I stumbled into Zen a little over a year ago. One of the things that initially got me into meditation was reading some rationalist accounts of people’s first retreats. They said it was valuable, but also that it was hard in a way they didn’t want to forget or diminish. But they didn’t say in what way it was hard or what it was like. So I thought it time to pass it on, by sharing what my year of retreats has been like. (Spoiler: it was hard.)
Two Weekend Retreats
I first found a local group that looked promising. I had wanted to sit with others; I had a vague sense that this would be a good practice. I had recently read Henry Shukman’s memoir One Blade of Grass; I had a vague sense that Zen might be interesting. I showed up for the introductory hour and was shown all about how to bow when entering the zendo, how to get up from the zabuton and the different bells, and so on. The zabuton is but a square meter of thin black foam you get to rest your body on. All legs (and arms) inside the square: they lie tight, one after the other; keep the front clear for walking. A lot of practical details and a little on how to sit: like, keep your eyes open, resting on the floor in front of you; your hands resting in your lap, left over right, forming an oval. This is called zazen. In the zendo you all sit on two rows along the walls, nothing like the classroom style layout I had been imagining. Shukman never mentions this! There are officers with different roles, they sit at both ends of the rows and help run things. The zabutons are black, the cushions are black, you’re asked to dress in dark or preferably black clothes. Everything is austere and made of unpainted wood. It’s beautiful in a way. In Rinzai you face the people sitting across from you, everyone in towards the room. At the front there is an altar with a small buddha statue. But it’s not the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, we’re told. It’s some other figure, a Buddha of Wisdom or something. He’s considered one of the practitioners, sitting with us facing the room. He gets served tea first during tea ceremony. Then at the end when I was expecting meditation instructions, the guy in the robes told us “well we haven’t got much more time, so let’s pretend this is the last six minutes of zazen.” Then he rang the bell three times and we sat in silence until he rang the bell again six minutes later, and with two wooden clappers, clacked twice—and we got up. That was it.
I signed up for what would be my first retreat, a weekend zazenkai from Friday to Sunday. Before that I figured I better go to one of the weekly sits and get a better feel for what it was actually like. Luckily I was able to make time for it right before leaving for vacation on the Thursday afternoon of the national election on my way to my fiancee’s party’s party. The shoes were all neatly stacked in little rows at the entrance so I figured I better do the same with mine. I bowed on the way into the zendo, found a spot on the next available zabuton so as to leave no gaps, bowed again in front of it, and tried to do everything else I was told. I sat quietly and gazed across the floor towards the other people when the bell rang three times, and as the sound of the last strike faded, what replaced it was silence. Anxiety gripped my heart. It flooded my chest, whole body really. I was to sit, silently and without moving, on this cushion for the next 25 minutes. My heart pounded so hard I could not breathe through my nostrils, I had to sit there with my mouth hanging open; panting. Gasping for air. I wanted to get up, run out of there. So, so badly. I closed my eyes. I don’t remember how long this went on for, but after a while my body relaxed enough that I didn’t have to awkwardly bail—and eventually, the first sit was over. We got up and did kinhin: a slow walking meditation in a long lockstep line, as a five minute break, then there were two more sessions of sitting. These went much better, and I felt mildly better about the whole thing. But I was still left with the feeling: oh my God, what have I signed up for. 48 hours of this?
I sat religiously every day for twenty minutes during the following vacation leading up to the zazenkai. I got off the bus and walked for ten minutes up a gravel path through some fields to a farm house. One of the regulars at the center had renovated an old barn to be this beautiful zendo, there was a row of those prefab boxes they put up for construction crews where we would sleep, and his family was leaving so we could have the main house at our disposal for cooking, eating the shared meals, and resting between sittings. After an introduction in the zendo for the newcomers, we shared an informal meal in the main building. I immediately hit it off with a guy, same age and occupation, whom I’ll later come to know as Oryō, also at his first Zen retreat. Standing in line at the serving table he commented “look, there’s a bowl of parmesan, how fancy.” We both took too many spoonfuls of what turned out to actually be salt on our stew, ruining it. At the dining table we were kind of laughing, kind of embarrassed to have been undone by our own greed. The teacher for the retreat was a very serious-looking German man called Shingen. He lived at a monastery in the US for years under a Japanese Zen master, and now spends five months of the year at one known in Japan as “the devil’s dōjō.” He sat down next to us and announced loudly, “I thought it was parmesan,” pointing at his bowl of ruined stew. The two of us exploded laughing. I’m still not sure he knows why.
Shingen joined our laughter and soon the whole table was laughing with us. A shared laughter of giddy excitement and trepidation.
The first third or so of my stay was great. The stress and agitation of everyday life gradually thawed. I sat with a tea on the porch in the sunny, if cool, autumn weather. I discovered that when you can’t talk, or even have eye contact—you’re not supposed to really communicate at all—it cuts off a lot of the stress of social interaction that can make things awkward. But there still is interaction: I’d hold out the tea kettle after pouring my own water, and the next guy would take it. Or he would not, either way neither of us would thank the other, or refuse, or signal. I found it strangely intimate and liberating: I felt I couldn’t really be rejected; either my offer was accepted wordlessly, without acknowledgement, or it wouldn’t be—and that was also fine. As I sat there I found I could enjoy my tea on the porch with the other person, in a way made impossible if we were to chit chat.
On the first morning I woke to the sound of people talking outside. The bell is broken, I overheard. No wake-up call then. I got up and began putting on my clothes in the darkness. Why is no one else getting up? Wait, the bell is broken? It was completely silent. I dug through my bag to find my watch, which I’d stowed away with my phone and other worldly belongings when I got there—and wasn’t really supposed to use during the stay—to find out it was barely past midnight. Lights out were at nine in the evening, so I might have gotten a few hours’ sleep—it’s not easy to fall asleep so early. Should I go back to bed? How will they wake me without the bell? I can’t stay up for another four or so hours. The bell can’t really be broken, can it? I tentatively lay down again to consider my options. Before I knew it I awoke to the sound of the bell.
Despite a rocky night with little sleep, by the time we were sitting in the near darkness of the early morning zendo a little past five in the morning, I was feeling wide awake. As a night owl, I have had a lifetime of rough mornings and usually don’t feel fully awake until far into the day. But here it was different, I was not just not-sleepy, I was shockingly, staggeringly awake and full of energy, which would last the whole rest of the day—the whole retreat, and even a while after I returned home. I was a little worried going in, that the complete silence and the ten hours a day of sitting would be tough somehow, but they were fine. I enjoyed it. There was a pleasantness to bare existence.
At one point I could see the floor breathing. It was pulsing up and down, but not in sync with my breathing. I held my breath to check; it continued on undisturbed. At another point, time appeared to stutter.
Then my legs started hurting. That’s another thing Shukman doesn’t mention. Your legs fucking hurt! Like the most excruciating pain of your life hurts. There’s something that happens to your body after sitting crosslegged for hours at a time, where the urge to move slowly ratchets up, and a searing pain starts to build. It is like your body is, at first politely asking, then yelling and eventually screaming at you. It turns up the pain until it makes you move. But the thing is, you’re not supposed to move. Certainly not get up until the bell, but you’re not supposed to even readjust. This I would come to know might be the whole of the Zen teaching. The pain steadily dialing up, you not being allowed to move—or not allowing yourself to move—until the bell. But something has to crack. Something will crack. I’ve been sitting since before dawn, I have no idea what time it is, except that the sun has gone down again and we’ve already had four rounds of sitting in a row—there can’t possibly be another round of sitting. The guy in the robes across from me sees me suffering and announces something encouraging, addressed to no one in particular. I don’t catch a single word. The bell does eventually come, but I wait for the clacker. Only one clack. That means we’re doing another round of kinhin, and after that, at least one more round of sitting. Five in a row this evening. I want to cry.
The next morning is better. My legs are rested after a night’s sleep and they don’t hurt as much; I’m able to be more clearheaded. When I scan the sensation in my legs it doesn’t seem so bad; the badness of it is hard to find. But it does feel bad and there is suffering. When I try to locate the suffering, I find that I can’t. It’s ambient, almost like it’s in the air. How I can even know the suffering I’m experiencing is caused by the sensations of pain is not at all clear. Weird.
The informal meal afterwards is great. Everyone’s been through something, although no one quite sure if it was the same as the others. The next two retreats I go on have the same fight. I barely remember any details of the sitting during my second zazenkai. Whereas the first one had rolling hills covered in stunning morning mist, the second was held at a rented chapel in the city. There is no accommodation this time, so I have to take the train in and out of the city every night and morning. In my memory it’s only a smeared weekend of miserable pain. At one point my posture has completely collapsed, my body is hanging on its ligaments, drooped over itself, legs splayed out and can barely even be called crosslegged. It gives me some way to rest despite the pain. I desperately try to “accept” the pain. If you stop wanting it to go away, apparently it will go away. A woman across from me is crying silently. It seems cathartic. When she wipes her tears with a handkerchief, the jikijitsu shouts from his spot at the far end of the room to leave it. I’m too empty to cry. I drift in and out of sleep until the bell. I stagger up, using more arms than legs. I stand there swaying, waiting to be able to walk again. Everything hurts and I’m exhausted. Waiting on the train Saturday evening with my fiancee who had been in the city with friends, I remember telling her: if I’m ever doing anything like this again, I’m asking for a chair.
Sunday morning I’m back on the zabuton. It’s still miserable. You get three meals a day, which is the only thing I look forward to. When the jikijitsu claps twice to indicate the session of sitting is over we get up with our bowls held in both hands and walk in two lines to a single long table, so that everyone sits in the same order as on the zabutons. They send a large pot of food down the middle and each person grabs however much they want. It will be served twice, so you can better judge how much you want, but at the end it’s expected that you finish everything you’ve taken. Then they send down the tea, which you use to wash out your bowl with your fingers before drinking it. Sitting in a regular chair and eating this hot, nourishing food is heaven. I eat slowly and carefully, mindful not to miss a single bite. A woman next to me rests her spoon in her bowl when taking a break from eating. They never tell you all the rules. I’ve never seen anyone do that: she’s going to get called out. She gets a minute. The jikijitsu is generous today. The spoon is still there. From the far end of the table the jikijitsu announces to no one in particular that the spoon should lie before you, between the bowl and the table edge, when resting. I realize I’ve taken too much of the dry, crunchy flatbread we got for this meal; everyone else is finished and now we’re all waiting for me. I chomp it down as quick as I can. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Everyone is listening. I don’t mind, it’s kind of a funny situation: until I run out of saliva. My mouth is full of what is beginning to feel like dry cement. I can’t chew it and I can’t swallow, and I still have half a brick left in my hand. I rest the brick in my bowl, lower my head in shame, mouth full of cement, and hope for the best. They start sending the tea down the table. I don’t know if the jikijitsu has taken mercy on me or hasn’t noticed I’m not actually finished. When the tea arrives I fill my bowl, get as much of it into my mouth as possible, and soak the brick in the rest. I’m finally able to chew again. I manage to finish the soaked brick and the tea before anyone calls me out.
Short Sesshin
Come winter there is go-sesshin, which is the short version of the summer sesshin. This one is from Wednesday to Sunday deep in back country woods in the dead of winter, the snow dense and hard. There are red, white, blue, green and yellow prayer flags hanging between the trees. This is a Tibetan monastery, or maybe hermitage. There’s only a single nun living here. Tibetan Buddhism isn’t very big in this country; I’m surprised we have a living monastery at all. Where she’s gone I don’t know, but apparently she’s thankful people are using the place for practice. It rents out the cabins dotted around for retreats, and we’ll be using the main building as the zendo. The zabutons are laid out in their usual two neat rows with the altar at the end and a long table improvised at the other for the meals. Everything will be heated by a single fireplace a few feet from the table. Instead of the usual wooden floor, the zendo is carpeted with this ornately detailed red Tibetan carpet, which I will be staring at for the next five days.
My fiancee drives me into the woods and drops me off. She’s on her way to a Christian silent-prayer retreat I found for her so she won’t be alone while I’m here, and secretly to introduce her to the joys of retreat life. After the introduction I go to my cabin and find Oryō there. By some fortune we’ve been assigned to be cabin mates. He explains he was late because he took a cab from the train station to the nearest Tibetan monastery; it turns out we have two of them in the same municipality. The other one has a monk.
I take the couch and Oryō sleeps on the bed in a tiny room without a door. We comment on the cabin’s tiny fireplace, which we won’t have time to use. We are wrong. It’s been less than six hours since I arrived and I’m lying in my sleeping bag wondering if I’ll even make it through the night. Luckily I’ve brought a thick woolen blanket. Even more luckily, the cabin has an even thicker one. Despite sleeping in every layer of wool I have brought, from long underwear to my thickest sweater, and both blankets inside my sleeping bag, I’m shivering the entire night. It’s the coldest I have ever been. I contemplate whether I have to take my sleeping bag and go up to the main building and sleep on the zendo floor in order to survive. But that building probably isn’t heated at this time of night either. It’s completely dark outside, and the inside of the cabin is now the same temperature as the outside.
I barely get any sleep at all. I wake in a confused stupor as someone is barging into our cabin. They’re telling us to wake up and then they leave. Oryō stumbles out of his tiny room and gets going before I can make any sense of the situation. Does he know what’s going on? He is supposed to help out in the kitchen this retreat, maybe they came to get him? But he didn’t seem any less confused than me as he scurried out the door. Again I rummage through my bag to find the watch I’m not supposed to use. Nearly half past five: we’ve slept through the wake-up bells. I woke up already fully dressed and then some, so I just grab my jacket and jump into some oversized Wellies that happen to be by the door and run outside. I had brought a headlamp for exactly this situation but I don’t know where it is. I can’t make out the path in front of me at all, it’s pitch black in the middle of this forest. I can see the lights from the main building up the hill and I know the path mostly so I manage to stumble my way up there without falling on the hard snow. I really have to pee; that’s always the first thing I do when I get up, but no time for that now. Inside the zendo they’re already well into the chanting. No tea for us this morning. I focus on getting everything right. Bow in the doorway. Hands in gassho as I walk. Straight to the officer at the nearest end: you bow to them when you enter the zendo late. I don’t know if you still do that in the middle of chanting, but they bow back. Get to my spot, quick bow in front of my zabuton. I sit down, no time to mess around with all the cushions. I slide into a sloppy crosslegged position and grab my chanting book and frantically try to find the page everyone’s on. KO-SHIN-MU-KE-GE. Obviously I slept poorly, but I figure the officers never made it all the way to our cabin with the bells. SAI-TEN-DO-MU. I’ll probably never know. HA-RA-MI-TA. It’s basically impossible to find where in a chant you are once you’re out of it even when you know the page—HA-RA-SO-GYA: got it!
The following days are spent desperately trying to stay warm enough at night to not fear for my safety. The place has plenty of firewood stacked everywhere. In just one day I burn through all the kindling that’s been prepared in our cabin, awkwardly trying to light a fire in the cabin and keep it going. I go on what feels like a video game quest, being sent from person to person to try and find someone who knows where the only axe is. It’s found half buried under a snowy tarp. I spend every break after meals while it’s still light out, about forty minutes twice a day, chopping wood. When it gets dark I spend every minute I can spare to try and keep the fire going. Instead of walking kinhin, about ten minutes between each sitting period, I sprint down to our cabin. The fire has died almost every time. I light it again and hope the heat will accumulate.
After the day’s last sitting period I make yet another fire and sit myself down in a chair in front of the fireplace. When Oryō comes to the cabin he seems delighted that I’ve made a fire. He grabs a chair and sits next to me. Warming ourselves and resting after a long day of sitting. We never share any glances or anything like that. That would seem to be against the spirit of the thing. We watch the fire together in silence for a long time. I’m hoping this fire will get us through the night. I wonder if he’s as cold as me, or if his tiny room is keeping the warmth better. A billow of smoke falls out of the fireplace and fills the room. Suddenly the smoke alarm is blaring and we scramble to climb on a stool to reach it. We sit back down and close the door to the fireplace this time. We watch the fire some more. Oryō starts cracking up, then laughing uncontrollably, and after a while he’s crawling along the floor gasping for air. I sit in the chair in front of the fire trying not to make too much noise. I can’t see the fire anymore through all the tears from silently laughing so hard. I don’t know if laughing is against the spirit or not.
I put the smoke alarm back before going to bed and I watch the light dance on the furniture from the still burning fire as I try to get some sleep. I wonder if it’s dangerous to sleep with a live fire. But there’s no one to ask now. I awake from the cold again. The fire is out and the room is dark. I light it many more times trying to keep it going through the night. Somehow I’m barely winning this fight. It’s just warm enough that I can get some sleep, even though it’s still miserably cold.
I’m pulled aside by one of the officers. He sits next to me in the zendo, and thinks I’m moving around too much. He asks if I’m in pain. I am. He insists I should use some small cushions under my knees or hips or whatever to build myself up and relieve some of the pain. It’s well meant advice, and kindly given. It works to relieve the legs somewhat, but at what cost. It’s impossible to balance the spine like this; it necessarily induces a slump. My back starts aching instead. That’s not as unbearable, but what am I even doing? It doesn’t seem right. I don’t like it. I drop the cushions again and resolve to sit still.
There is dokusan, a private meeting with the teacher: Koshin, the head teacher at the center and leading the retreat, is a mild-mannered American who spent over a decade at the same monastery as Shingen. Everyone looks forward to the relief. There’s too many of us for everyone to go every day. After dokusan Koshin lends me his sitting stool, to be able to sit higher and take the load off the legs. I try it briefly, but my legs are too shot to be able to sit on my knees. He shows me how to covertly slide the upper foot off the lower leg when you want to get out of a half or quarter lotus and into Burmese. “The trick is to do a slow slide all the way.” He demonstrates. “You don’t want to—CHOMP—it down.” If no one can see or hear it, you can’t be called out.
Nothing helps.
Between two sitting periods I find myself sitting in a chair enjoying a cup of tea, looking out at the drifting dusk snow. The fire keeping the zendo warm crackles behind me. My body is exhausted but I feel good. My mind is clear. I have the thought: if only being wrecked after work could feel this pleasant. Be this wholesome. I finish my tea and a while later they start clacking to indicate it’s time for more sitting.
I eventually get the idea to bring my heating problem to dokusan. To my surprise he takes it very seriously. He suggests making it one of the officers’ jobs to go around keeping the fires alive, but then we discover the other cabins have these giant portable oil radiators ours doesn’t have. That’s why no one else is running around during kinhin or chopping wood during breaks. I am authorized to take one from the main building. We both laugh at the whole situation. I hold up three fingers. Chop wood, I say, and fold one down. Carry radiator, I say, and fold the second down. Don’t worry, he says, the ecstasy part comes later.
On the eve of the last full day, something happens. I don’t know where it comes from, but I imagine the zabuton as a shallow pool of healing water. I don’t know what that means or what “healing water” would be, but as long as I’m able to hold that image steady in my mind, I stop suffering. When it slips, I’m cast right back into the throes of intense suffering. It’s a great motivator. I’ve been trying since the first retreat to accept the pain, but it hasn’t really done anything. I already knew, from that first zazenkai, that the nature of pain and suffering wasn’t quite what I had believed. But now it’s different. The pain is a warm, slightly pleasant glow any time I’m able to stabilize the image of healing water covering my legs. The suffering is gone. I set my mind on the intention to get up swiftly when the bell rings. When it rings I spring up without hesitation and without using my arms. I am the first to stand, and my legs aren’t hurting. After that sit, the mere intention to regard the sensations of pain as a pleasant massage is enough to re-render the whole experience.
I feel like I might be onto something.
The morning after is the last day and there is some more sitting, and the same thing holds. I’m able to stay with the sensations and sit still, comfortably. The retreat ends, my fiancee comes to pick me up and we give Oryō a lift to the train station. I learn he had a small electric heater in his tiny room the whole time. The mood is joyous, warm, bubbly. But not to my fiancee, she hated hers. When we’re alone in the car she puts me into words: “a fucking Duracell bunny.”
Interlude
Before getting into this whole Zen thing I’d already booked a trip to Gaia House for that spring. It was an insight retreat that went from Tuesday to Sunday, so it was my longest retreat yet, and I had to travel to another country. The grounds at Gaia have been in silence for decades and the birds have taken it over. Even sitting in the meditation hall you can hear five or ten different species of birdsong at the same time, constantly, throughout the day. The retreat featured way fewer hours of sitting than what I had gotten used to, and the expectations very different. No one checked if you were in the meditation hall. The shoes were all over the place, and for the meals you queued in a random order. That took a lot of the fun out of it; I wanted more sitting and more ceremony. I slept quite a lot in all the free time we had, and found a new appreciation for being able to shower basically whenever I wanted.
On the train back to London I had a lovely chat with an older English gentleman who’d also been at the retreat. We exchanged book recommendations. After he got off at his stop, I spent the remaining several hours looking out the window at the places and people passing by. I felt great, despite the retreat being easy as pie. The usual pull to reach for my phone and read something or listen to a podcast was gone. I looked at a young couple sitting across from me holding hands, both reading their own Kindle, and both wearing headphones. I looked at the people walking past on the platform outside. Many looked like they had just finished a marathon, staggering forward and unable to make eye contact with anyone. I had the sense that I hadn’t gained anything, but rather put something down.
Then I arrive through the security checkpoint at Heathrow and as I sit down to meditate while charging my phone I realize I have made a huge mistake. There is too much bustling, too many people everywhere. Nowhere I look is safe. My mind starts racing, there’s a restaurant over there, what if I go there. But I immediately know that won’t help, there are just as many people if not more there. There is no restaurant, no place at all, I can go where there isn’t a deafening crowd of people. The ceiling is low and there is no daylight in sight. I’m dizzy, heart pounding, palms sweaty. I know what’s happening: I’m about to have a panic attack. The urge to move is overwhelming and there is nowhere to go. The flight doesn’t leave for several hours, why did I go through security. I grab all my stuff and go in a random direction. The terminal is a maze. I find a prayer room. It has six or eight of the world religions on the placard, including Buddhism. Good. I go in. It’s quiet, only a few people. All of them on the prayer carpets facing Mecca. I look around for a place to sit. A young man asks me what I’m looking for. It doesn’t feel like he asks to be helpful. “A cushion,” I say. I find none. I don’t feel welcome here. There’s a single chair in the whole room. I sit and cross my legs on it. I hold the top rail of my luggage while I keep my eyes closed.
After a while, I feel I’ve calmed myself down enough to conclude I’ve sailed clear of an actual full blown panic attack, so I get up and head back to the terminal. I don’t feel great. But I manage to find a place with windows, at last I can see out onto the tarmac. I can see the outside. It’s not quite the same as being outside, but it helps. I go further until I get to some unused gates with much less people. I find a station that lets me charge my phone. An older Frenchman asks if I’m going to Versailles. I barely glance at him. All I answer is “no,” and he slinks away. Why would I be going to Versailles? I stand there staring into nothing until my phone has charged. Poor guy, just wanted a chat. I call my fiancee and she talks to me on the phone until the plane leaves. Never have I been more soothed than by the awe-some rumble of jet engines pushing a thousand tons of steel with me in it at harrowing speeds. I close my eyes and relax.
Back home I have a great several days of post-retreat high, feeling the exact same energized lightness and joy as before. The retreat itself wasn’t challenging, but neither did I get through the trip without a fight. I still don’t know if the adversary is a necessary component for the post-retreat high.
Sesshin
Sesshin is the full week summer retreat. It’s up in the mountains in a forest, there’s a lake nearby for swimming, paths for hiking, and a few main buildings on a little hilltop. The zendo floor is somehow even worse than the ornate carpet, it’s that gray linoleum thing with lots of fake dust specks or a camouflage pattern or however you want to describe it, lots of tiny patterns you get lost in for hours. We go around the table before we begin, telling a little bit about ourselves; why we’re here. Everyone competes to give the most zen answer possible, which is a very un-zen thing to do. Everyone says something about nerves or how it feels standing on the brink. I feel kind of fine and confident, but I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to sound “zen,” so I say something about nerves or how it feels to stand on a brink. Getting up from the table, that feels a little ominous.
As with every retreat, there is an introduction in the zendo for newcomers to lay out some of the expectations and answer questions people have about how things are going to go. This will be my fourth introduction. Shingen is here to help out and runs the introduction. Instead of morning bells they will be using the wooden clackers this retreat. I guess clackers can’t break. He makes a point of how it’s possible to eat with a spoon without clanking the bowl. In fact, he says, you only have to touch the walls of the bowl at the very end when you’re almost done, and then it’s possible to do so very deliberately and quietly. He demonstrates by silently scooping air out of his empty bowl. When someone predictably asks about meal etiquette, they get the same answer I did when I asked about meal etiquette on my first retreat: don’t worry about it, do whatever everyone else is doing and it’ll be fine.
The days are long and all the same.
I am pulled effortlessly from deep sleep, through a half-asleep state into full, bright wakefulness by the sound of wooden clackers—clack, clack, clack. It is four in the morning and it’s time to go. I put on a wool sweater and my black samue-robe-like jacket and go outside. It’s still as dark as it gets during summer and it’s cold even with the sweater. I see the back of Oryō’s head, on his zabuton, through the zendo windows. Motherfucker. I pee, wash my face, skip the toothbrush, and sit down in the zendo. The officers come in with the incense and do their bows; two of the officers serve tea, first to the buddha at the front, then everyone down the two rows of zabutons. It’s two and two at a time, the officer stops in front of me and the person next to me, we hold out our cup and indicate with hand signals when to stop. Everyone waits, then picks up and drinks their tea in unison. Quiet and fast, you don’t want everyone to wait on you. Everyone waits, then puts their empty cups down in unison. The officers swap tea pots, walk briskly to the front and do another round. The previous round’s tea wasn’t that hot, that means this one is going to be scalding. I indicate to stop pouring almost immediately—I’ve made that mistake before. We bow when everyone is done and put the cups away. The chanting book comes out and we go. It’s the first period of the day, so it’s the whole book—about forty minutes. GYA-TE GYA-TE HA-RA-GYA-TE HARA-SO-GYA-TE BO-JI SOWA-KA HAN-NYA SHIN-GYO. Kinhin is outside, it isn’t raining very much. It’s almost a jog. It’s getting a bit brighter outside but still very dark, then it’s time for sitting. Walk, sit. Walk, sit. Walk, sit. I try not to keep count. Walk, sit, walk, sit. The sun is low in the sky and casting long morning shadows. Walk, sit, walk, sit. Two clacks: time for breakfast. We get up, hold our bowls in both hands, and walk out in two lines. It’s cloudy and gray. We sit down at the table, quick chant: HA-RA-MI-TA, eat, back to the zendo: bell, everyone bows, the officers wipe off their zabutons and fluff their cushions, they meet in the middle of the room and bow to each other. One of the officers remains and bows to us: we’re released. Everyone wipes off their zabutons and makes their spot neat. My body needs more sleep. I quickly wipe off my zabuton and make my way back to my bunk, I will get maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. Clack, clack, clack. Time for work. Not a cloud in the sky. Another day I cleaned the toilets, today my task is to clean the entrance. I remove the giant carpet-padding thing and all the shoes, I mop the floor inside, I sweep the outside with a broom. I move fast. Unhurried. Does this task include cleaning the carpet-padding thing? I don’t know. I hang it over the railing and beat it with my open palm. I have to stop because I can’t breathe. I have become covered in brown dust. I should have taken off my meditation jacket. I beat the thing some more while holding my breath. Clack, clack, clack. I put it all back and make sure everything looks nice and tidy. I pause to enjoy my work, I have a minute. Okay, back in the zendo. Medium chant. Dharma talk, walk, sit, walk, sit, walk, sit. Lunch. Is there time to nap? No probably not, I gather my dried shorts and towel from the fence and go for a quick bathroom break. We walk, it’s sunny, I’m full of energy. My legs are strong, body supple. It feels great to walk. The walk is mandatory, the swim is not. Another day I’m going to be in a bad mood and lie sulking in the blueberry heather. Not today, I join the swim. I bask in the sun. Back at the compound, I find a fence behind the cabin, perfect: I can hang my wet shorts and towel here. Clack, clack, clack. I sit down in the zendo. Longer chant. Walk, sit, walk, sit, walk, sit. Thirty minutes of yoga to loosen our bodies. Dinner. Break—I have time to poop and get another forty minutes of nap. Luxury. Clack, clack, clack. I’m in the zendo. Gyodo: slow walking chant, each step is a single syllable. HA-step RA-step MI-step TA-step. Sit, walk, sit, walk, sit, walk, sit. The officers arrive with the tea. Always two servings, but since it’s evening we get a cookie as well. The cookie is delicious. The officers bow and leave. Do I stay for the optional night sitting? No, my body needs sleep. I brush off my zabuton and head to my bunk. Oryō stays. It’s hard to fall asleep so early. It’s barely past nine. Clack, clack, clack. It’s four in the morning and I’m wide awake. Time to go.
I’ve been outside before, but being outside regularly every half hour from before dawn to after dark gives me a completely different sense of what weather is. Now it strikes me as ephemeral, transient. The sky is always there, but clouds, wind, and even the color of the sky, changes by the minute—it feels like.
I was sulking in the grass, I tell Koshin at dokusan. I don’t know why, there was no reason. “Good mood, bad mood. Mood is weather,” he scoffs. I squint. He knows.
I expect to meet the pain with concentration and work with it. But it doesn’t work. I’m fumbling for a while, a few days, with trying to meet the pain like I had before. I try new things: this is chiseling my body and mind, I tell myself. I don’t drink any tea in the breaks because it would have me go pee every kinhin and that would interrupt my concentration.
Then I discover something I wasn’t looking for and wouldn’t have liked the sound of: the pain isn’t going away. And it’s not going to stop being painful. But I can sit in a new way. The pain is as problematic as ever before, but somehow, leaning into a good posture and sitting properly—feels good. Whereas before, the pain would tug at my body. I would wince and cramp down in agony. Sitting well now feels good, not in spite of nor because of the pain, but somehow with the pain. I am in pain, and the pain is still pain. It is not a good, warm sensation. It is not neutral sensations. It’s painful pain. Yet I’m not suffering. Nothing about my body looks like it’s in pain. It’s relaxed, alert, strong. I feel expansive, I can feel the pain down there in my legs as clearly as ever, but I can also see the linoleum floor and the people across the hall, I can see my body in my peripheral vision and the people next to me and I can hear the sounds all around. All of it feels like me, and the pain only a small part. The thought occurs to me: this is zazen.
But it doesn’t last. As the days go on the pain becomes too large for even this to hold. Or I lose track of it, I’m not sure which. When it becomes too much to bear, I fall back to old strategies. I try to concentrate on it. I try to convince myself it’s chiseling me.
It’s late afternoon. I’m suffering. My legs feel kind of fine though. The pain comes and goes throughout the day, and right now it isn’t that bad. I’ve had much worse. So why am I suffering so much? Why am I in such misery? I can’t quite put a finger on it, until it hits me: I’m overheating. It’s been an especially warm day, and the sun has been frying the zendo all day. I’m wearing a shirt under my samue-robe-thing. Next kinhin I’ll take it off to air out properly, I decide. The bell rings, two clacks. Okay never mind, it’s dinner time.
While I’m eating my delicious bowl of rice with soy sauce I suddenly realize I will not be able to finish it. It looks like a mountain of rice. I feel sick at the mere thought. I put it down in front of me to rest. My heart is racing and my palms go clammy. Oh no. I need air, right now. I need to get up, go out and get some air. I’ve never seen anyone leave a meal. Why is this happening? What is happening? A revelation: I’m thirsty. I’m not warm, I need water. My body needs water. I know I will get tea very soon, when the meal is over. I make a commitment to my body that I will drink as much water as I need afterwards. And with that, the growing panic slowly starts to wear off. It’s as if my body agrees to dial down the panic. My heart rate settles and my hands don’t shake quite as much. I wait a little longer and then manage to get down the remaining rice.
I lie in my bed pretty shaken in the following break. I don’t know whether it’s safe or irresponsible to continue. I definitely don’t want to induce an actual panic attack. At least now I know what has been causing my problems, and I won’t let it happen again. I don’t know what to do.
What am I doing! Why am I lying here contemplating how to proceed without telling anyone. It’s as if it hasn’t occurred to me until now: I can actually ask for help. I go find one of the officers and ask for a meeting with one of the teachers. She asks why; I tell her I almost had a panic attack and am considering whether I can continue. She comes back in a few minutes and tells me I can see Koshin right away in his room.
He is relieved the incident has a clear cause and an obvious remedy. I’m not feeling so sure, I’m still very shaken and worried whether it really is wise to go on. He suggests I sit out this evening’s last period to recover. Try again tomorrow morning, and see how it goes. We’ll meet again both before and after. He suggests I should really drink some electrolytes, but we don’t have any Gatorade or whatever. I say I once heard a Jamaican man rap on YouTube about cucumbers being a good source of electrolytes. He hasn’t heard the rap.
I go back to my room to try and get some rest and maybe some sleep. It is the evening of the third full day, the exact middle of the retreat. Koshin has lent me his water bottle, filled with slices of cucumbers he nicked from the kitchen.
The next morning was beautiful. It was wonderful to sit in the zendo while the light slowly crept in. As the sun rose I realized that my body had been screaming for attention. I hadn’t listened. It had to resort to almost inducing a panic attack to get it. Which subsided as soon as it did. While we were out walking kinhin with the low morning sun in my eyes, I realized the pain in my legs I had been wanting so badly for the whole year to be gone, was also my body trying to reach me. The leg pain just needed to be held, felt and loved. A well of compassion sprang from within and tears streamed down my face. I could not wait to get back to the zendo and sit, to be with and hold my dear, beloved pain. It needed me. For the next many hours I sat and felt every inch of the pain as meticulously as I could. I wanted to be nowhere else. I was sobbing for hours. It was like finally holding a small child I had inadvertently neglected. I was so, so sorry.
The rest of the retreat went well. After this there was no more leg pain. I could sit for the last three and a half days with perfect posture and it felt great. Sobbing uncontrollably in a room full of almost entirely strangers, and not being allowed to do anything about the tears causing a mess, was bizarrely liberating. It was as if Zen was saying to me, there is nothing wrong with you or this. I realized there was some potency in what I had experienced, and decided to point this tenderness at a specific emotional problem I’d had for a long time, but hadn’t been able to do anything about. The problem softened and was permanently, and almost entirely, resolved. Later I was able to release tension in my stomach I’d been chronically holding my whole life. That too is almost entirely and permanently gone. At dokusan I related the sobbing to Koshin. I told him that at one point we were chanting and I was ugly crying—at full volume: ugly chanting. “That is also a way to chant,” he said, and I had the feeling he meant it. He asked if I wanted to read—at the informal meal after sesshin—a poem that came to me while sitting. I had recited it to him during dokusan, but I didn’t think I would be able to do it justice at the table in front of everyone, so he read it for me. I’m not sure it made sense to anyone else there, but I’m sure it makes sense to you now. It’s called “Sesshin”:
The zabuton becomes a torture chamber of my own making And the only escape is to take this crowbar Zen gave me and crack open my heart
Epilogue
After my concentration discovery at the winter go-sesshin, I tried concentrating on my legs as I was having a conversation with my fiancee sitting on the couch at home. What I found was that I was still able to do it, but at the expense of not being able to listen. If I listened, especially as the pain got stronger, I couldn’t also concentrate on the pain at the same time. So it’s not some kind of silver bullet, and it also requires a mind capable of sustained concentration, which you usually don’t have outside retreats. In a similar vein, even though the pain was completely absent for the remainder of the summer sesshin, it’s back to normal when I sit for extended periods now. [1]
But something else arrived. After I got back from sesshin I started developing a strange sense of being with my body, as if my body was somehow an other. As I walk around the house doing menial chores I observe my body doing them. It’s not me who’s doing them, I’m keeping my body company as it does the chores. It has company, and so do I. I’m no longer on my own, or by myself. Company makes life less tedious. It comes and goes to varying degrees, and I find I can connect with this sense of company more easily the more I make my life like retreat: less distractions, less productivity, less trying to achieve things in the world for some external goal. I hope to write more about this in the future when I understand more.
Oryō, by the way, is a fake Dharma name we made up for fun. According to AI it means “Awakening Completed.” Mine is Taigen, “Great Mystery.” And he didn’t sit the whole night. I think.
Unfortunately I’ve since moved further away from the city and I am not able to attend any zazenkais, at least not as long as they are without accommodation. Which is a great shame, as I now feel that whatever my initial interest in meditation was, it is retreat which is the greatest treasure. Nevertheless, I keep a daily practice and sit with another local group weekly. Koshin has started doing dokusan online; I’ve signed up for this coming Wednesday. I’m hoping to get some meditation instructions. I look forward to sesshin with the same trepidation I did that first retreat. But next year I’ll be back.
Which is not to say that the body does not adapt! I used to be extremely inflexible, like probably most people who spend most of their time sitting in front of a computer, but over the last few years I spent some effort on folding my legs under me when watching TV or whatever, and now I can easily sit for more than half an hour before any discomfort starts. It’s really very comfortable, and has become my favorite way to sit.
Prologue
I stumbled into Zen a little over a year ago. One of the things that initially got me into meditation was reading some rationalist accounts of people’s first retreats. They said it was valuable, but also that it was hard in a way they didn’t want to forget or diminish. But they didn’t say in what way it was hard or what it was like. So I thought it time to pass it on, by sharing what my year of retreats has been like. (Spoiler: it was hard.)
Two Weekend Retreats
I first found a local group that looked promising. I had wanted to sit with others; I had a vague sense that this would be a good practice. I had recently read Henry Shukman’s memoir One Blade of Grass; I had a vague sense that Zen might be interesting. I showed up for the introductory hour and was shown all about how to bow when entering the zendo, how to get up from the zabuton and the different bells, and so on. The zabuton is but a square meter of thin black foam you get to rest your body on. All legs (and arms) inside the square: they lie tight, one after the other; keep the front clear for walking. A lot of practical details and a little on how to sit: like, keep your eyes open, resting on the floor in front of you; your hands resting in your lap, left over right, forming an oval. This is called zazen. In the zendo you all sit on two rows along the walls, nothing like the classroom style layout I had been imagining. Shukman never mentions this! There are officers with different roles, they sit at both ends of the rows and help run things. The zabutons are black, the cushions are black, you’re asked to dress in dark or preferably black clothes. Everything is austere and made of unpainted wood. It’s beautiful in a way. In Rinzai you face the people sitting across from you, everyone in towards the room. At the front there is an altar with a small buddha statue. But it’s not the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, we’re told. It’s some other figure, a Buddha of Wisdom or something. He’s considered one of the practitioners, sitting with us facing the room. He gets served tea first during tea ceremony. Then at the end when I was expecting meditation instructions, the guy in the robes told us “well we haven’t got much more time, so let’s pretend this is the last six minutes of zazen.” Then he rang the bell three times and we sat in silence until he rang the bell again six minutes later, and with two wooden clappers, clacked twice—and we got up. That was it.
I signed up for what would be my first retreat, a weekend zazenkai from Friday to Sunday. Before that I figured I better go to one of the weekly sits and get a better feel for what it was actually like. Luckily I was able to make time for it right before leaving for vacation on the Thursday afternoon of the national election on my way to my fiancee’s party’s party. The shoes were all neatly stacked in little rows at the entrance so I figured I better do the same with mine. I bowed on the way into the zendo, found a spot on the next available zabuton so as to leave no gaps, bowed again in front of it, and tried to do everything else I was told. I sat quietly and gazed across the floor towards the other people when the bell rang three times, and as the sound of the last strike faded, what replaced it was silence. Anxiety gripped my heart. It flooded my chest, whole body really. I was to sit, silently and without moving, on this cushion for the next 25 minutes. My heart pounded so hard I could not breathe through my nostrils, I had to sit there with my mouth hanging open; panting. Gasping for air. I wanted to get up, run out of there. So, so badly. I closed my eyes. I don’t remember how long this went on for, but after a while my body relaxed enough that I didn’t have to awkwardly bail—and eventually, the first sit was over. We got up and did kinhin: a slow walking meditation in a long lockstep line, as a five minute break, then there were two more sessions of sitting. These went much better, and I felt mildly better about the whole thing. But I was still left with the feeling: oh my God, what have I signed up for. 48 hours of this?
I sat religiously every day for twenty minutes during the following vacation leading up to the zazenkai. I got off the bus and walked for ten minutes up a gravel path through some fields to a farm house. One of the regulars at the center had renovated an old barn to be this beautiful zendo, there was a row of those prefab boxes they put up for construction crews where we would sleep, and his family was leaving so we could have the main house at our disposal for cooking, eating the shared meals, and resting between sittings. After an introduction in the zendo for the newcomers, we shared an informal meal in the main building. I immediately hit it off with a guy, same age and occupation, whom I’ll later come to know as Oryō, also at his first Zen retreat. Standing in line at the serving table he commented “look, there’s a bowl of parmesan, how fancy.” We both took too many spoonfuls of what turned out to actually be salt on our stew, ruining it. At the dining table we were kind of laughing, kind of embarrassed to have been undone by our own greed. The teacher for the retreat was a very serious-looking German man called Shingen. He lived at a monastery in the US for years under a Japanese Zen master, and now spends five months of the year at one known in Japan as “the devil’s dōjō.” He sat down next to us and announced loudly, “I thought it was parmesan,” pointing at his bowl of ruined stew. The two of us exploded laughing. I’m still not sure he knows why.
Shingen joined our laughter and soon the whole table was laughing with us. A shared laughter of giddy excitement and trepidation.
The first third or so of my stay was great. The stress and agitation of everyday life gradually thawed. I sat with a tea on the porch in the sunny, if cool, autumn weather. I discovered that when you can’t talk, or even have eye contact—you’re not supposed to really communicate at all—it cuts off a lot of the stress of social interaction that can make things awkward. But there still is interaction: I’d hold out the tea kettle after pouring my own water, and the next guy would take it. Or he would not, either way neither of us would thank the other, or refuse, or signal. I found it strangely intimate and liberating: I felt I couldn’t really be rejected; either my offer was accepted wordlessly, without acknowledgement, or it wouldn’t be—and that was also fine. As I sat there I found I could enjoy my tea on the porch with the other person, in a way made impossible if we were to chit chat.
On the first morning I woke to the sound of people talking outside. The bell is broken, I overheard. No wake-up call then. I got up and began putting on my clothes in the darkness. Why is no one else getting up? Wait, the bell is broken? It was completely silent. I dug through my bag to find my watch, which I’d stowed away with my phone and other worldly belongings when I got there—and wasn’t really supposed to use during the stay—to find out it was barely past midnight. Lights out were at nine in the evening, so I might have gotten a few hours’ sleep—it’s not easy to fall asleep so early. Should I go back to bed? How will they wake me without the bell? I can’t stay up for another four or so hours. The bell can’t really be broken, can it? I tentatively lay down again to consider my options. Before I knew it I awoke to the sound of the bell.
Despite a rocky night with little sleep, by the time we were sitting in the near darkness of the early morning zendo a little past five in the morning, I was feeling wide awake. As a night owl, I have had a lifetime of rough mornings and usually don’t feel fully awake until far into the day. But here it was different, I was not just not-sleepy, I was shockingly, staggeringly awake and full of energy, which would last the whole rest of the day—the whole retreat, and even a while after I returned home. I was a little worried going in, that the complete silence and the ten hours a day of sitting would be tough somehow, but they were fine. I enjoyed it. There was a pleasantness to bare existence.
At one point I could see the floor breathing. It was pulsing up and down, but not in sync with my breathing. I held my breath to check; it continued on undisturbed. At another point, time appeared to stutter.
Then my legs started hurting. That’s another thing Shukman doesn’t mention. Your legs fucking hurt! Like the most excruciating pain of your life hurts. There’s something that happens to your body after sitting crosslegged for hours at a time, where the urge to move slowly ratchets up, and a searing pain starts to build. It is like your body is, at first politely asking, then yelling and eventually screaming at you. It turns up the pain until it makes you move. But the thing is, you’re not supposed to move. Certainly not get up until the bell, but you’re not supposed to even readjust. This I would come to know might be the whole of the Zen teaching. The pain steadily dialing up, you not being allowed to move—or not allowing yourself to move—until the bell. But something has to crack. Something will crack. I’ve been sitting since before dawn, I have no idea what time it is, except that the sun has gone down again and we’ve already had four rounds of sitting in a row—there can’t possibly be another round of sitting. The guy in the robes across from me sees me suffering and announces something encouraging, addressed to no one in particular. I don’t catch a single word. The bell does eventually come, but I wait for the clacker. Only one clack. That means we’re doing another round of kinhin, and after that, at least one more round of sitting. Five in a row this evening. I want to cry.
The next morning is better. My legs are rested after a night’s sleep and they don’t hurt as much; I’m able to be more clearheaded. When I scan the sensation in my legs it doesn’t seem so bad; the badness of it is hard to find. But it does feel bad and there is suffering. When I try to locate the suffering, I find that I can’t. It’s ambient, almost like it’s in the air. How I can even know the suffering I’m experiencing is caused by the sensations of pain is not at all clear. Weird.
The informal meal afterwards is great. Everyone’s been through something, although no one quite sure if it was the same as the others. The next two retreats I go on have the same fight. I barely remember any details of the sitting during my second zazenkai. Whereas the first one had rolling hills covered in stunning morning mist, the second was held at a rented chapel in the city. There is no accommodation this time, so I have to take the train in and out of the city every night and morning. In my memory it’s only a smeared weekend of miserable pain. At one point my posture has completely collapsed, my body is hanging on its ligaments, drooped over itself, legs splayed out and can barely even be called crosslegged. It gives me some way to rest despite the pain. I desperately try to “accept” the pain. If you stop wanting it to go away, apparently it will go away. A woman across from me is crying silently. It seems cathartic. When she wipes her tears with a handkerchief, the jikijitsu shouts from his spot at the far end of the room to leave it. I’m too empty to cry. I drift in and out of sleep until the bell. I stagger up, using more arms than legs. I stand there swaying, waiting to be able to walk again. Everything hurts and I’m exhausted. Waiting on the train Saturday evening with my fiancee who had been in the city with friends, I remember telling her: if I’m ever doing anything like this again, I’m asking for a chair.
Sunday morning I’m back on the zabuton. It’s still miserable. You get three meals a day, which is the only thing I look forward to. When the jikijitsu claps twice to indicate the session of sitting is over we get up with our bowls held in both hands and walk in two lines to a single long table, so that everyone sits in the same order as on the zabutons. They send a large pot of food down the middle and each person grabs however much they want. It will be served twice, so you can better judge how much you want, but at the end it’s expected that you finish everything you’ve taken. Then they send down the tea, which you use to wash out your bowl with your fingers before drinking it. Sitting in a regular chair and eating this hot, nourishing food is heaven. I eat slowly and carefully, mindful not to miss a single bite. A woman next to me rests her spoon in her bowl when taking a break from eating. They never tell you all the rules. I’ve never seen anyone do that: she’s going to get called out. She gets a minute. The jikijitsu is generous today. The spoon is still there. From the far end of the table the jikijitsu announces to no one in particular that the spoon should lie before you, between the bowl and the table edge, when resting. I realize I’ve taken too much of the dry, crunchy flatbread we got for this meal; everyone else is finished and now we’re all waiting for me. I chomp it down as quick as I can. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Everyone is listening. I don’t mind, it’s kind of a funny situation: until I run out of saliva. My mouth is full of what is beginning to feel like dry cement. I can’t chew it and I can’t swallow, and I still have half a brick left in my hand. I rest the brick in my bowl, lower my head in shame, mouth full of cement, and hope for the best. They start sending the tea down the table. I don’t know if the jikijitsu has taken mercy on me or hasn’t noticed I’m not actually finished. When the tea arrives I fill my bowl, get as much of it into my mouth as possible, and soak the brick in the rest. I’m finally able to chew again. I manage to finish the soaked brick and the tea before anyone calls me out.
Short Sesshin
Come winter there is go-sesshin, which is the short version of the summer sesshin. This one is from Wednesday to Sunday deep in back country woods in the dead of winter, the snow dense and hard. There are red, white, blue, green and yellow prayer flags hanging between the trees. This is a Tibetan monastery, or maybe hermitage. There’s only a single nun living here. Tibetan Buddhism isn’t very big in this country; I’m surprised we have a living monastery at all. Where she’s gone I don’t know, but apparently she’s thankful people are using the place for practice. It rents out the cabins dotted around for retreats, and we’ll be using the main building as the zendo. The zabutons are laid out in their usual two neat rows with the altar at the end and a long table improvised at the other for the meals. Everything will be heated by a single fireplace a few feet from the table. Instead of the usual wooden floor, the zendo is carpeted with this ornately detailed red Tibetan carpet, which I will be staring at for the next five days.
My fiancee drives me into the woods and drops me off. She’s on her way to a Christian silent-prayer retreat I found for her so she won’t be alone while I’m here, and secretly to introduce her to the joys of retreat life. After the introduction I go to my cabin and find Oryō there. By some fortune we’ve been assigned to be cabin mates. He explains he was late because he took a cab from the train station to the nearest Tibetan monastery; it turns out we have two of them in the same municipality. The other one has a monk.
I take the couch and Oryō sleeps on the bed in a tiny room without a door. We comment on the cabin’s tiny fireplace, which we won’t have time to use. We are wrong. It’s been less than six hours since I arrived and I’m lying in my sleeping bag wondering if I’ll even make it through the night. Luckily I’ve brought a thick woolen blanket. Even more luckily, the cabin has an even thicker one. Despite sleeping in every layer of wool I have brought, from long underwear to my thickest sweater, and both blankets inside my sleeping bag, I’m shivering the entire night. It’s the coldest I have ever been. I contemplate whether I have to take my sleeping bag and go up to the main building and sleep on the zendo floor in order to survive. But that building probably isn’t heated at this time of night either. It’s completely dark outside, and the inside of the cabin is now the same temperature as the outside.
I barely get any sleep at all. I wake in a confused stupor as someone is barging into our cabin. They’re telling us to wake up and then they leave. Oryō stumbles out of his tiny room and gets going before I can make any sense of the situation. Does he know what’s going on? He is supposed to help out in the kitchen this retreat, maybe they came to get him? But he didn’t seem any less confused than me as he scurried out the door. Again I rummage through my bag to find the watch I’m not supposed to use. Nearly half past five: we’ve slept through the wake-up bells. I woke up already fully dressed and then some, so I just grab my jacket and jump into some oversized Wellies that happen to be by the door and run outside. I had brought a headlamp for exactly this situation but I don’t know where it is. I can’t make out the path in front of me at all, it’s pitch black in the middle of this forest. I can see the lights from the main building up the hill and I know the path mostly so I manage to stumble my way up there without falling on the hard snow. I really have to pee; that’s always the first thing I do when I get up, but no time for that now. Inside the zendo they’re already well into the chanting. No tea for us this morning. I focus on getting everything right. Bow in the doorway. Hands in gassho as I walk. Straight to the officer at the nearest end: you bow to them when you enter the zendo late. I don’t know if you still do that in the middle of chanting, but they bow back. Get to my spot, quick bow in front of my zabuton. I sit down, no time to mess around with all the cushions. I slide into a sloppy crosslegged position and grab my chanting book and frantically try to find the page everyone’s on. KO-SHIN-MU-KE-GE. Obviously I slept poorly, but I figure the officers never made it all the way to our cabin with the bells. SAI-TEN-DO-MU. I’ll probably never know. HA-RA-MI-TA. It’s basically impossible to find where in a chant you are once you’re out of it even when you know the page—HA-RA-SO-GYA: got it!
The following days are spent desperately trying to stay warm enough at night to not fear for my safety. The place has plenty of firewood stacked everywhere. In just one day I burn through all the kindling that’s been prepared in our cabin, awkwardly trying to light a fire in the cabin and keep it going. I go on what feels like a video game quest, being sent from person to person to try and find someone who knows where the only axe is. It’s found half buried under a snowy tarp. I spend every break after meals while it’s still light out, about forty minutes twice a day, chopping wood. When it gets dark I spend every minute I can spare to try and keep the fire going. Instead of walking kinhin, about ten minutes between each sitting period, I sprint down to our cabin. The fire has died almost every time. I light it again and hope the heat will accumulate.
After the day’s last sitting period I make yet another fire and sit myself down in a chair in front of the fireplace. When Oryō comes to the cabin he seems delighted that I’ve made a fire. He grabs a chair and sits next to me. Warming ourselves and resting after a long day of sitting. We never share any glances or anything like that. That would seem to be against the spirit of the thing. We watch the fire together in silence for a long time. I’m hoping this fire will get us through the night. I wonder if he’s as cold as me, or if his tiny room is keeping the warmth better. A billow of smoke falls out of the fireplace and fills the room. Suddenly the smoke alarm is blaring and we scramble to climb on a stool to reach it. We sit back down and close the door to the fireplace this time. We watch the fire some more. Oryō starts cracking up, then laughing uncontrollably, and after a while he’s crawling along the floor gasping for air. I sit in the chair in front of the fire trying not to make too much noise. I can’t see the fire anymore through all the tears from silently laughing so hard. I don’t know if laughing is against the spirit or not.
I put the smoke alarm back before going to bed and I watch the light dance on the furniture from the still burning fire as I try to get some sleep. I wonder if it’s dangerous to sleep with a live fire. But there’s no one to ask now. I awake from the cold again. The fire is out and the room is dark. I light it many more times trying to keep it going through the night. Somehow I’m barely winning this fight. It’s just warm enough that I can get some sleep, even though it’s still miserably cold.
I’m pulled aside by one of the officers. He sits next to me in the zendo, and thinks I’m moving around too much. He asks if I’m in pain. I am. He insists I should use some small cushions under my knees or hips or whatever to build myself up and relieve some of the pain. It’s well meant advice, and kindly given. It works to relieve the legs somewhat, but at what cost. It’s impossible to balance the spine like this; it necessarily induces a slump. My back starts aching instead. That’s not as unbearable, but what am I even doing? It doesn’t seem right. I don’t like it. I drop the cushions again and resolve to sit still.
There is dokusan, a private meeting with the teacher: Koshin, the head teacher at the center and leading the retreat, is a mild-mannered American who spent over a decade at the same monastery as Shingen. Everyone looks forward to the relief. There’s too many of us for everyone to go every day. After dokusan Koshin lends me his sitting stool, to be able to sit higher and take the load off the legs. I try it briefly, but my legs are too shot to be able to sit on my knees. He shows me how to covertly slide the upper foot off the lower leg when you want to get out of a half or quarter lotus and into Burmese. “The trick is to do a slow slide all the way.” He demonstrates. “You don’t want to—CHOMP—it down.” If no one can see or hear it, you can’t be called out.
Nothing helps.
Between two sitting periods I find myself sitting in a chair enjoying a cup of tea, looking out at the drifting dusk snow. The fire keeping the zendo warm crackles behind me. My body is exhausted but I feel good. My mind is clear. I have the thought: if only being wrecked after work could feel this pleasant. Be this wholesome. I finish my tea and a while later they start clacking to indicate it’s time for more sitting.
I eventually get the idea to bring my heating problem to dokusan. To my surprise he takes it very seriously. He suggests making it one of the officers’ jobs to go around keeping the fires alive, but then we discover the other cabins have these giant portable oil radiators ours doesn’t have. That’s why no one else is running around during kinhin or chopping wood during breaks. I am authorized to take one from the main building. We both laugh at the whole situation. I hold up three fingers. Chop wood, I say, and fold one down. Carry radiator, I say, and fold the second down. Don’t worry, he says, the ecstasy part comes later.
On the eve of the last full day, something happens. I don’t know where it comes from, but I imagine the zabuton as a shallow pool of healing water. I don’t know what that means or what “healing water” would be, but as long as I’m able to hold that image steady in my mind, I stop suffering. When it slips, I’m cast right back into the throes of intense suffering. It’s a great motivator. I’ve been trying since the first retreat to accept the pain, but it hasn’t really done anything. I already knew, from that first zazenkai, that the nature of pain and suffering wasn’t quite what I had believed. But now it’s different. The pain is a warm, slightly pleasant glow any time I’m able to stabilize the image of healing water covering my legs. The suffering is gone. I set my mind on the intention to get up swiftly when the bell rings. When it rings I spring up without hesitation and without using my arms. I am the first to stand, and my legs aren’t hurting. After that sit, the mere intention to regard the sensations of pain as a pleasant massage is enough to re-render the whole experience.
I feel like I might be onto something.
The morning after is the last day and there is some more sitting, and the same thing holds. I’m able to stay with the sensations and sit still, comfortably. The retreat ends, my fiancee comes to pick me up and we give Oryō a lift to the train station. I learn he had a small electric heater in his tiny room the whole time. The mood is joyous, warm, bubbly. But not to my fiancee, she hated hers. When we’re alone in the car she puts me into words: “a fucking Duracell bunny.”
Interlude
Before getting into this whole Zen thing I’d already booked a trip to Gaia House for that spring. It was an insight retreat that went from Tuesday to Sunday, so it was my longest retreat yet, and I had to travel to another country. The grounds at Gaia have been in silence for decades and the birds have taken it over. Even sitting in the meditation hall you can hear five or ten different species of birdsong at the same time, constantly, throughout the day. The retreat featured way fewer hours of sitting than what I had gotten used to, and the expectations very different. No one checked if you were in the meditation hall. The shoes were all over the place, and for the meals you queued in a random order. That took a lot of the fun out of it; I wanted more sitting and more ceremony. I slept quite a lot in all the free time we had, and found a new appreciation for being able to shower basically whenever I wanted.
On the train back to London I had a lovely chat with an older English gentleman who’d also been at the retreat. We exchanged book recommendations. After he got off at his stop, I spent the remaining several hours looking out the window at the places and people passing by. I felt great, despite the retreat being easy as pie. The usual pull to reach for my phone and read something or listen to a podcast was gone. I looked at a young couple sitting across from me holding hands, both reading their own Kindle, and both wearing headphones. I looked at the people walking past on the platform outside. Many looked like they had just finished a marathon, staggering forward and unable to make eye contact with anyone. I had the sense that I hadn’t gained anything, but rather put something down.
Then I arrive through the security checkpoint at Heathrow and as I sit down to meditate while charging my phone I realize I have made a huge mistake. There is too much bustling, too many people everywhere. Nowhere I look is safe. My mind starts racing, there’s a restaurant over there, what if I go there. But I immediately know that won’t help, there are just as many people if not more there. There is no restaurant, no place at all, I can go where there isn’t a deafening crowd of people. The ceiling is low and there is no daylight in sight. I’m dizzy, heart pounding, palms sweaty. I know what’s happening: I’m about to have a panic attack. The urge to move is overwhelming and there is nowhere to go. The flight doesn’t leave for several hours, why did I go through security. I grab all my stuff and go in a random direction. The terminal is a maze. I find a prayer room. It has six or eight of the world religions on the placard, including Buddhism. Good. I go in. It’s quiet, only a few people. All of them on the prayer carpets facing Mecca. I look around for a place to sit. A young man asks me what I’m looking for. It doesn’t feel like he asks to be helpful. “A cushion,” I say. I find none. I don’t feel welcome here. There’s a single chair in the whole room. I sit and cross my legs on it. I hold the top rail of my luggage while I keep my eyes closed.
After a while, I feel I’ve calmed myself down enough to conclude I’ve sailed clear of an actual full blown panic attack, so I get up and head back to the terminal. I don’t feel great. But I manage to find a place with windows, at last I can see out onto the tarmac. I can see the outside. It’s not quite the same as being outside, but it helps. I go further until I get to some unused gates with much less people. I find a station that lets me charge my phone. An older Frenchman asks if I’m going to Versailles. I barely glance at him. All I answer is “no,” and he slinks away. Why would I be going to Versailles? I stand there staring into nothing until my phone has charged. Poor guy, just wanted a chat. I call my fiancee and she talks to me on the phone until the plane leaves. Never have I been more soothed than by the awe-some rumble of jet engines pushing a thousand tons of steel with me in it at harrowing speeds. I close my eyes and relax.
Back home I have a great several days of post-retreat high, feeling the exact same energized lightness and joy as before. The retreat itself wasn’t challenging, but neither did I get through the trip without a fight. I still don’t know if the adversary is a necessary component for the post-retreat high.
Sesshin
Sesshin is the full week summer retreat. It’s up in the mountains in a forest, there’s a lake nearby for swimming, paths for hiking, and a few main buildings on a little hilltop. The zendo floor is somehow even worse than the ornate carpet, it’s that gray linoleum thing with lots of fake dust specks or a camouflage pattern or however you want to describe it, lots of tiny patterns you get lost in for hours. We go around the table before we begin, telling a little bit about ourselves; why we’re here. Everyone competes to give the most zen answer possible, which is a very un-zen thing to do. Everyone says something about nerves or how it feels standing on the brink. I feel kind of fine and confident, but I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to sound “zen,” so I say something about nerves or how it feels to stand on a brink. Getting up from the table, that feels a little ominous.
As with every retreat, there is an introduction in the zendo for newcomers to lay out some of the expectations and answer questions people have about how things are going to go. This will be my fourth introduction. Shingen is here to help out and runs the introduction. Instead of morning bells they will be using the wooden clackers this retreat. I guess clackers can’t break. He makes a point of how it’s possible to eat with a spoon without clanking the bowl. In fact, he says, you only have to touch the walls of the bowl at the very end when you’re almost done, and then it’s possible to do so very deliberately and quietly. He demonstrates by silently scooping air out of his empty bowl. When someone predictably asks about meal etiquette, they get the same answer I did when I asked about meal etiquette on my first retreat: don’t worry about it, do whatever everyone else is doing and it’ll be fine.
The days are long and all the same.
I am pulled effortlessly from deep sleep, through a half-asleep state into full, bright wakefulness by the sound of wooden clackers—clack, clack, clack. It is four in the morning and it’s time to go. I put on a wool sweater and my black samue-robe-like jacket and go outside. It’s still as dark as it gets during summer and it’s cold even with the sweater. I see the back of Oryō’s head, on his zabuton, through the zendo windows. Motherfucker. I pee, wash my face, skip the toothbrush, and sit down in the zendo. The officers come in with the incense and do their bows; two of the officers serve tea, first to the buddha at the front, then everyone down the two rows of zabutons. It’s two and two at a time, the officer stops in front of me and the person next to me, we hold out our cup and indicate with hand signals when to stop. Everyone waits, then picks up and drinks their tea in unison. Quiet and fast, you don’t want everyone to wait on you. Everyone waits, then puts their empty cups down in unison. The officers swap tea pots, walk briskly to the front and do another round. The previous round’s tea wasn’t that hot, that means this one is going to be scalding. I indicate to stop pouring almost immediately—I’ve made that mistake before. We bow when everyone is done and put the cups away. The chanting book comes out and we go. It’s the first period of the day, so it’s the whole book—about forty minutes. GYA-TE GYA-TE HA-RA-GYA-TE HARA-SO-GYA-TE BO-JI SOWA-KA HAN-NYA SHIN-GYO. Kinhin is outside, it isn’t raining very much. It’s almost a jog. It’s getting a bit brighter outside but still very dark, then it’s time for sitting. Walk, sit. Walk, sit. Walk, sit. I try not to keep count. Walk, sit, walk, sit. The sun is low in the sky and casting long morning shadows. Walk, sit, walk, sit. Two clacks: time for breakfast. We get up, hold our bowls in both hands, and walk out in two lines. It’s cloudy and gray. We sit down at the table, quick chant: HA-RA-MI-TA, eat, back to the zendo: bell, everyone bows, the officers wipe off their zabutons and fluff their cushions, they meet in the middle of the room and bow to each other. One of the officers remains and bows to us: we’re released. Everyone wipes off their zabutons and makes their spot neat. My body needs more sleep. I quickly wipe off my zabuton and make my way back to my bunk, I will get maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. Clack, clack, clack. Time for work. Not a cloud in the sky. Another day I cleaned the toilets, today my task is to clean the entrance. I remove the giant carpet-padding thing and all the shoes, I mop the floor inside, I sweep the outside with a broom. I move fast. Unhurried. Does this task include cleaning the carpet-padding thing? I don’t know. I hang it over the railing and beat it with my open palm. I have to stop because I can’t breathe. I have become covered in brown dust. I should have taken off my meditation jacket. I beat the thing some more while holding my breath. Clack, clack, clack. I put it all back and make sure everything looks nice and tidy. I pause to enjoy my work, I have a minute. Okay, back in the zendo. Medium chant. Dharma talk, walk, sit, walk, sit, walk, sit. Lunch. Is there time to nap? No probably not, I gather my dried shorts and towel from the fence and go for a quick bathroom break. We walk, it’s sunny, I’m full of energy. My legs are strong, body supple. It feels great to walk. The walk is mandatory, the swim is not. Another day I’m going to be in a bad mood and lie sulking in the blueberry heather. Not today, I join the swim. I bask in the sun. Back at the compound, I find a fence behind the cabin, perfect: I can hang my wet shorts and towel here. Clack, clack, clack. I sit down in the zendo. Longer chant. Walk, sit, walk, sit, walk, sit. Thirty minutes of yoga to loosen our bodies. Dinner. Break—I have time to poop and get another forty minutes of nap. Luxury. Clack, clack, clack. I’m in the zendo. Gyodo: slow walking chant, each step is a single syllable. HA-step RA-step MI-step TA-step. Sit, walk, sit, walk, sit, walk, sit. The officers arrive with the tea. Always two servings, but since it’s evening we get a cookie as well. The cookie is delicious. The officers bow and leave. Do I stay for the optional night sitting? No, my body needs sleep. I brush off my zabuton and head to my bunk. Oryō stays. It’s hard to fall asleep so early. It’s barely past nine. Clack, clack, clack. It’s four in the morning and I’m wide awake. Time to go.
I’ve been outside before, but being outside regularly every half hour from before dawn to after dark gives me a completely different sense of what weather is. Now it strikes me as ephemeral, transient. The sky is always there, but clouds, wind, and even the color of the sky, changes by the minute—it feels like.
I was sulking in the grass, I tell Koshin at dokusan. I don’t know why, there was no reason. “Good mood, bad mood. Mood is weather,” he scoffs. I squint. He knows.
I expect to meet the pain with concentration and work with it. But it doesn’t work. I’m fumbling for a while, a few days, with trying to meet the pain like I had before. I try new things: this is chiseling my body and mind, I tell myself. I don’t drink any tea in the breaks because it would have me go pee every kinhin and that would interrupt my concentration.
Then I discover something I wasn’t looking for and wouldn’t have liked the sound of: the pain isn’t going away. And it’s not going to stop being painful. But I can sit in a new way. The pain is as problematic as ever before, but somehow, leaning into a good posture and sitting properly—feels good. Whereas before, the pain would tug at my body. I would wince and cramp down in agony. Sitting well now feels good, not in spite of nor because of the pain, but somehow with the pain. I am in pain, and the pain is still pain. It is not a good, warm sensation. It is not neutral sensations. It’s painful pain. Yet I’m not suffering. Nothing about my body looks like it’s in pain. It’s relaxed, alert, strong. I feel expansive, I can feel the pain down there in my legs as clearly as ever, but I can also see the linoleum floor and the people across the hall, I can see my body in my peripheral vision and the people next to me and I can hear the sounds all around. All of it feels like me, and the pain only a small part. The thought occurs to me: this is zazen.
But it doesn’t last. As the days go on the pain becomes too large for even this to hold. Or I lose track of it, I’m not sure which. When it becomes too much to bear, I fall back to old strategies. I try to concentrate on it. I try to convince myself it’s chiseling me.
It’s late afternoon. I’m suffering. My legs feel kind of fine though. The pain comes and goes throughout the day, and right now it isn’t that bad. I’ve had much worse. So why am I suffering so much? Why am I in such misery? I can’t quite put a finger on it, until it hits me: I’m overheating. It’s been an especially warm day, and the sun has been frying the zendo all day. I’m wearing a shirt under my samue-robe-thing. Next kinhin I’ll take it off to air out properly, I decide. The bell rings, two clacks. Okay never mind, it’s dinner time.
While I’m eating my delicious bowl of rice with soy sauce I suddenly realize I will not be able to finish it. It looks like a mountain of rice. I feel sick at the mere thought. I put it down in front of me to rest. My heart is racing and my palms go clammy. Oh no. I need air, right now. I need to get up, go out and get some air. I’ve never seen anyone leave a meal. Why is this happening? What is happening? A revelation: I’m thirsty. I’m not warm, I need water. My body needs water. I know I will get tea very soon, when the meal is over. I make a commitment to my body that I will drink as much water as I need afterwards. And with that, the growing panic slowly starts to wear off. It’s as if my body agrees to dial down the panic. My heart rate settles and my hands don’t shake quite as much. I wait a little longer and then manage to get down the remaining rice.
I lie in my bed pretty shaken in the following break. I don’t know whether it’s safe or irresponsible to continue. I definitely don’t want to induce an actual panic attack. At least now I know what has been causing my problems, and I won’t let it happen again. I don’t know what to do.
What am I doing! Why am I lying here contemplating how to proceed without telling anyone. It’s as if it hasn’t occurred to me until now: I can actually ask for help. I go find one of the officers and ask for a meeting with one of the teachers. She asks why; I tell her I almost had a panic attack and am considering whether I can continue. She comes back in a few minutes and tells me I can see Koshin right away in his room.
He is relieved the incident has a clear cause and an obvious remedy. I’m not feeling so sure, I’m still very shaken and worried whether it really is wise to go on. He suggests I sit out this evening’s last period to recover. Try again tomorrow morning, and see how it goes. We’ll meet again both before and after. He suggests I should really drink some electrolytes, but we don’t have any Gatorade or whatever. I say I once heard a Jamaican man rap on YouTube about cucumbers being a good source of electrolytes. He hasn’t heard the rap.
I go back to my room to try and get some rest and maybe some sleep. It is the evening of the third full day, the exact middle of the retreat. Koshin has lent me his water bottle, filled with slices of cucumbers he nicked from the kitchen.
The next morning was beautiful. It was wonderful to sit in the zendo while the light slowly crept in. As the sun rose I realized that my body had been screaming for attention. I hadn’t listened. It had to resort to almost inducing a panic attack to get it. Which subsided as soon as it did. While we were out walking kinhin with the low morning sun in my eyes, I realized the pain in my legs I had been wanting so badly for the whole year to be gone, was also my body trying to reach me. The leg pain just needed to be held, felt and loved. A well of compassion sprang from within and tears streamed down my face. I could not wait to get back to the zendo and sit, to be with and hold my dear, beloved pain. It needed me. For the next many hours I sat and felt every inch of the pain as meticulously as I could. I wanted to be nowhere else. I was sobbing for hours. It was like finally holding a small child I had inadvertently neglected. I was so, so sorry.
The rest of the retreat went well. After this there was no more leg pain. I could sit for the last three and a half days with perfect posture and it felt great. Sobbing uncontrollably in a room full of almost entirely strangers, and not being allowed to do anything about the tears causing a mess, was bizarrely liberating. It was as if Zen was saying to me, there is nothing wrong with you or this. I realized there was some potency in what I had experienced, and decided to point this tenderness at a specific emotional problem I’d had for a long time, but hadn’t been able to do anything about. The problem softened and was permanently, and almost entirely, resolved. Later I was able to release tension in my stomach I’d been chronically holding my whole life. That too is almost entirely and permanently gone. At dokusan I related the sobbing to Koshin. I told him that at one point we were chanting and I was ugly crying—at full volume: ugly chanting. “That is also a way to chant,” he said, and I had the feeling he meant it. He asked if I wanted to read—at the informal meal after sesshin—a poem that came to me while sitting. I had recited it to him during dokusan, but I didn’t think I would be able to do it justice at the table in front of everyone, so he read it for me. I’m not sure it made sense to anyone else there, but I’m sure it makes sense to you now. It’s called “Sesshin”:
The zabuton becomes a torture chamberof my own making
And the only escape
is to take this crowbar Zen gave me
and crack open my heart
Epilogue
After my concentration discovery at the winter go-sesshin, I tried concentrating on my legs as I was having a conversation with my fiancee sitting on the couch at home. What I found was that I was still able to do it, but at the expense of not being able to listen. If I listened, especially as the pain got stronger, I couldn’t also concentrate on the pain at the same time. So it’s not some kind of silver bullet, and it also requires a mind capable of sustained concentration, which you usually don’t have outside retreats. In a similar vein, even though the pain was completely absent for the remainder of the summer sesshin, it’s back to normal when I sit for extended periods now. [1]
But something else arrived. After I got back from sesshin I started developing a strange sense of being with my body, as if my body was somehow an other. As I walk around the house doing menial chores I observe my body doing them. It’s not me who’s doing them, I’m keeping my body company as it does the chores. It has company, and so do I. I’m no longer on my own, or by myself. Company makes life less tedious. It comes and goes to varying degrees, and I find I can connect with this sense of company more easily the more I make my life like retreat: less distractions, less productivity, less trying to achieve things in the world for some external goal. I hope to write more about this in the future when I understand more.
Oryō, by the way, is a fake Dharma name we made up for fun. According to AI it means “Awakening Completed.” Mine is Taigen, “Great Mystery.” And he didn’t sit the whole night. I think.
Unfortunately I’ve since moved further away from the city and I am not able to attend any zazenkais, at least not as long as they are without accommodation. Which is a great shame, as I now feel that whatever my initial interest in meditation was, it is retreat which is the greatest treasure. Nevertheless, I keep a daily practice and sit with another local group weekly. Koshin has started doing dokusan online; I’ve signed up for this coming Wednesday. I’m hoping to get some meditation instructions. I look forward to sesshin with the same trepidation I did that first retreat. But next year I’ll be back.
Which is not to say that the body does not adapt! I used to be extremely inflexible, like probably most people who spend most of their time sitting in front of a computer, but over the last few years I spent some effort on folding my legs under me when watching TV or whatever, and now I can easily sit for more than half an hour before any discomfort starts. It’s really very comfortable, and has become my favorite way to sit.