June 2nd

11:01 AM
Sesshin is not as bad as everyone is making it out to be. Although, maybe that is because I am half-asleep for most of the zazen. I try to stay awake in the morning, but it is practically impossible. Four hours is a long time to be sitting, especially when you just woke up at 3:45 after six hours of sleep. And to think that it will always be 5 hours from now on, since today is my last day as assistant tenzo....

At breakfast this morning, I finally got the right amount of food. Daisen cooked up some extra okayu (rice gruel). It was very nice with some brown sugar. After the meal, Docho-san announced 'we are having a problem,' - immediately my throat closed up, thinking that it was something that I did wrong, either closing my eyes during morning zazen, or having that cup of coffee while setting up breakfast yesterday, to which, Daisen-san said, 'ummmm... ummmm... This is a leetle beet nawt good-to.' But Docho-san continued, 'with insects in the rice field. We will skip zazen from 10:15-11 and meet in front of the blue barn.'

So, I took a 15 minute nap, grabbed some coffee, and we went out to the rice field with sticks in hand. We worked our way through the field, brushing each rice plant so that the bugs would fall off. They will keep climbing up, but we will just keep doing that, becausewe don't kill living beings .After working in the rice field for about 30 minutes, Docho-san announced that we could take a shower. This was really nice, since I thought that I wouldn't get that change. All in all, we missed 1 session of zazen. Now it's time to get back to the cushion.