Free Tibet
Athlete Wanted


Not to brag, but just to let you know that I'm not asking you to do something I wouldn't myself, here's my email confirming my donation (click to enlarge).




Donate
Students for a Free Tibet
Athlete Wanted

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Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 6

It was suggested that by leaving the ango early I was avoiding dealing with boredom.

When we arrived so much was new and different and only after a couple of weeks would I fall into the rhythm and pattern of life at the temple and begin to experience the frustration born from lack of fresh stimuli. It seems to me, though, that I don't need to hang out at a temple to deal with boredom. It's what I've spent the better part of life dealing with. In fact I'd guess that's what most of us deal with – putting up with our jobs, with our homes and all the routine work that goes into maintaining them, putting up with the places we live, the commute to work, the paperwork at the job, office politics, etc., etc. I've dealt with my boredom in some rather unskillful ways, but my experience at the temple suggested that we would not be introduced to a method for managing boredom, but would be left to find our own way. Which is exactly what I'm doing in my life outside the temple.

In the end I was asking myself, what is the purpose in staying? To say that I had completed the full ango? You don't need to finish a mediocre film or meal to know that it's not likely to get better. To fulfill an obligation to the other ango participants to practice as a group? I liked the people I was with and can understand that some might prefer I stay, but impermanence is after all one of the central tenets of Buddhism.

Someone compared the ango to a ship and the participants to a crew. Only working together can the crew sail the boat to its destination. What was left unsaid was that though the group may sail the boat to its destination, everyone must walk ashore on his own.

Thank you and OK!
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 5
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 4
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 3
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 2
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 1
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 0

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Movie review: Words of My Perfect Teacher (2008)

Portrait of an ordinary guru

This is a film about a Buddhist guru and his western followers, a Canadian engineer, an English fortune teller, and an American filmmaker (the same who made this movie). What you'll find at the end of nearly two hours with this group is that the guru is the most normal person among them.

This is especially remarkable for a man who in his native Bhutan is revered as a god and who, if he let it go to his head, could lord it over his western students, who being in need of someone to tell them how to manage their lives have already given over to him much of their own intellectual and emotional independence.

The guru, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche (aka Khyentse Norbu), is in Europe and North America one of the most well-known teachers of Vajrayana Buddhism, the form of the faith practiced in the Himalayan countries of Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, and north India. He is believed to be the reincarnation of a famous teacher and comes from a family with a long line of famous teachers. It is not his pedigree, though, that has earned him notoriety, but his films. He began his movie career working as an assistant on Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha (1993), before going on to make The Cup (2000), and Travelers and Magicians (2003).

Khyentse Norbu finds himself, though, somewhat reluctantly stuck with the job of guru. “I hate my profession,” he laments. “So much hypocrisy, pretense, so much cultural hang ups. I wish I'm just an ordinary person.” So, ordinary is how he acts, to the great consternation of his students. He cooks his own meals, he drinks, he goes to football games, he shows up late, or not at all. As the Canadian computer engineer remarks, “If he's enlightened, why doesn't he act like an enlightened being?”

Shot in the early years of the new millennia, filmmaker Lesley Ann Patten introduces us to Khyentse Norbu while in residence in London, following him to the World Cup in Germany, the United States immediately following the attacks on the New York Twin Towers, and finally to Bhutan where we see the guru in his greatest splendor, attended by throngs of devoted worshipers. Along the way, Patten makes a detour to Los Angles to explore the guru phenomenon with two unlikely subjects, Gesar Mukpo, a recognized reincarnation and the son of one of the first Tibetan gurus to teach in the west, and action-movie star Steven Segal, also a recognized reincarnation (of more dubious distinction). Mukpo would rather play basketball than guru and gives Patten a quick course in recognizing bogus claims to enlightenment. A good teacher, he says, invites challenges to his authority; it shows the student is growing. Segal notes that the thousands that have challenged him did so only because of their vapidity. (The subject of finding authentic teachers and the dangers of the guru-student relationship come up later in the DVD bonus material, a 30 minute interview with Khyentse Norbu.)

The film concludes with the guru going into a three month meditation retreat and the students returning to their homes in Europe and North America. Director Patten got enough material to complete her film, a remarkably fresh portrait of a modern Buddhist teacher, and everyone seemed to have enjoyed their time in Bhutan. None of the students, though, declare their independence or seem to have come away wiser or more capable of managing their lives.

• Director: Lesley Ann Patten
• Studio: Festival Media
• DVD Release Date: February 26, 2008
• Run Time: 103 minutes

Official web site (currently unavailable)
Amazon

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Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 5

Our American Zen priest helped facilitate communication between the Japanese monks and the visiting foreigners. He kept us informed, made sure we knew where we were supposed to be and what we were to be doing. He was, in all practical respects, the engine that kept the ango moving. It seemed to some of us, though, that he sometimes tried too hard, that he was trying to be more Japanese than the Japanese themselves.

He set us up early for anxiety by stressing in his opening orientation that while Westerners tend to make allowances for beginners, Japanese expect perfection from day one. That may seem shocking to some of you. It was to me. But in a sense, he is correct. Japanese are anxious perfectionists. They'll go to great lengths, and worry to extremes, about getting it right – whatever “it” might be. But only the most insensitive parents, teachers, coaches or tutors expect their charges to be perfect from the very start. Japanese do make allowances. What is important is a proper attitude, to have sincere yaruki, to gambaru. It's not so much that you have to get it right the first time; you have to be seen to be making the effort to get it right.

Within the cultural and religious context, though, it wasn't my place to question or argue. Inside a week most of us were sleeping poorly after nights filled with anxiety laden dreams, nightmares in which we found ourselves called on to do something important for which we were not prepared. One of our number appeared to be something of a perfectionist and for a few days could be found walking with head down, snapping at us when communication was necessary. Another was subject to nocturnal communication, verbal manifestations of dreams about some of the stressful situations in which we found ourselves. One night he seemed to be making tea and wanted to know what to with the water. Another night he sat up and gave a self introduction.

The unrealistic level of expectation was exacerbated by an inadequate system of instruction, itself a product of having too many learners and too few teachers. The plan was for the first four days to pair the foreigners with a monk, who would teach each of us one job. The foreigners would thereafter be responsible for teaching each other. Normally new monks might not do these jobs for a year or two after entering a training monastery. They'd have ample to time to observe and absorb before being called on to perform, and there would be a large number of senior monks on whom they could call for instruction, revision and assistance. We had none of those advantages and after week two it became clear that the foreigners hadn't learned their jobs completely and were in many cases passing on erroneous information. The low point in the process was a lecture to the group in which we were admonished for not properly learning our jobs. The lack of feedback from monks was acknowledged, but we were nevertheless made to feel as if we were poor students for having not grasped our lessons properly from the outset. The delicious irony was that our instructors were each teaching from their own playbook. That very evening we gathered for a complete rehearsal of morning service only to find the monks contradicting and correcting each other. So much for getting it right the first time.

It seemed to me by week three that I might as well be practicing zazen at home in Fukuoka. I hadn't been with Mutsumi for more than 6 weeks of the previous 10 months and if what our teachers were telling us were true – that the practice of zazen is more than what takes place on the meditation cushion, that zazen is the daily practice of mindfulness in all things – then I thought I might as well be practicing at home with Mutsumi than with the men and women at Shogoji. I might as well be cooking and cleaning for her than for the monks. I might as well be practicing my thangka drawing and painting than tea ceremony. Living with Soto monks and sharing their daily routines was an interesting experience. I'm glad I did it and knowing what I do now I'd make the same decision. But I wouldn't chose to do it a second time. At least not under the same conditions.

Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 6
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 4
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 3
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 2
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 1
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 0

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Oita city Seki Butsu

The last few days have been a small whirlwind of activity, beginning Wednesday when I accompanied Mutsumi to Oita city for a bit of work she had to do evaluating a couple of banks. I was along for the ride and for a chance to visit two more of the prefecture's 12^th century stone sculptures. Several years ago we ventured down to the village of Usuki to see what is perhaps Japan's most well known collection of Buddhas carved in mountain stone outcroppings.

Dating to the same period, and equally mysterious in origin, are two more sets of carvings just on the edge of Oita city. The structures around the carvings are of recent construction and are intended to protect the rock from rain and sun. The Iwayaji carvings consist of one near-complete Buddha or Bodhisattva and the heads of a couple more. The color on the bottom of the robe of the near-complete figure is still noticeably red. To the right of this carving is what now appears to be a collection of frames, small alcoves that probably once housed statues that have since been stolen or destroyed in one of Japan's numerous religious pogroms.

Following the signs around the site takes you on a five minute walk to the Motomachi carvings, a bit grander and better preserved than Iwayaji. The main building houses a large Nyorai Butsu surrounded by some less well preserved guardian deities and Bodhisattvas. The neighboring structure houses only the faint remains of something human-looking.

It was a beautifully hot sunny summer day and walking around rice paddies following signs to sacred sites took me back to my recent trek around Shikoku. I was happy this time to be able to share it with Mutsumi.

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Indulge your aspirations

You may have seen this in the news recently. In an article for the Harvard Business Review, researchers looking at consumer behavior patterns find:

"People who unduly resist self-indulgence suffer from an excessive farsightedness, or hyperopia—the reverse of typical self-control problems. Rather than yielding to temptation, they focus on acquiring necessities and acting responsibly and they see indulgence as wasteful, irresponsible, and even immoral. As a result, these consumers avoid precisely the products and experiences that they most enjoy. Their hyperopia can inhibit consumption in ways that are bad both for their own well-being and for marketers’ bottom lines. We don’t advocate trying to motivate consumers to make ill-considered purchases, of course, but marketers can help customers make appropriately indulgent choices that they’ll appreciate over the long term."

The full article is here.

The misdrawn conclusion is that you should buy that Louis Vuitton bag now and not regret it later. The truth is buried later in the report, in the adage "Nobody on his deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office." That is, happiness is not about spending large sums of money. It's not about acquiring luxury items. Rather happiness is, as Joseph Campbell used to say, in following your muse. In doing things you find meaningful. About being open to new experiences and having the courage to explore them. That may sometimes require a substantial financial investment. But it need not.

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Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 4

One of the more interesting aspects of the ango was having a chance to interact with Japanese monks. I studied and lived along side Tibetan and Bhutanese monks in Nepal, but in Japan I've only had the chance to see them in more formal settings.

It may come as a surprise to some, but monks are just like you and me. Some are monks because they want to, others because they were in some way compelled or coerced. The monk in his early 20's at Shogoji told us straight out one night in the bath, after asking him about his experience as a monk, that he hated Shogoji, he hated the food there, and he hated zazen. Then he asked us who was the stupider, Brittany or Paris? He himself preferred Paris, but Brittany was a close second.

This young man is still in training and he was feeling the stress of having to complete his own studies, prepare for two retreats following ours, plus support and assist in our ango. He took robes (as ordination is known) in order to be able to take over his family's business of running the neighborhood temple. Do to the circumstances of history, Japan's network of Buddhist temples served as a kind of national registry to which every family had to belong. The registry was abolished only after WWII, but the temples still exist, as do long-held ties of families to temples, which are run much like businesses and passed down from father to son. This young man said that when his father recently passed away, one of his first official religious duties was to preside at his funeral. It was, he said, the first time he was glad to have entered the monastery.

The other Japanese monk was about my age and less forthcoming on his reasons for leaving secular society, where he was an engineer as well as a school teacher in east Europe. He was the most organized and efficient person at the temple, the man to see if you had any important questions or something that needed to get done. While he put on a serious face when working, he enjoyed joking about. In the bath he would squirt water from his hands and teach the foreigners Japanese slang. There was for days afterwards on one such occasion jokes about practicing the shakuhachi. The smell from him each morning, though, was strong and worrisome. The foreigners marveled at how he was able to function after so much alcohol and so little sleep.

There was one other fellow I got to know a bit while sewing in Nagasaki. He was working in the kitchen, just behind the door where I sat with about two dozen grandmothers sewing robes and rakusu. During his free time, this friendly 30-something, a family temple priest with a wife and child, would plop down next to me and pass the minutes and sometimes hours chatting with the only foreigner in the room who could carry on a conversation in Japanese. We talked about everything and anything in no particular sequence, just whatever popped into his head. There were many questions about life at Shogoji; he seemed surprised we were living in such primitive conditions. He was most concerned at this time in being able to watch all the Indiana Jones movies on DVD before going off to the theater to see the newest release.

The other monks at the Nagasaki temple we didn't get to know so well. There were a lot more of them, which meant less time per person, and we didn't spend so many hours together. Most of them were busy supporting us, who were spending the days sewing. The one chance we had to socialize were the nightly after parties, which some of my Tibetan monastic friends would be amazed to attend. The range of alcoholic refreshments was ample: beer, happoshu, shochu, sake, umeshu, and wine. Like everything else at the temple, they were given a fixed time and slotted into the schedule. They didn't drag on, as these things often do, until you had to excuse yourself. Everyone still had to get up at 05:00 the next morning and so they ended fairly promptly by 23:00.

Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 5
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 3
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 2
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 1
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 0

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Movie Review: Amongst White Clouds (2006)

Among the hermits: where cameras never go

Amongst White Clouds is an amazing document of the human adventure revealed not only in it's principle subject, but also in the making of the film.

First-time American director Edward A. Burger went to India in the late 90's to study Buddhism but found a greater connection to China. A book about Buddhist hermits pulled from an Indian monastery library led him north in search of an ancient way of life. Arriving in Beijing, he studied Chinese and began asking around for contacts that could introduce him to a mountain meditator. He ended up in the Zhongnan range of Shaanxi Province, where he lived and practiced for four years with one of these hermit masters. In 2003 he took a small film crew into the mountains to interview half a dozen of these practitioners and document their lives.

What comes across clearly in the interviews is that all of these men and one woman are serious about perfecting themselves, revealing their true natures and escaping from the suffering of mundane reality. What isn't always clear, and what many refuse to discuss, is their motivation for removing themselves from society and monastic communities. Besides footage of fetching water, working in the garden, or working on their huts, there is very little film of actual spiritual practice, no tantric rituals, no sitting zazen, no chanting of mantras. The recluses exhibit a few noticeable differences. Some live alone, while others reside in pairs or small groups. Some have electricity and running water. Others lead sparser lives, for example refusing to accept offerings of food. But still, we don't really get any idea of what kind of practices these hermits engage in – do they meditate most of the day? On what? Do they copy sutras? Recite mantras or the names of the Buddhas?

The most interesting questions are left unasked. How is the daily life of a mountain recluse – which consists in meditating, working around the hut, preparing the day's meals, washing, and perhaps a little study – different from the life of a village lay practitioner? What exactly is “the practice” and why is it necessary to isolate oneself from society in order to do it? Once realized, what then? Is there any obligation to return to society, or is “practice” an excuse to escape from the pressures of living with other people?

Despite the lack of probing questions, this remains a film worth watching for the light it shines on a little documented corner of the human experience.

• Director: Edward A. Burger
  
• Studio: Festival Media
• DVD Release Date: June 26, 2007
• Run Time: 86 minutes

Interview with director Edward A. Burger
Official website

Amazon

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Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 3

It was in the third week that I first considered leaving the ango. Others might imagine the lifestyle difficult, but except for the daily grind of sitting seiza through ceremonies and meals, the schedule and the activities were not excessively challenging. Maybe its my age and I'm getting used to living with difficulties and inconveniences. A younger me could not have put up with a lot of the stuff that went on in a typical day at Shogoji. It may also be that seven months in Nepal and India, plus five weeks walking around Shikoku toughened me up a bit. The biggest challenge seemed to be finding meaning in what we were doing.

We sat zazen every morning, except for days ending in 4 and 9 when we got up at five instead of four and sat only a perfunctory 10 minutes. Many days this is all the zazen we sat. The rest of the day was taken up with rehearsing the morning, noon, and evening services; practicing how to eat formal meals; practicing tea ceremony; sewing robes; cleaning the temple and temple grounds; and attending lectures about how to sit zazen. The main focus of the ango seemed almost entirely on form – how to dress, how to sit, how to stand, how to enter and exit rooms, how to talk, how to eat, how to use the toilet, how to take a bath, how to sleep, how to clean, how to ring the bells and strike the drums. All of which is very interesting and especially useful for those planning to become - or thinking about becoming - monks. After a few weeks, though, it left me feeling empty.

I was completely compliant in the process. I took up every request gratefully. I never complained or pulled a disappointed face, even after poor management of the scheduling left me with kitchen duty for seven of the 22 days I was at Shogoji. (In fact I was told after announcing my intention to leave that I had been a positive influence on the ango.) It wasn't so much what we were doing or what I was asked to do that made me want to leave. It was the absence of context that left me feeling hollow, that left me feeling I was doing things only because that's the way they're done, not because doing them leads to anything more than doing things differently. There were no inspiring lectures about Bodhi-mind, compassion, or awakening the heart of a Bodhisattva. While there were hours of practice moving around the temple, ringing bells and banging drums, there was no explicit instruction in cultivating mindfulness. Perhaps that was intentional. Perhaps we were supposed to be able to come such understanding on our own. If so, then maybe I'm the fool for not having gotten it.

Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 4

Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 2
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 1
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 0

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Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 2

The weather when we arrived at Shogoji was wonderful. Not too hot and little rain. But by week two we were living inside a cloud. Even when it wasn't raining it was wet and colonies of mold and mildew could be found growing on the cloth wrapping of our bowls.

Our day started at 04:00 with the beat of a drum and the ringing of a bell. We then had 15 minutes to put away our bedding and wash up before a 40 minute session of zazen. That was followed by morning service, breakfast, daily cleaning, and formal tea. There was often a short break before work, which took us up to the midday ceremony and then lunch, after which we had a longer break of about 90 minutes. More work in the afternoon broken up by an informal tea break, then evening service, dinner, bath, zazen, and lights out at 21:00.

The work hours, called samu, were intended as periods of outdoor labor, a kind of meditation-in-action during which we would be weeding, raking, pruning, or chopping wood. There were a couple of days of this, but because of bad weather and other events we spent most samu at lectures or sewing rakusu. The making of the symbol of the Buddha's robes is a special interest of our leader from Alaska, who scheduled us to participate in a three-day rakusu sewing circle in Nagasaki. In preparation, we spent about a week of samu getting a head-start on our projects so that we could complete them during the event.

We also practiced chanting and how to dress and carry ourselves for takahatsu, the traditional practice of begging for alms. Because Shogoji is located at the top of a mountain, a car is required to get from the temple to nearby towns and cities to practice takahatsu. This meant only a few of us could go at any one time and because of the poor weather takahatsu was canceled several days running. Three of us, including me, didn't have a chance to do takahatsu until we arrived in Nagasaki for our sewing event. I was a bit nervous to begin with but after a few moments lost myself in the rhythm of the chanting. I understood then, as I began to understand on the pilgrimage, one of the appeals of the clerical life - a tremendous level of respect from complete strangers.

Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 3
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 1
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 0

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Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 1

I returned to Fukuoka 26 June, thirteen days before the official end of the retreat. I'll explain why in a future post, but for now I thought I'd start with a bit of background.

I was the last foreign participant to arrive at Shogoji on the afternoon of 31 May. Altogether there were ten of us, two ordained monks and eight laity. The temple is currently home to three monks, two Japanese and one Spanish. (I should note, I suppose, that Japanese Buddhism is a bit confusing when it comes to distinguishing between monastics and priests. I will henceforth refer to all of them as monks, except in cases where I am sure they also function as priests. Please forgive the imprecise usage.)

We were there for an ango (literally, “peaceful dwelling”), the traditional rainy season retreat for monastics, a three month period of study, work and meditation. Shogoji's international ango has been shortened to forty days to accommodate the busy schedule of foreigners. Participants are accepted as full members and are expected to participate as if ordained.

Most of us arrived with experience of temple services and ceremonies, including those from the Anchorage (Alaska) Zen Community, where our leader for the ango, Koun Franz, is resident priest, as well as from Zen centers in the US midwest and Pacific northwest, and from South America. I believe I was the only who had to learn it all from scratch.

Our first ten days were set aside as a training period, during which time we learned how to live in the temple, from waking to sleeping and everything in between. We also began studying to take on temple roles, learning how to ring bells, beat drums, chant, and move about during services and ceremonies. There was a series of lectures on the practicalities of sitting zazen – preferred temperature and lighting, size specifications for cushions, how to fold your legs and hold your hands, how to get to and from the cushion, how to do walking zazen between bouts of sitting – in addition to another explicating the daily schedule of the monastic.

Besides learning the three daily services (morning, noon, and evening), we also rehearsed for a number of special ceremonies, such as the official opening of the ango, our first entrance into the sodo (where we would sleep and sit zazen), a special ceremony for one of the foreigners who would begin the process of full ordination at our ango, and a robe-taking ceremony for myself, in which I would be conferred with a rakusu, a bib-like robe, as well as a dharma name. (If you'd like to see a bit of the rakusu ceremony as performed at Shogoji, video from a previous ango has been posted here and here).

Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 2
Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 0

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Movie review: The Zen Mind (2006)

Half-baked intro to Zen

Filmmaker Jon Braeley did a couple of things right with this one-hour documentary on Japanese Zen Buddhism. He hired a skilled shakuhachi player for his soundtrack and as cameraman was able to take advantage of some wonderfully photogenic locations, including Sojiji, one of Soto Zen's main monastic training centers.

It's too bad he didn't get a decent scriptwriter or a narrator able to pronounce Japanese.

If you know absolutely nothing about zen, you might learn something from this film, though you're just as likely to get the wrong idea. The film begins with titles superimposed over monks doing zazen: "Zen. From the Sanskrit word, Dhyana. From the Chinese word, Chan." In fact it's the other way round. Zen is the Japanese word for Chan. You might also get the idea that zen has a lot to do with home and garden design. You surely won't come away understanding how zen is different from other forms of Buddhism. In fact you might not even suspect it has anything at all to do with Buddhism.

There's a lot of blather about one pointed concentration, freeing the mind, non-attachment, emptiness, becoming one with nature, living in the moment. But these ideas are tossed into the pot without rhyme or reason, like someone making a stew with whatever they picked up out of the refrigerator.



There is a short section on the technical details of doing zen (how to fold your legs, how to hold your hands, how to breathe), as well as demonstrations of formal, monastic style zen. But I really doubt anyone new to zen would be able to do much on their own with the material presented here.



The best parts of the films are interviews with zen roshis from both the Rinzai and Soto traditions. Unlike the narrated script, which is full of the platitudes you might find in an episode of Kung Fu, these gentlemen are quite practical and down-to-earth. The Godo Roshi at Sojiji (whose name is mistransliterated as Dai Tow) explains that satori, or enlightenment, is not a special power or state of being. It is simply becoming yourself. There is, he explains (contrary to the narration), no such thing as a mind without thought, that as long is there is mind there is thought, there are sense impressions. This is the nature of mind. The important thing, he stresses, is to accept what is, without fear and without favor.

Unfortunately, the interviews with the monks and roshis account for less than one quarter of this film's 60 minutes. Anyone seriously interested in zen would do well to skip this film and instead find a good book, or visit a nearby temple or zen center.

(Note that the 5-star reviews at Amazon are from people with only one or two other reviews, most often other products from people who worked on this film. Looks like promotion from friends and relatives.)

• Director: Jon Braeley
• Studio: Empty Mind Films
• DVD Release Date: August 28, 2006
• Run Time: 60 minutes

Official site
Amazon

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Movie review: How to Cook Your Life (2007)

Getting it right: perfection in intention

This delightful and insightful film from German director Doris Dorrie (Enlightenment Guaranteed) demonstrates, in the tradition of great Buddhist teachings, the marvel of life that is and always has been right under your nose, right at your fingertips, right there waiting for you to really see it, really feel it, really smell and taste it.

Ostensibly a profile of American Soto Zen priest Edward Espe Brown , for 30 years the head cook of the California Tassajara Zen Center, the film is in the end more about how we relate to food, and ultimately how we relate to life. In Japan's Soto Zen tradition, cooking is more than just feeding the monks. It's about close attention to detail. It's about respect for the produce of the Earth. In the process, its as much about preparing yourself as it is a meal.

13th century Japanese Zen master Dogen elevated the position of cook within his monasteries to near the importance of the abbot. He saw in the handling and preparation of food a means for cooks to practice mindfulness, and through careful attention to detail maintain the health and morale of the monastic community. He wrote a treatise on the subject, Instructions to the Tenzo, that is still studied in Soto Zen monasteries. In fact you'll see in the film some of the cooks at Tassajara studying this very text.



These days Edward Espe Brown leads cooking, health and meditation seminars in the US and Europe, at which much of the footage for this film was shot. Director Dorrie doesn't shy from showing us more than the wise, Zen-master side of her subject, including segments in which Brown loses his temper with his students, as well as with a plastic wrapper and a bottler stopper. As he remarks to a class at the beginning of the film, he may have been practicing Zen for 40 years, but he's still a human being subject to nervousness and anxiety at the beginning of each new retreat. He notes as well that he still makes mistakes, that mistakes are part of the process of cooking, as they are with life. Perfection, he adds, is to be found in the effort.

While not a kinesthetic subject, Dorrie does a good job of keeping the viewer's attention by mixing up shots and breaking the film up into thematic units. Except for a small diversion on the homeless and a woman who survives by living off supermarket discards, Dorrie remains tightly focused. The understated jazz soundtrack is perfect accompaniment to themes of spontaneity and authenticity.

You won't come away from this film with a handful of new recipes, but you might have a new respect for cooking and the practice of mindfulness.

• Director: Doris Doorie
• Studio: Lions Gate
• DVD Release Date: May 6, 2008
• Run Time: 93 minutes

Official Website
Amazon

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