How To Sleep In The Woods

(This entry from my ango log is a timely reminder of how difficult life was in the jungle during those first frigid, rainy months. I wrote this record down because I knew I would soon forget these hardships when I returned to the Red Dust World.

Simple things aren't simple when you live outdoors.

The brother who drove me out on the last day of ango also brought my camera so I could take some photos of the place where I'd just spent 100 days alone. By then it was late summer, so the rainfly was furled, revealing the door and mosquito netting of the walls behind it. Equally telling is the fact that the entire world is no longer dark and sodden, as it was when I wrote the following entry.)

BEDTIME ORYOKI:

1. Unzip the tent fly, then the tent door, just at the bottom, so as not to let bugs in, and slide the rolled blue foam mat, orange Thermarest, and journal case through the slit.

2. Zip back up, return to Tyvek [meditation shelter] and [secure it] for the night. (Mostly hanging stuff up and blowing out the candle after thanking it.)

3. Pee.

4. Lay [walking] stick outside tent door. Unzip the tent and sit in it with feet still outside on the ground. Take off the road [right] sandal, then the heart [left] sandal, and leave them outside, on the heart side, under the fly.

5. Brush off feet with gloved hands if wet, or by rubbing them together if not, and lift them into the tent.

6. Switch on the tent light and place it in the attic [small net hammock overhead]. Turn off the flashlight and store it there as well.

7. Pull the stick inside, clean off the [dirty] end, and lay it along the door sill. Zip up the door.

8. Take off specs and put them in the attic.

9. Untie the blue mat and unroll it along the door side, beside the stick. Store the tying string in the attic.

10. Reinflate the Thermarest and lay it on top of the blue mat, at [the] head end.

11. Spread the [sleeping] bag out on the mats, zipper to the heart (inboard) side. Spread the [cotton sleeping bag] liner on top of the bag.

12. Take off the [monk] robe and lay it next to the bedroll on the floor, interior down, knife [worn on the robe's belt] to heart side, mala [also on the belt] road side, collar headward.

13. Remove needed articles (hand sanitiser, toilet paper, gloves) from cargo pockets of trousers and lay them on the floor against the standing [back] wall, chest-high [when lying down].

14. Take off trousers, roll them up, and place them on the rain poncho against the standing wall, at about knee height [when lying down].

15. Roll up [a] pillow from un-needed clothes and other fabric items. Place at head-level, on heart side.

16. Remove underwear and place on trousers.

17. Snake into liner [first], and then into the bag.

18. Spread the robe over the sleeping bag as a blanket, interior down, collar at chin level.

19. Tuck robe's roadside hem corner, belt end, and sleeve under the blue mat (not the orange one), to keep it anchored during the night.

20. Mount night guard [a plastic device I wear at night to protect my teeth].

21. Turn off the light, lie back, find and place pillow.

And pleasant dreams.

This process is very time-consuming. But there's no other way to do it so you meet all your needs: warm, dry, as comfortable as possible, properly positioned on the ground, able to find stuff you might need during the night, especially emergency stuff such as you might need during an attack of Giardia or something threatening outside the tent, like a bear.

Good Song: Come Join The Murder

I had never heard of this alt hymn, or the artists who built it, or even the television series that launched it, before I first heard it on Celtic Music Radio some weeks ago. (Or maybe The Whip, or Folk Alley? Apologies to the unknown programme director with the sound judgement to add this track to the rotation.)

Which is probably for the best, as I understand the climactic scene behind which these poignant verses run would have superseded any connexions my own mind might have made.

And the work is deeply moving on its own.

In the meantime I've listened to it over and over again – I'm listening to it now – and suggest you do as well.

Listen without the lyrics. Let the chant flow through your skull. If the current moves you, listen a few times more before you engage your binary drive.

Just savour the oracular growl of Jake Smith (aka The White Buffalo), voicing the literary dexterity of lyricist Kurt Sutter. (While we're up, let's also note that the titular "murder" refers to a posse of corvids, not a capital crime.)

Those birds – crows, jays; ravens above all – were sangha during my forest ango; omnipresent, providing a guidance hard to quantify in the Red Dust World.

But you can take my word for it. These words–

Come join the murder
Come fly with black
We'll give you freedom
From the human trap

–arrested me.

Never mind that the story puts a darker spin on it; for me this quatrain encapsulates my experience on the mountain, taking me back to that time and place.

More sit than song.

And as Marshall McLuhan didn't quite say:

"The meditation is the message."

Therefore, for the good of The Order, I say in brotherly communion:

Let us clear our minds of discrimination, and contemplate this wisdom.


Wu Ya's commentary:

"Look, it's just a song."

–烏鴉


Come Join The Murder

by The White Buffalo and The Forest Rangers
words and music by Kurt Sutter

There's a blackbird perched outside my window
I hear him calling
I hear him sing
He burns me with his eyes of gold to embers
He sees all my sins
He reads my soul

One day that bird, he spoke to me
Like Martin Luther
Like Pericles

Come join the murder
Come fly with black
We'll give you freedom
From the human trap
Come join the murder
Soar on my wings
You'll touch the hand of God
And he'll make you king
And he'll make you king

On a blanket made of woven shadows
Flew up to heaven
On a raven's glide
These angels have turned my wings to wax now
I fell like Judas
Grace denied

And on that day he lied to me
Like Martin Luther
Like Pericles

Come join the murder
Come fly with black
We'll give you freedom
From the human trap
Come join the murder
Soar on my wings
You'll touch the hand of God
And he'll make you king
And he'll make you king

I walk among the children of my fathers
The broken wings, betrayal's cost
They call to me but never touch my heart now
I am too far
I'm too lost

All I can hear is what he spoke to me
Like Martin Luther
Like Pericles

Come join the murder
Come fly with black
We'll give you freedom
From the human trap
Come join the murder
Soar on my wings
You'll touch the hand of God
And he'll make you king
And he'll make you king

So now I curse that raven's fire
You made me hate, you made me burn
He laughed aloud as he flew from Eden
You always knew
You never learn

The crow no longer sings to me
Like Martin Luther
Or Pericles

Come join the murder
Come fly with black
We'll give you freedom
From the human trap
Come join the murder
Soar on my wings
You'll touch the hand of God
And he'll make you king

Come join the murder
Come fly with black
We'll give you freedom
From the human trap
Come join the murder
Soar on my wings
You'll touch the hand of God
And he'll make you king
And he'll make you king

St. Valentine's Day Meditation

Love is an act of courage, a losing bet that makes all who place it holy. Absurdity, sacrifice, and heartbreak are integral to it; marks of valour, not folly.

Those who refuse to honour it are first damned and last saved.

– From the journal of my 100 days of solo meditation in the forest, the story of which – 100 Days on the Mountain – I'm currently shopping to publishers.


(Photo of traffic signal trafficked for St. Valentine's Day – a lighthouse in the trackless night – courtesy of François Detemmerman and Wikimedia Commons.)

Hermit Habit

The wildlife of the North Pacific rainforest is famously reserved; where the East has its flashy cardinals, red efts, and indigo buntings, our own rubber boas, rough-skinned newts, and varied thrushes are modestly beautiful. The odd Steller's jay or goldfinch may be a pleasant change of pace, but we're satisfied to return to the brown and russet uniform of our understated nation when they've passed.

While sitting my 100 Days on the Mountain, I sometimes daydreamed about founding a North Coast-native order of forest monks. And should that fancy ever gel, we will sit in the forest of my forebears, wearing the habit of our Douglas squirrel hosts: a hooded robe of honest Cascade umber, over an ochre jersey.



(Text edited from the notes for my book, 100 Days on the Mountain. Photo of Tamiasciurus douglasii courtesy of Ivie Metzen, the US National Park Service, and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: T-Bone in the jungle

(My nephew, currently 28, photographed at 16 in the forest where I sat ango.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Guarding the Walls

Palladius said, "One day when I was suffering from boredom I went to Abba Macarius and said, 'What shall I do? My thoughts afflict me, saying, "You are not making any progress, go away from here".' He said to me, 'Tell them, "For Christ's sake, I am guarding the walls"'."

The Paradise of the Desert Fathers


(Pictured: the Bodhi Tree, the huge old bigleaf [Acer grandiflora] I guarded while sitting my 100 Days on the Mountain.)

WW: Elk Ridge trail

(This is the trail up Elk Ridge, just across the ravine from the jungle camp where I sat ango.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Ango

True nature;
It is on this mountain.
Because of the heavy mist, the exact location is unknown.

– An Ancestor's commentary on the Mumonkan.


(Photo of a North Coast mountain that looks remarkably similar to the one were I sat ango, courtesy of John Fowler and Wikimedia Commons.)

Remembering Ango

Today's top headline:
"Free-range Buddhist Eaten By
Health-Conscious Cougar."

– Haiku written eleven years ago, in anticipation of my 100 Days on the Mountain.

(Photo of Katsushika Hokusai painting courtesy of the British Museum and Wikimedia Commons.)

Street Level Zen: Refuge

"Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places."

Henry Beston

(Photo courtesy of Mario Dobelmann and Unsplash.com.)

Bad Dreams

One of the advantages of eremitical monasticism is the freedom to adapt practice to needs and conditions. Among the disadvantages is having life make its own changes without consulting you first.

Recently my meditation practice was largely eliminated by unsupportive circumstances. Then I got it back, as new conditions imposed themselves. And that's precipitated some valuable insight.

Meditation causes bad dreams.

This isn't my first experience with this. Most dramatic was ango, the salient features of which were a monastery-grade meditation schedule and unhappy REM sleep. Not nightmares per se; just reviews of personal regrets and fears that left me sad and circumspect.

But this is the first time I've noticed the causal relationship. When I'm prevented from meditating deeply or regularly, the bad dreams go away. Then I start getting more reliable cushion time, and they come back. Why?

I might spin a few hypotheses. One is just the free exercise of my whole brain. When you don't meditate much, you're actively firing only a small chunk of your neural net. Most of your mind runs in the background, cataloguing details and mapping associations while you drive ignorantly on. But meditation uses all the plumbing, and that stirs up rust and mould and silt that's settled quietly for years.

None of which is news to beginning meditators. The sensational tilling of ancient strata is one of the top ten results of new practices, and the main drive of the famous "burning off" of accrued delusion that Zenners often report at that stage. My own was a veritable inferno.

But apparently something more is going on. I generally get more courageous, in all facets of my life, when I practice consistently. "Composed" may be a better word; the mind-set Thich Nhat Hanh calls "mountain-solid". It's an un-macho, un-histrionic sort of gravel; I don't become a soldier or a warrior (thank God). I'm just more willing to "go there", where I otherwise might dither.

I think this is related to the bad dreams; whoever it is that edits that content when I'm not meditating regularly becomes less squeamish when I am. And the fact is, with further sustained practice the monk starts inserting himself into those scenarios.

"Well," he says, "we can always leave."

Or he confronts a critic: "Remind me again what business it is of yours?"

Or he apologises. "I should have thought more carefully before I made that decision. I shouldn't have assumed I knew what to do about this."

I'm still wistful during and after these dreaky movies, but I wake up informed at worst, and sometimes gratified.

Any road, as sincere sitters know, meditation isn't about feeling better or fixing things; it's about confronting and accepting them. I'm no greater fan of bad dreams than anyone else, and if I had the choice I'd skip that part, but I deeply value the insights they offer, and particularly the sense that I'm in greater control and that something useful and productive is happening between my ears.


(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

WW: Skull tree

(This is a tree on the edge of my camp during ango. As I've mentioned twice before, humans like to hang skulls in conspicuous places. I'm no different.)

WW: Jungle creek

(A shot of a creek in the jungle where I sat my 100 Days.)

Good Book: Cat Attacks

I didn't want to read this book. And I really didn't want to keep reading after I started. But as I've often said, denial is an unskilful response to danger.

Most of my life has happened in cougar country, much of it in the woods, where I prefer to practice Zen when possible. A few years back I sat 100 Days on the Mountain, an ancient Buddhist ritual, in Washington's coastal jungle.

The cat threat there, of which I was generally aware, comes up several times in my book. (Which is now finished and seeking a publisher.) But if I'd read Cat Attacks: True Stories and Hard Lessons from Cougar Country, I wouldn't have slept once during those more than three months.

Authors Dean Miller and Jo Deurbrouck are careful to point out that human-cougar encounters are extremely rare, and physical contact a tiny blip in that statistic. But they are also conscientious – downright didactic, in fact – in recounting, second by horrific second, exactly what happens in a mountain lion attack.

And though it's apparently impossible to escape a gruesome death if you're alone when the stats turn against you, your chances of avoiding that actuarial convergence drop to zero if you've no hard data on your predator's habits and methods.

Some of which, thanks to Miller and Deurbrouck, I now know:

•    Cougars prefer silent, lightning ambush from behind and above, after extensive, close stalking. When in the woods, turn and look behind you, thoroughly and often.

•    Your predator's single-minded intent is to kill and eat you. This makes your bear-mollifying skills guaranteed death. Instead, if one atypically shows itself before lunging, go big, mean, and criminally insane. This may convince the cougar to go back to just stalking you for now. If on the other hand you make yourself quiet and small and avoid eye contact, you've green-lit a kill.

•    The charge, when it comes, is supernaturally fast; witnesses uniformly report a "brown blur". And its dump-truck impact is instantaneous. So even if you see a lion crouching to strike (which they take great pains to conceal) you have no time to raise or aim, much less draw, a firearm.

•    Though they'll attack groups, particularly children in the midst of one, as readily as they'll strike a loner, cougars rarely turn on rescuers. (It's bizarre, un-prey behaviour that evolution has not prepared them to answer.) So if a companion is hit, come in hot and hostile and fight hard at close quarters, with feet and fists if necessary. Once engaged, a lion may cling stubbornly to its quarry, but they seldom or never accept third-party combat. So keep on hammering until you completely weird it out and it withdraws.

•    Solitary humans have no chance of survival.

This is just a smattering of the practical, unromantic intelligence Cat Attacks contains. The authors' steely pragmatism, while traumatic, gives the work great strength. Particularly valuable is their bullheaded refusal to get sucked into either of the silly postures – "kill 'em all" or "poor persecuted kitties" – one usually encounters when the topic is raised.

To counteract the first, they illuminate in equal detail the harsh reality of a cougar's life, which is astonishingly brutal and getting crueller by the day, thanks to overweaning human arrogance.

As for the second, well… in the same instant a cougar touches you it rips your face off. This allows it to begin eating you without waiting for you to die.

That image brings me keenly in mind of Meditation in the Wild, wherein Charles S. Fisher points out that early Buddhist monks – originally all, and then most, of whom were hermits – had a tendency to enter Asia's primordial jungles and never be seen again. Tigers are even bigger than cougars, and not one whit more sentimental.

These are the conditions that forged our nihilistic Zen world view.

So if you live or travel in the northern and/or western half of North America, read Cat Attacks. Get schooled. Be prudently terrified.

Because when I think of all the times I've been afoot in the rough at dusk – including every day of ango – I break into a cold sweat. One unmoderated by the knowledge that cats also attack people in broad daylight. (Even housecats creep me out now.)

So be safe out there, brothers and sisters.

As safe as this existence allows.

(Note: a slightly updated release of this book came out in 2007 under the title Stalked by a Mountain Lion: Fear, Fact, And The Uncertain Future Of Cougars In America.)

UPDATE, 31 MAY 2018. Coverage of a local fatal attack, with further information on staying safe in the forest, is available here.

Practice Models

What I most ached for on the mountain was a musical instrument. They're like languages, each complete and distinct and irreplaceable. Sadly, of the several I play, only the harmonica is easily carried. Which is why I learned it, but as I never acquired the true harpist's seatbelt-sense of "nowhere without it", I'd managed to forget mine before leaving. And I missed it every day.

Flautists have it figured out: a simple tube, and a jackknife with a reamer, and you've got music. Archaeologists believe that, percussion excepted, the transverse flute was the first instrument we invented.

Of course, simplicity on that order demands complexity on another. I tried to learn, once.

And so, the harmonica. Because anything your instrument won't do for you, you have to find in yourself.

(Photo of 43,000-year-old Aurignacian bone flute, which clearly demanded more talent than I have, courtesy of José-Manuel Benito, Parque de la Prehistoria de Teverga, and Wikimedia Commons. Photo of my old Hohner Chromonica model also courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

Hermitcraft: Bindle Oryoki Set

Though the word translates as "just enough", oryoki has grown to mind-numbing complexity in Zen monasteries, where every second of every meal is carefully choreographed. Beginners often view this mealtime ritual as an onerous pack of made-up fuss, but in fact it's the most efficient way to get lots of people through a full-course meal and back to work. (Once everyone's mastered it, anyway.)

Centrepiece of the ceremony is the monk's dining set, which consists of three or more graduated bowls (details vary from house to house) nested and knotted in a large napkin, along with a range of utensils. Diners start and end each meal in the same position: seated before a neat, perfectly-packed oryoki set. Watching a well-trained sangha perform this bewildering kata, from opening through serving, eating, cleaning, and closing, is a memorable experience. (Participating in it is even better. As neurotic as it sounds, oryoki is curiously satisfying. I've never met a monk who doesn't consider it one of the most powerful – maybe the most powerful – liturgies in the monastic day.)

Having said that, I didn't intend to observe oryoki when I began my 100 Days on the Mountain; too much falderal for a man alone. But I quickly realised that it's even more necessary in the woods than in the artificial forest of institutional Zen. When you're sitting lotus on the ground, with only your lap for a table, you're forever reversing tea on yourself, scuffing dirt into your rice, knocking over the water bottle… those first meals without oryoki were a chaotic, wasteful fiasco. Fortunately I had the basic elements of a bowl set with me, and after some intensive assembly and invention, managed to reduce accidents to virtually none. (Absolutely none, if you subtract mishaps due to neglect of the forms.)

Out in the Red Dust World, storebought oryoki sets are often lovely works of art… and the money needed to buy some of them could keep their lacquerware Buddha bowls full for many years. By contrast, the kit you see here serves admirably for "bindle oryoki": an eremitical version of "just enough" that's, like, just enough. It includes only two bowls: a Buddha bowl for rice and beans, and a smaller one for tea; only two cloths (wrapper/wiper and lap cloth/spoon case); and – most heretical of all – a single utensil (still folded in the lap cloth in the photo at left). Fact is, forest practice doesn't require anything but a spoon. It'll put rice in your bowl, take rice out of your bowl, and scrape the bowl clean afterward. Mission accomplished.

All of this, properly (make that, obsessively) cleaned, wrapped, and knotted, fits nicely in my little tea kettle, and then both of those in my larger rice kettle.

The elements, with approximate prices new, in US dollars, are:

2 melamine bowls, $7.50
2 bandana handkerchiefs, $5.00
1 wooden mixing spoon, suitably modified and finished in trinity tar, $5.00

Total cost: less than $20.00. If that's still too much, you can buy the bowls at a dollar store or garage sale; make the cloths from old sheets or shirts; and whittle the spoon out of scrap wood. In fact, with due diligence, you could probably reduce the total investment to $0.00.

The spoon is the only component that requires careful consideration. I actually used an old stainless steel spoon on the mountain. Metal is tough and holds an edge, and so it scrapes the bowl well at meal's end. Also, a heat-proof utensil is handy; you never know what you might need to do with it. On the other hand, Japanese tradition favours the natural beauty of wood, and appreciates the fact that a wooden spoon makes less noise in the mouth. (One of the many neuroses of monastery etiquette.) This is germane to the forest as well, where a monk must keep the lowest possible profile for tactical reasons. Wooden implements also are non-reflective, and don't ring or sink if dropped.

The kettles came from an ancient camping cookset my parents bought in the early 60s with S&H Green Stamps. You can't get quality like that today – at least not at the price – but sharp eyes at the Good Value Army, or careful crafting of tin cans (for further consideration see this post), could get you into a serviceable pair for very little.

One way or the other, this set-up fed me with radiant adequacy for 100 days. I'm sure it'll do as much for you.

May each of us carry our bowls through this world with mindful resolve.

Good Book: At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace

I'm not sure he'd appreciate the label, but Claude AnShin Thomas is the most prominent hermit of our generation. Though an ordained priest in Bernie Glassman's Zen Peacemaker lineage, his practice is in the tradition of Bashō. In his own words:

"I made the decision to take the vows of a mendicant monk primarily because I wanted to live more directly as the Buddha had. […] Also, in witnessing the evolution of Zen Buddhist orders in the United States, I wanted to evoke the more ancient traditions of those who embarked on this spiritual path and to live my commitment more visibly."

AnShin specialises in walking ango – long voyages on foot, without money, living off the Dharma and the compassion of others. He calls them peace pilgrimages, and to date he's walked from Auschwitz to Vietnam; across the US and Europe; in Latin America; and even the Middle East. He also leads street retreats, a unique Peacemaker practice wherein Zen students take the Buddha at his word and become Homeless Brothers in the urban core of a large city for a specified period of time.

Where, you wonder, does a guy get gravel like that? Well…

In At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace, AnShin describes his military service in Vietnam, where he clocked 625 combat hours in US Army helicopters, many behind an M60 machine gun. By his own recollection, he was in combat virtually every day from September 1966 to November 1967. He was, in short, the classic "badass American fighting man" so beloved of Hollywood.

Except it wasn't as fun.

He came home, like all war veterans, to a society desperate never to hear about those not-fun parts, or to pay for the care he now required for life. The tale that ensues has been told a hundred times, and each time is the first.

Re-reading At Hell's Gate (one of my all-time favourite Zen books) I was struck again by the sense that the author would rather not be writing it at all. There's a reticence in AnShin's prose, a tone of compelled confession, that suggests modesty, circumspection, and discomfort with the writer's art, at which he clearly doesn't feel proficient. Which is exactly why he is. You're not reading a writer; you're reading a veteran, in much more than just the military sense.

Interspersed among terse, almost telegraphic accounts of his past is some of the best how-to on practical meditation I've found. His themes are universally relevant: depression and despair; atonement and redemption; suffering and transcendence. All from a guy who speaks with thunderous authority.

His eremitical bona fides are equally evident. He writes:

"Anyone can come with me on a pilgrimage. It's not necessary for a person to become a student of mine or to spend time with me to learn this practice. It is open."

In these angos – which he defines as "just walking" – he's revived a practice largely abandoned in the era of institutional Zen:

"There is no escape from the nature of your suffering in this practice. When you walk, you are constantly confronted with your self, your attachments, your resistance. You are confronted with what you cling to for the illusion of security."

Should anyone require more evidence of AnShin's hermitude, his Further Reading section includes Zen at War, The Cloud of Unknowing (a classic of Christian contemplation), and the Gnostic Gospels, though none of them are cited in the text.

My lone criticism of At Hell's Gate is its light treatment of those incredible pilgrimages. In fact, I wish AnShin would write a whole 'nother book just about them. I appreciate his desire to avoid the odour of self-glorification; first-person journalism is a hard beat for a non-narcissist. And as a mendicant, he likely doesn't have time or space to sit down and write. But it's badly needed. I hope AnShin's sangha convince him someday to transmit and preserve these vital experiences, for the benefit of future generations. After all, where would we be if Bashō had remained silent?

Nevertheless, the book we already have is all by itself a repository of rare and hard-earned wisdom, a chronicle of unusual violence and damage, leading to unusual insight. The man himself puts it best:

"Everyone has their Vietnam. Everyone has their war. May we embark together on a pilgrimage of ending these wars and truly live in peace."

If you're suffering – whether firearms were involved or just plain-old heartbreak – read this book.

Good Book: Eat Sleep Sit

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.

Hermitcraft: Shelters For Forest Practice

Thoreau's cabin at Walden

My decision to live in a tiny tent during my 100 Days on the Mountain, rather than more comfortable quarters, was largely influenced by my determination to live in the forest, rather than just near it. (It was also my only option when I thought I'd have to sit on public land.) But in the doing I discovered that a cabin is necessary to do this right; it spares you practice-robbing work and health risks. Let's be clear: by "cabin", I mean four walls and a roof. A shepherd's trailer; a wall tent; a tool shed; a plywood hut; eight by twelve of simple headroom. More, and you're no longer in the woods.

• Your shelter should have as many windows as possible, for morale and to keep you "in-frame". A broad, wrap-around opening in the walls, screened and shuttered, is perfect. A roofed porch or awning is also useful.

• As I learned, a woodstove can be invaluable in northern climes, even in summer. Otherwise it can be impossible to stay clean; you can't dry your clothes and it's difficult to bathe through cold and rainy weeks. The small portable models they make for hunters are fine.

Shepherd's trailers

• Since cooking on a woodstove is an arcane skill, uncomfortable in warm weather and time-consuming, you'll need a camp stove as well. A single propane or butane burner is entirely adequate and can be used indoors with adequate ventilation.

• Take pains to secure a comfortable cot and a good pillow; unbroken sleep is vital to effective practice.

• You will also need a table and chair. Lack of comfortable seating is a technique governments use to torture prisoners. They do not become enlightened. (Mandarin or convict.)

• Install shelves or cabinets, and a variety of hooks, for storage.

Simple garden shed

A corrugated metal roof and/or sides makes for a fast and solid building, fine for one-season use. A corrugated plastic roof, light to carry and cheap to buy, also acts as a skylight. A wood floor, while not necessary, makes staying clean a lot easier. (If using a tent, consider a plywood platform, a sewn-in floor, or at least a heavy canvas ground cloth.)

Finally, it's a good idea to make whatever structure you choose as neat as possible. People are already suspicious of us. You don't want to give those Ted Kaczynski references any free hand.

Basically, you want something that's dirt-basic but a whole lot cleaner. Then raise the Bandana Ensign in the dooryard and bust some suffering!

UPDATE, 19 June 2014: see my post on Kamo no Chômei's classic hermit hut.

UPDATE, 30 July 2015: Swedish architect draws designer hermit digs! Read about it here.

(Adapted from 100 Days on the Mountain, copyright RK Henderson. Photos: Thoreau's cabin (Tom Stohlman) and shepherd's trailers (John Shortland) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; simple garden shed from Sheddiy.com.)

Hermitcraft: How to Make Ghee

I had never made ghee before I went to the mountain. In the planning stages of that project, having been raised on tales of people who starved eating rabbit, I believed I needed a source of dietary fat. (Wild rabbits have no fat, according to backwoods lore, hence you can die on a full stomach if you eat only that.) I'd heard about ghee for years, how versatile it was, how good it tasted, and how it kept for months without refrigeration. So that spring I put up four pints of the stuff, for use during my ango.

I found instructions on various Internet sites, but most or all of them were more complicated than necessary. Therefore, because ghee really is useful, especially for people who don't have refrigeration, I submit my recipe.

HOW TO MAKE GHEE

First, copy the following list of ingredients exactly and procure them from a licensed full-service grocer.

Full List of Ingredients:
1. Butter.

Next, melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. When liquefied, turn the temperature up to an active simmer. You're cooking off the water, which is in all butter, and so it will spit and carry on like any hot fat with water in it. DO NOT STIR. (Reason follows.)

You're also allowing the milk solids in the butter to congeal and sink to the bottom. This is the difference between ghee and drawn or clarified butter; many websites mistakenly equate the two. Ghee is cooked beyond simple separation, until all the water has steamed away and -- very important -- the milk solids have browned. This is what gives ghee its rich flavour, sometimes described as nutty, sweet, or lemony.

The only delicate part is telling when to take the pan off the heat, and that's only delicate because you have to do it by smell. First the ghee will go still; water gone, the bubbling stops. Not long after that, the kitchen will suddenly fill with a buttery scent some associate with baking croissants; to me, it's the smell of shortbread. It's a rich, sumptuous fragrance that takes no prisoners; you'll know it when it happens.

Tilt the pan gently at this point and note that the even layer of gunk on the bottom has a pastry-like, toast-brown aspect. That's your cue to take it off the heat.

Filter the ghee immediately, while still hot and thin. I use a paper coffee filter for this, for its fine mesh and ease of clean-up. (Woodstove Dharma strikes again.) You can also use muslin, cheesecloth, or a steel-screen coffee filter.

Pour the filtered ghee into a lidded jar or tub, and you're done.

Fact is, there are only two ways you can screw this up:

1. By becoming distracted (for example by drying paint, which is more exciting than watching butter melt) and allowing the milk solids on the bottom to burn rather than brown, giving the ghee an off flavour.

2. By boiling the ghee so vigorously that some slops on the stove and sets your house on fire, rendering flavour problems relatively moot by comparison.

The fix for both is the same: never leave the kitchen until the ghee is off the stove. I wipe down the counter, wash a few dishes, start another recipe, whatever I can do without stepping more than a metre away from the simmering pot. Adventure averted.

So, what kind of butter is best? Again, details are important: you must only use butter made from the milk of some animal. Do not attempt to make ghee from roofing tar, modelling clay, margarine, or old tires; the flavour will be disappointing.

Aside from that, any butter will do. Many websites insist the butter be unsalted; some insist it be expensive; some say it must be organic. The fact is, all butter works. On the Indian subcontinent, ghee is commonly made of yak butter, but the stores where I live tend to sell out of that before I get there, so I use cow butter. The sole difference between the salted and unsalted is purity: marginally-refined butter must be salted to stop all the solids that have been left in it going rancid. Unsalted butter must be more refined, to remove the spoil-prone proteins that would otherwise require salt, and this extra processing raises the price.

Because it has less by-catch to precipitate out, unsalted butter renders the most ghee per pound of butter. (Typically just a shade less than the original amount.) Good-quality salted butter renders slightly less ghee than that, but the ghee is not salty; the salt drops out with the rest of the solids. Even the cheapest, crappiest, scariest butter you can buy (that infamous single paper-wrapped rough-hewn slab that smells like cheese and tastes like salt paste) makes excellent ghee. There's just less of it. (Much less; you'll get about two thirds the original amount. In other words, a third of that machete butter, isn't butter.)

Ghee has less cholesterol than butter and keeps well without refrigeration if stored in a cool dark place. Since the crust left on the bottom of your pan is also what makes butter burn at high temperature, you can fry in ghee. And it can be used at the table like whole butter. The flavour is pleasant but subtle, and is compatible with most dishes.

Now that I'm initiated, I gotta have ghee. I fry potatoes in it, pop popcorn, and of course, sauté my masala. A pound or two put up, and I'm fixed for the year.

What was it they used to say on TV? "Try it, you'll like it."