My 20 Girlfriends

So, I guess I haven't written on here since the last sesshin. A lot has happened since then, and Antai-ji has an entirely different feel.

By breakfast time on the day after sesshin, about 10 people had left. The abbot and his family went to Europe to lead some retreats and do some travelling. Most of the Germans also went back home. Now, there are only 5 people living at Antai-ji. Of course, I am here, there is a Japanese monk (committed to stay for 3 years), a Canadian monk (who has been here for a year) who leaves in mid-July, an Australian lay practitioner, and an Austrian lay practitioner who has recently committed to stay at Antai-ji for the next 3 years.

After sesshin, we had two free days in a row - it was almost like having a real weekend. The first free day was Oo-Hosan, which means that you have absolutely no obligations, but there is no guaranteed food. I wound up going down to Hamasaka where I got a haircut and ate Ramen for breakfast and lunch. The second free day was a normal Hosan, which means that everyone has to clean out the Hondo, and you are required to attend the two meals. Hosan is called a free day, but really, it is not quite so free.

After the two free days, we had three days of work. The samu (work) schedule has been reduced, and now we finish work at 12, which is really nice. So, a normal samu day consists of 4 hours of meditation, 3.5 hours of work, three meals, snack break (between breakfast and lunch), and a tea meeting. This leaves us with about 4 hours of free time per day, which is great. I have taken a few 1-hour naps during that free time, which almost make up for the fact that we wake up at 3:45.

Yesterday we had a One-Day sesshin. This means that there is 10 hours of meditation (broken into two 5-hour blocks), two meals, and free time after the second meal which ends around 3:45 PM. So, although the day begins out pretty rough, you wind up having most of the afternoon and the entire evening to yourself. At the end of the day, we watched a little bit of a Bob Dylan documentary and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou while drinking a little bit of Asahi beer and some Japanese-style snacks. The Japanese guy didn't understand anything that was going on, so he wandered off after the first 45 minutes or so.

Today is Hosan. As I already said, Hosan is not much of a free day, and I actually wound up working about the same amount that I do on a normal work day. I slept in until 6 - yayyy!!! And had to be down in the kitchen by 7 in order to help prepare breakfast. I am tenzo-in-training, so I have to watch what the cook is doing, and in a few days, I will have the responsibility of cooking for everyone. This is actually really exciting, because in a traditional monastery the tenzo is a highly revered position and only given to a person who has been living at the monastery for many years. In other words, it is a very senior position. But here at Antai-ji, we don't have too many people, so everyone will assume this responsibility on a rotating basis.

After breakfast, I went with Daisen-san (the Japanese monk) to let the chickens out of their 'barn' for a little stress relief. Although they left the barn, they didn't stray too far, which surprised me. After we let them wander around and eat the bushes for about 20 minutes, we put them back and I began to clean out their bedding. Their old bedding was essentially wood chips and had started to get very soggy with chicken shit - so it was time to replace it. I removed about 15 large bushels of bedding and put them in the compost heap. The compost heap is pretty far away from the chicken barn, so I got to drive one of our trucks back and forth - my first time driving a car with the steering wheel on the right side of the vehicle. After I removed all of the old bedding, I drove out to the baseball field and collected grass cuttings into the same bushels. I put all of this new bedding in the chicken barn to make the chickens happy.

I am taking good care of my 20 girlfriends. ;)