Tiny Revolutions №110: Things are Illuminated

+ an invitation to an IRL experiment in the Hudson Valley

The entrance to Toshoji

Hello! Last time I wrote I mentioned I was leaving soon to spend some time at Toshoji, a Zen Buddhist monastery in rural Japan that’s been operating since the eighth century (!). I traveled there with a couple of members of my sangha to visit our teacher, Dave Cuomo of

Angel City Zen Center

, who was completing a 90 day training period there as part of his elevation to the rank of teacher in Soto Zen. 

It was a rare opportunity for lay people like us to visit this monastery. Contrary to what many westerners might think when they hear the word “monastery,” it is not a chill experience. It is more like a boot camp. Some people go there to deepen their Zen practice (me), but it was expressly designed for the purpose of training of monks who will someday take over their family temples, and as such, it’s pretty intense. In conversation I’ve been describing it as part meditation retreat, part work camp, which should give you some idea of what goes on there. The monks don’t just chant and meditate and train to run the temple, they also have responsibility for monastery operations and upkeep, which includes lots of chores. And while we lay visitors didn’t have a lot to do on that front, we did pitch in during work practice (samu) periods in the schedule. Anyway, here are some things I wrote about the experience while I was there.

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To my surprise I already had a pretty good foundation in Zen forms and rituals from my training with ACZC. When and how to bow and do gassho and shashu. How to be observant and follow what everyone else is doing. Familiarity with lots of chants and call and response refrains. Even the pattern of the bells I am mostly familiar with. A roll-down is a roll-down and they do it on lots of different bells and drums and clackers. Which is not to say I haven’t made a ton of little mistakes, but you make them and you just keep going. Do it enough and it becomes routine and you don’t make mistakes anymore. Or not as often. The more you pay attention, the more things are illuminated. 

Sort of like how all the monks look the same from a distance. All robed and crow-like, scurrying around in their sweeping drapes of black, doing things that are obviously highly choreographed down to the gesture level, but that are inscrutable to a stranger’s eye. Where at first you just see the lot of them, the longer and closer you look you start to see the individuals emerge. 

Some monk speaks in English and you detect a French accent or a “y’all” that hints at their origins. You spot an unusual gait during walking meditation. A sleeve slips down and reveals a tattoo. Personalities start to become apparent – a kind smile, a joke, a knowing head nod. Beyond the bald heads and uniform robes the details are revealed and the reality that we’re all the same and yet totally distinct is clear. Same in a monastery as on any city street corner. The setting changes but there’s always more to discover if you look. Like really look. But of course you have to drop your own self-centered concerns to be able to notice. And in a place like this you are absolutely supposed to drop yourself. I think that’s the whole point. 

It’s hard though when you’re also constantly making a mess of everything. You forget to take off your flip flops and walk through the dharma hall. You forget to put on your flip flops when you go to the zendo. You get caught reading in the library which you are apparently not supposed to do? (Sometimes you get corrected and sometimes someone will just give you a pointed look, I have found.) 

Over time the corrections take effect and you’re just trained to behave the way everyone else does. Everyone the same, yet everyone different. I think what stands out to me is that the way everyone differs is so specific to them and yet no one is trying to be different. They just are. And it just is. You don’t need to try. Just do what is necessary. Only you will be you. Just like everyone else. 

And as the strangeness of the setting fades, the song of the birds becomes more apparent in the background, and you start to detect that each bell or drum that sounds is meant to indicate something is happening. It’s all a practice in waiting, settling, noticing. How seldom we do this in our daily lives! 

your girl w medieval broom

The chores here are absurd. Two days I swept the road during work practice. Also for two days I picked up leaves and other detritus in the courtyard one by one by hand. It’s a painstaking effort that really does add up over time, but yeah, you’re crouched down picking up a little seed helicopter with the sun blazing down on your neck and you’re like, wait, what the fuck am I doing? And how did I get here? A blister appears on the webbed skin between your thumb and your pointer finger from the bamboo cane that serves as the handle of the broom (the broom itself is made of twigs banded together and bound with wire). Who am I, you think, and why am I *sweeping a road* in rural Japan with a medieval yard tool? And oh look, a cute little frog. And here come the temple cats mewing for someone to pet or feed them. Your perspective zooms in and out from the specific to the universal, and in and out again. Much like it does in any spiritual practice, or really just any human life where you are truly paying attention. Back and forth, here and gone, a powerful individual being and speck of dust. There’s a strange sort of peace in being present for it.

I’m not saying I’d like to stay here at the monastery for a long time. I wouldn’t. You’re constantly in discomfort. Discomfort in zazen, discomfort in doing the chores, discomfort in the knowledge that the work of life itself never ends. You have to do it everyday forever. Start over every time. Do it a little better every time, maybe. Get comfortable in the wild discomfort. You can live, you can breathe. You can appreciate that every little moment of joy is a unique experience that will never come again and it’s worth it to stay in the unrelenting effort of it all for those little glimmers. 

Even though most of it fucking blows, to be clear. Well, maybe “much” is more accurate. A lot. Stand around and chant. Sit with your aching back, your growling stomach, the memory from your childhood that brings tears to your eyes and a physical ache to your heart. This is how you do it. You just sit with it and know it will pass. It’s happening to all of us just the same, only each one of us is different. 

“Reality has a surprising amount of detail.” That’s the refrain that’s coming up for me after three days here. (And five+ years of Zen practice. And 47+ years of living a human life.) It’ll be different later, more and less rosy. It’ll be exactly what it is, that’s about all you can count on. 

Taking time to notice the way right before you is the way the larger path reveals itself. One step at a time and over and over again. 

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Come Hang in the Hudson Valley?

Speaking of traveling along down the path, in my last issue I also mentioned that I was thinking of heading to New York to explore spending more time there. Movement is happening!

From July 21 - 31, I’ll be staying in the charming town of Kingston, about two hours north of NYC, near some of my collaborators at

Foster

. Over those 10 days, we’re going to be co-creating some informal workshops and events to spend time writing, hanging, working on various projects, and finding ways to support each other.

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in joining, reply to this email or leave a comment! The whole thing is emerging on the fly, but I can promise you there will be bright, curious, playful, open-hearted people who are interested in building relationships with other good humans and making beautiful things amidst all this chaos. We’re looking for like-minded others to join us. Is that you?

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Or Just Come Hang with Me on Zoom?

I’ve got another free fire-themed writing circle coming up with Foster on Tuesday, July 16 at 2:00 pm ET. This is a 90 minute container for anyone who wants to get something out of their head — whether you consider yourself a “writer” or not. I’ll do some guided meditation and ice-breakers with other participants to ease you in and get you writing. I’d love to see you there.

RSVP here.

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I hope your summer is everything you want it to be so far, and if it’s not, I hope you’re rolling with it all the same. Tell me how it’s going in the comments.

Thanks for being here, as ever.

😘

Sara

p.s. Tiny Revolutions is free to read but if you’d like to support my work, please share this with someone who’d appreciate it, or just like this post!

p.p.s If you’d like more visuals and sounds to go along with my scattered impressions of monastic life, here’s a documentary someone made about Toshoji recently.