Most books available in the West on life in Japanese monasteries are written by Westerners. Perhaps that's why they tend to take a star-struck, romantically uncritical view of the exotic practices they encounter. Eat Sleep Sit: My Year At Japan’s Most Rigorous Zen Temple doesn't suffer from this quirk. Its author is Japanese, and that makes all the difference.
In the mid-Nineties, thirty-year-old Nonomura Kaoru entered Eihei-ji, the Vatican of Soto Zen. His motives were credibly vague; discussing them with his girlfriend, he gets out little more than "I'm uneasy". (Which is what drives most of us to monasticism – the Buddha called it "world-weariness".)
His friends react with anything but joy. In Japan, taking orders is considered rash and self-destructive, as radical and potentially suicidal as any forest ango. (Surprise!) One of them points out that cœnobites have a lower life expectancy than those outside the walls. But Nonomura persists, and his record of what ensues is both a powerful account of monastic awakening and an important corrective to misconceptions about Asian practice models.
The only honest term for the training Nonomura endures at Eihei-ji is "military":
Then the door […] abruptly opened. Before our eyes there appeared a monk, on his face a scowl so bitter that he might have been shouldering all the discontent in the world. Following the orders he barked at us, we each shouted out our name in turn, summoning all our strength to yell as loud as possible.
"Can't hear you!" he'd snap in reply. "If that's the best you can do, you'll never make it here! Turn around and go home!" [...] Again and again we raised our voices, yelling with such might that it seemed blood would spurt from our throats. [...] Finally I was left standing alone. With every shout my voice grew hoarser, making it harder and harder to yell. How much longer could this go on, I wondered.
It's all here: the hammer-headed machismo, the abuse masquerading as instruction, the barking-mad superiors. For months on end recruits are humiliated and beaten, forbidden to defend themselves or even cringe, and denied sleep, food, leisure, and hygiene.
Some have to be hospitalised; some never return.
But Eat Sleep isn't just, or even primarily, an indictment. Nonomura – an excellent writer, speaking through a talented translator – also relates the moving beauty, the timeless wisdom (especially of Dogen), and the penetration of his own nature and that of the world, that he finds "inside". It's another gift of Nonomura's nationality, inured to gratuitous authoritarianism, and so able to see past it to great treasures. Even the abuse has a certain purifying effect:
Every time I was pummelled, kicked, or otherwise done over, I felt a sense of relief, like an artificial pearl whose false exterior was being scraped away… Now that it was gone […] I knew that whatever remained, exposed for all to see, was nothing less than my true self. The discovery of my own insignificance brought instant, indescribable relief.
Perhaps Nonomura's greatest strength as a writer is his unflagging respect for his readers, eschewing condescending exposition, certain we'll get it on our own. Unlike Western observers, he never endorses or justifies the terrorism. Nor does he credit it with the insights he eventually gains. He simply relates events and leaves readers to draw their own conclusions. I found this especially useful, as the contrast between ends and means in this system is dramatic. Eihei-ji is ambiguous and contradictory moral ground, and Nonomura is content (and Zen enough) to leave it so.
I have a fantasy that some day, somewhere, a Zen monastery will be founded on the interlocking principles of anatta and humility. Aspirants in this renewed lineage will be required to study with equal zeal ancestral wisdom and the errors that have been committed in its name. Because if you don't have both, you don't have Zen.
As regular readers will have guessed, I'd like the books I review here to be included on that shelf. And teachers in that future Zen Centre could do worse than assign Eat Sleep Sit to each novice on entry, right alongside mu.
(More experienced sitters may also find Meditation Tips useful.)
Meditation is easy to do but challenging to learn, mostly because it is so easy; practitioners either don't talk about technique at all, or tart it up with so much precious tripe it's hard to discern the fundamentals. When I became a hermit monk, with the Internet and common sense my only master, I had some difficulty getting the hang of this sitting thing. After a few weeks, with mixed results and the general feeling I must be "doing it wrong", I finally Googled my way to Zen Mountain Monastery's concise, complete, flake-free instructions. Without further koo-koo-ka-choo, here they are:
ZEN MOUNTAIN MONASTERY ZAZEN INSTRUCTIONS, aka Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Zen Meditation But Nobody Would Answer Your Goddam Questions.)
In respect and support of all enlightenment practices, I would also like to share some lessons learned during that founding period, to help others avoid common cul-de-sacs.
o When the Buddha said "sit", he meant "sit". The most important thing in your meditation practice is meditation. It's more important than equipment, posture, teachings, sutras, doctrine, or literally anything else. Just getting yourself to sit down and stay down is both the point and the hardest part of this practice.
o We don't meditate to accomplish things. We don't do it to become calmer, kinder people. We don't do it to sharpen our attention, or gain insight into our lives or the human condition. We sure as hell don't do it to have "visions" or become Awesome Zen Masters. Some sits are "good", full of wisdom, acceptance, and clarity. Others are "bad", full of rage and grief and unrest. But whatever happens is what's supposed to happen.
o Benefits are often realised only after you stop. Sometimes I sit for an hour without a second of peace. My mind snarls and chews, my body creaks and whines; nothing's good. But when I finally get up, a sort of quiet contentment washes over me. If I hadn't kept sitting, I wouldn't have received that compensation.
o Sometimes – particularly in the beginning – you may in fact have visions, or openings, or other types of mental recoil. Greet these like you greet everything that happens on the cushion: with a firm "Hmmmm." An experience may have meaning to you, but don't become attached to it – i.e., consider it a "revelation", or any other twee bunkum. These insights come from inside of you, from your own mind. Take delivery, and pass on to the next breath.
o When I first started, I read a lot of Zen teachings about being unmovable and disciplined and determined. As I was (and am) hard-core in my pursuit of enlightenment, if I dozed off on the cushion, I would slap myself, hard, to stay awake. One day I gave myself a bloody nose. "This can't be what the Buddha had in mind," I thought. I was right. Zen comes from Asia, where it's cool to inflict suffering on yourself. Monks there are beaten, made to sit in uncomfortable conditions or for tortuously long periods, denied sleep, food, leisure, and hygiene. (See Eat Sleep Sit: My Year at Japan's Most Rigorous Zen Temple, by Nonomura Kaoru.) The Buddha flat-out ordered us not to do this. Machismo is one of the stickiest attachments, right up there with greed, approval, and social media. You get zero credit for "powering through" avoidable suffering; in fact, it sets you back. If physical misery rises to the point you can no longer focus, modify your technique, or terminate the session.
o Beware the stories of others (including mine). Listening to other meditators' experiences is a sure path to discontent. "Everybody else talks about transcending/kensho/insight/oneness/visions/out-of-body experiences/indifference to pain/recovering lost memories/curing warts; something must be wrong with me." Your meditation practice is tailored to you. No-one else can command it, forbid it, certify it, or control it. You have one task: to sit. Are you doing it? Goooood.
o Finally, the effects of meditation are cumulative. You will feel much greater "effect" (for want of a better word) if you meditate twice a day, every day, than if you sit only once, or erratically. Life conspires to break up practice; sometimes you can't sit as well, or as often, as you'd like. Overcoming such obstacles (including the most debilitating: your internal excuse factory), and accepting them when they can't be overcome, is the nature of practice.
Somebody smart once said, "Each time you sit is the first time." This isn't poetry; no matter what's happened before, or what you've come to expect, every sit is its own event, ungovernable and unpredictable. And despite what some would have you believe, there are no meditation masters, any more than there are sleeping masters, dreaming masters, or boredom masters. Meditation is a natural state, arising when conditions are such. Following the Zen Mountain instructions establishes those conditions; whatever happens next is zazen.
Are you doing it? Goooood.
