So, tomorrow is my birthday. My first birthday at a Japanese Zen monastery. It should be interesting. We have a visitor coming that usually brings sweets (little cakes, juices, etc), and the other guys here are making a cake for me! :)
After that, there is a sesshin from August 1-5. We still haven't decided how we will handle that. Usually, there is no sesshin in August, because of the heat. However, since Docho-san is not here, we are going to do one, but we might not do a full 15 hours. Some have suggested to do two 5-hour blocks, omitting the middle block (when it is the hottest). However, they suggest to go outside and work for 2 hours during that block, which would be horrible, since we still only eat 2 meals a day. 2 meals a day, 2 hours of work outside in the heat, 10 hours of sitting with no air conditioning, is probably unmanageable. But, in zazen everything becomes manageable.
The day after sesshin, August 6th, will be a free day. So, I will have time to gather all of my stuff together to leave the next morning. I will leave early (6am) on August 7th to walk to the bus stop and catch the train in Hamasaka. I bought my train ticket today from Hamasaka station to Kansai International Airport. It cost ￥５１５０ (~$48 US).
After Public Storage makes their automatic withdrawal from my bank account tomorrow, I will have less than $10. Aside from the bank, I have a 20 dollar bill, so I will have less than $30 to my name. It seems like I am always living strapped for cash.
When I get back to the states, I will have a few weeks to enjoy air conditioning, and figure out how I am going to pay for UW, where I will live, fix my laptop, learn Perl, and countless other things I haven't even thought about yet.
But for now, I will just sit silently. Just another bug crawling around the forest. The enchanted forest of Hyogo Prefecture, Japan.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Sesshin otsukare sama deshita
July 1 to July 5 was another 5 day sesshin. Yes, this means that I spent 15 hours in meditation and didn't talk to anyone on the Fourth of July. Lame...
After the sesshin, everyone drank a decent amount of beer. 3 of us stayed up until after 1 AM watching the movie Sunshine, which, by the way, is pretty good until the last 30 minutes or so. I was tenzo the day after the sesshin, so I had to wake up 4 hours later to start cooking breakfast. Waking up at 5, breakfast had to be prepared by 7:30, because a guest that came just for the sesshin had to be back in town early to get back home. Somehow, I was quite late with the breakfast, I didn't finish until 7:45, even with a couple of the other guys' help setting up the table. Not only was I late cooking the breakfast, but I also forgot that one of the guys was fasting and still served him food. To make up for it, I ate all of his food as well. The head monk was quite pissed off at me. Everyone went to the beach that day, but they suggested that I stay back, so that I would "have enough time to make dinner."
We actually wound up having two free days after the sesshin, the second of which was an O-Hosan, where there is no tenzo and no obligations to do anything. Everyone wound up going to the beach again, so I got to tag along this time. It was really neat. We went down to the coast of the Sea of Japan and set up a big tarp next to one of the small cliffs. I was the first to swim out to the ocean and found a large group of rocks. There was one spot where you could jump off of the rocks into the water from about 15 feet up. This was pretty fun. Fun, something I haven't had much of since being here at Antaiji. Later on, I swam to some caves I saw and checked them out. It was pretty neat to swim inside of caves. :)
We have a discussion on a particular book every week here at Antaiji, and two nights ago was my turn to lead the discussion. I had prepared the talk for about 5 hours over the course of 3 weeks, whereas most of the other guys take less than an hour the day of to do it. The head monk got really T.O.'ed about the stuff I was talking about, because he didn't understand me (didn't see the connection to the text), and hence disagreed. At one point, he told me to stop talking about this certain thing, because I was wasting time. I tried to tell him that I was building up to make a point. But then, by the time I got to the end of the section, my point finally became clear and he was agreeing with me. He has been very nice to me ever since. He actually gets into a lot of disputes with everyone here. Possibly, he has a big head because he is the head monk, but he's only been here for a year and is actually leaving Antaiji for at least a year (maybe forever?) sometime next week - he is committing to stay a year at another monastery (Sougenji).
Aside from all of this stuff, I have begun to dabble in more secular interests lately. I am reading Operating Systems Concepts in order to gain a deeper understanding of how operating systems work. Although I am only reading that so that I will be able to read The Design and the Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System I have recently developed an obsession with FreeBSD. Their design philosophy and organization structure are incredibly sexy.
After the sesshin, everyone drank a decent amount of beer. 3 of us stayed up until after 1 AM watching the movie Sunshine, which, by the way, is pretty good until the last 30 minutes or so. I was tenzo the day after the sesshin, so I had to wake up 4 hours later to start cooking breakfast. Waking up at 5, breakfast had to be prepared by 7:30, because a guest that came just for the sesshin had to be back in town early to get back home. Somehow, I was quite late with the breakfast, I didn't finish until 7:45, even with a couple of the other guys' help setting up the table. Not only was I late cooking the breakfast, but I also forgot that one of the guys was fasting and still served him food. To make up for it, I ate all of his food as well. The head monk was quite pissed off at me. Everyone went to the beach that day, but they suggested that I stay back, so that I would "have enough time to make dinner."
We actually wound up having two free days after the sesshin, the second of which was an O-Hosan, where there is no tenzo and no obligations to do anything. Everyone wound up going to the beach again, so I got to tag along this time. It was really neat. We went down to the coast of the Sea of Japan and set up a big tarp next to one of the small cliffs. I was the first to swim out to the ocean and found a large group of rocks. There was one spot where you could jump off of the rocks into the water from about 15 feet up. This was pretty fun. Fun, something I haven't had much of since being here at Antaiji. Later on, I swam to some caves I saw and checked them out. It was pretty neat to swim inside of caves. :)
We have a discussion on a particular book every week here at Antaiji, and two nights ago was my turn to lead the discussion. I had prepared the talk for about 5 hours over the course of 3 weeks, whereas most of the other guys take less than an hour the day of to do it. The head monk got really T.O.'ed about the stuff I was talking about, because he didn't understand me (didn't see the connection to the text), and hence disagreed. At one point, he told me to stop talking about this certain thing, because I was wasting time. I tried to tell him that I was building up to make a point. But then, by the time I got to the end of the section, my point finally became clear and he was agreeing with me. He has been very nice to me ever since. He actually gets into a lot of disputes with everyone here. Possibly, he has a big head because he is the head monk, but he's only been here for a year and is actually leaving Antaiji for at least a year (maybe forever?) sometime next week - he is committing to stay a year at another monastery (Sougenji).
Aside from all of this stuff, I have begun to dabble in more secular interests lately. I am reading Operating Systems Concepts in order to gain a deeper understanding of how operating systems work. Although I am only reading that so that I will be able to read The Design and the Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System I have recently developed an obsession with FreeBSD. Their design philosophy and organization structure are incredibly sexy.
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