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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Back to Miami

I returned to Fukuoka Thursday, thirteen days before the official end of the retreat. It's been a mostly rainy weekend and I've spent a good part of it writing about my experience at Shogoji. I'll be posting some of that shortly, but in the meantime I wanted to share something unrelated.

Last night I took a trip back to the place where I grew up. I saw my old street, the houses where my friends lived. Like it was 30 years ago, I left home and walked to school. I didn't need to consult a map. The memory of the streets and the directions were still there in my flesh and bones.

And it wasn't a dream. You can do the same with Google Maps.

After you have Google opened in your web browser, type in your former address, hit return, then at top-left click Maps. You should then see a satellite photo of the surrounding area, with a pop-up box that includes a photo. Click on Street View and the pop-up reconfigures to a scrollable, 360 degree, photographic representation of that street. Click on the direction arrows to move north, south, east or west. You can also click-hold on the photo and by moving the mouse rotate your view.

Our house on NW 201st Street

Norwood elementary school

Our family church, what used to be Bethany Lutheran, now Grace United

I haven't been back to Miami since 1980. None of my family lives there anymore and I've lost track of friends. I sometimes wondered what the place looks like. Now I know.

Click the video below for appropriately nostalgic background music for your own search.

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What's next?

Now that my pilgrimage is complete, a few people have asked what I'll be doing next. You might not be terribly surprised that it doesn't involve English teaching.

Beginning May 31^st I'll be joining a meditation retreat at Shogoji temple in Kumamoto prefecture, right here on the island of Kyushu. The retreat is an annual event for overseas Zen students to practice in an authentic Japanese monastic setting. To learn most of what I know, you can have a look at the temple's English language web site here: http://www.shogoji.com.

Photo from Kumamoto prefecture website

I first learned about this retreat from one of the artists at our CD shop, Australian jazz pianist Tom Vincent, who visited with us for a day in Fukuoka on his way to Shogoji two years ago. While in Nepal I applied for a position, but as one of the requirements is a recommendation from a Zen teacher, and I don't have one, I wasn't really expecting a positive reply. I now count myself fortunate.

There appears to be little about the temple on the internet, in either Japanese or English. Two that I have found are here and here. The only other person I know of who will be in attendance is an American Zen priest, who appears to be acting as the guide for the foreign participants.

I won't be able to tell you much about my experience until after it's over. The temple apparently has limited electricity from solar collectors, so except for emergency phone calls, I'll be out of contact until mid-July.

It will be a bit of a change, from walking everyday to sitting everyday, but I'm looking forward to it, especially more hours of daily meditation and quiet mindfulness.

Enjoy the next few weeks. Remember me if you can. I'll be back here again in July.

_/|\_

gassho

Shogoji 2008 International Ango: Pt 1

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Buddhist Superhero

(Clicking on the pictures below should open larger versions.)

In the tradition of American comic superheros, the spoken word has had little power. Incantations, spells, charms – these were the tools of heroes of an earlier age. The modern hero's abilities are the frequent result of contact with nature unleashed: radiation exposure (Spiderman, Fantastic Four), toxic chemical spills (Daredevil) and genetic mutation (X-Men). A few have their powers conferred from aliens (Green Lantern), while a smaller number are themselves aliens living amongst us (Superman).

But there were at least two superheros who derived their power from magic words, both first published in the year 1940. One went on to fame, the other obscurity.

The best selling American comic book of the early 1940's followed the adventures of boy radio reporter Billy Batson, who transformed himself into Captain Marvel by shouting “Shazam!” The magic word was a neologism, an acronym of the ancient heroes from whom Captain Marvel derives his powers: Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury.

The other character whose superhuman abilities issued from the spoken word had a much shorter publishing history. By the 1950's he was already forgotten. But he had a most unusual mantra, a real one (if you believe in such things) dating back to the 5^th or 6^th century, one that is still used today by millions of people to summon the compassion of the celestial deity Chenrezig. An incarnation of this god is believed to be with us still today. His name – the Dalai Lama.

Long before Americans ever heard of the Dalai Lama, though, they may have heard of the Green Lama, the superhero alias of Jethro Dumont, a wealthy New York socialite who for 10 years studied in Tibet and through the recitation of the sacred mantra, Om Mane Padme Hum, transforms himself into a caped and hooded superhero.

You won't be surprised to find the stories of the Green Lama bereft of Buddhist philosophy or ethics. Few Americans in the 1940's knew anything about Buddhism or Tibet. What you'll find instead are folk bromides masquerading as Asian wisdom. “It is said good luck walks beside good people,” Dumont remarks to his Tibetan sidekick, Tulku, while viewing the fishermen of a bucolic New England village. A rapacious lender holds the mortgages on the village's fishing boats and hopes by preventing the fishermen from doing their jobs to foreclose the following day. Dumont observes under a sky of dark clouds that “Evil sails on speedy wings” before changing into the Green Lama to drive a massive school of fish into the nets of the waiting fishermen. There is no hint of misgiving about herding so many sentient beings to death. Especially not if it means a Merry Christmas for the villagers. For the Green Lama, it's results that matter. Even it it means a few bombs over Japan.

Should you care to sample the Green Lama yourself, you can download four mid-1940's issues from the public domain archival site Golden Age Comics. If you prefer paper to digital, then you might like to pick up the recently issued first volume of a planned two volume set of reprints from Dark Horse Comics.

Om Mane Padme Hum!

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Results

It seems I passed my first year art school exams.

Results were supposed to have been posted 19 March, after I had already returned to Japan, but I never heard from anyone. I even emailed the school office address to ask (though to be fair they were having some computer problems before I left and perhaps never recovered).

I know everyone was probably eager to leave on vacation once results were published and perhaps I was forgotten in the excitement.

Today, though, we got a message from Tsering, one of my classmates, who wrote:

"I passed in class also Jeff , he is better then me I think. He is 5th position or 4 th position, something like that."

While she may have remembered incorrectly about my rank, that I passed I feel pretty certain is an accurate recollection. And it couldn't have come at a better time. I'm off tomorrow on a new adventure. Have a peek at my companion blog for more: http://fullhenro.blogspot.com

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Sakura second helpings

Mutsumi and I had lunch in the park this afternoon, what we refer to as hanami, or flower viewing. There were a surprising number of people in the park for a weekday.

The forecast calls for rain this weekend, which means most of the blooms will likely be gone by next week.

Sayonara, sakura.

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