one month at zmm

i zen, you zen, we all zen for zazen

it’s icing on the cake after here, really. if i wanted to, i could cease my whole usa-tour travel plans and stay here for a year or more. i’m gonna try listing out a bunch of things i wanted to share and see if getting them down on paper frees up yet juicier reflections for me

cycles within cycles within cycles

one of the things that’s super cool about the training schedules here is all the varying cycles of intensity. within the day, there are two periods of formal zazen, 20 minutes of liturgy in the morning and some other chants thru the rest of the day, long stretches of work practice in the afternoon and evening, and hour for reading, 3 meals, and a couple hours of free time.

within the week, there’s are 4 full days (weds - saturday) of the intense training schedule (~5am-9:30pm), sunday with work and service in the morning followed by all afternoon/evening free, monday free all day, and tuesday free in the morning followed by beginning the next training week in the afternoon.

within the month, there are 3 weeks of this regular schedule, and one week of sesshin, where we mostly sit zazen all day long and maintain noble silence.

within the year, there are two 90-day periods called “ango” where the day is a bit longer, there’s more time for zazen and less time off within the regular training week, the sesshins are a bit more intense, breakfast is in the formal oryoki style, and i think there’s some other stuff too.

isn’t that just based af? i think it’s a very human way to learn and train, these tiered layers of alternating effort and rest. it’s like a dharma massage for the body and mind. it’s perfect for integration - i can’t help but notice how i feel a little different during various layers of intensity, and i try to bring my full authenticity and practice to whatever mode i’m in.

bowing

when we arrive at our cushion in the zendo, we place the hands in the gassho mudra (🙏) and bow first to our seat. (i read in daido roshi’s book that the elbows should be high, almost parallel to the ground. this places the hands around the heart space. i’ve found this posture to be supportive of my sincerity and intimacy, rather than the hands in front of the face.) when we bow, the practitioners on either side of our cushion and immediately behind our cushion return our bow, from the seated position, if they have arrived in the zendo before us. we then turn around (turning in the direction that is towards the buddha on the altar) and bow across the zendo, where the practitioner on the other side of the hall is already greeting us with hands in gassho, and we bow to each other.

i once heard that reb anderson roshi described a bow as saying three things: “thank you,” “i’m sorry,” and “i love you.” i love these, and would also include in the bow the energies of profound sincerity, respect, and humility. every bow for me is an opportunity to practice truly brining the heart into alignment with this wordless aspiration.

there is no slinking into the hall and closing myself off here - eyes are open, and each period of sitting begins with this formal acknowledgement of our shared space, our shared humanity, our shared aspiration.

liturgy: acknowledging the sacredness of life, of our intentions, of our practice

we chant a ton here - in the morning after zazen, all throughout the morning service, before two of the meals, before each of the work periods, and at the end of the evening zazen. there’s always people singing the main note and others singing the 5th, so it has this badass power-chord quality. the chant style is insistent and rhythmic, and all on a principal tone except for emphasized syllables which are a whole step lower, which adds to the rock-opera feel for me. sometimes people sing the 3rd too which makes it sound heavenly.

can you imagine - over an hour of strict zazen, all perfectly still except for the brief kinhin (walking meditation) period in the middle, then two rings a gorgeous bell followed by this wall of sound from everyone: MAYYYY ALLLL BEEEINNGGSS BEE FREEE FROMMM SUFFERINGGGGGGG ANNDD THEE ROOOOT OF SUFFERINNGGGG (etc). it’s so dramatic, i fucking love it.

there’s a bunch of other liturgical instruments that all add to the ritual and drama of the day, too. some 10ish minutes before the sitting period starts, a woodblock called the Han starts sounding, first slowly, then getting faster, coming to a climax and the beginning slowly again. it’s very stark, austere, and has a remarkable effect on gathering energy and attention. the same pattern is played at the end of the day, after the last zazen period, but while we are still sitting. during the morning service, there some 4ish different bells used at various times and another big wooden instrument that keeps time during some of the chants. a bass drum that can be heard from far away gathers us into each of the work periods in a distinctive rhythm.

in the kitchen we light an altar and bow before getting to work. in the garden we place an offering of a flower or blade of grass or a rock to an altar of jizo bodhisattva before assuming our tasks. at the end of our longer service in the morning, after our three full prostrations to the buddha, we bow again to each other, and then again to the buddha, and then again to each other, and then again to each other.

it’s not always easy to remember the depth of why we’re here. the magnitude of suffering we wish to care for, the numberless sentient beings our hearts wish enfold and protect, the profundity beyond profundity of letting go that is the true appropriate response to the human condition. “against the stream,” the buddha called it. always being pulled by greed hatred and delusion into forgetfulness. the instruments, the bowing, the chanting, the incense - all the liturgy helps me remember, again and again, in fresh moments.

work practice

a non-exhaustive list of tasks i have done during work practice:

• dharma janitor: cleaning the bathrooms, sweeping, vacuuming, mopping, cleaning the kitchen after meals

• dharma housekeeper: folding dozens of sheets, straightening dorm rooms for visiting retreatants, restocking paper towel dispensers and toilet paper, washing and folding dishtowels

• dharma gardener: weeding, shoveling manure and dirt, harvesting and washing fresh lettuce, spraying plants to protect from bugs, spreading hay over freshly weeded and refilled garden beds, sorting harvested garlic for use now in the kitchen or stored later to be replanted or eaten in winter

• dharma groundskeeper: weedwacking, helping clear huge logs from a fallen tree in the cemetery, shoveling wheelbarrows full of compost (u would not believe how smelly)

• dharma sous-chef: all manner of washing, peeling, chopping, dicing, etc etc etc. we make a ton of food since we’re usually feeding like 30-50 people, so it’ll be like “here’s a giant container of [vegetable], ur gonna be doing [task] on them for the next like 40 minutes” lol

it’s a huge part of the day! for longer term residents, they usually end up doing not physical labor the entire time but also something administrative, like registrar, finances, taking care of the shop, etc.

if i was doing chores like this at home you can bet ur ass i’d have a podcast going, i’d be on twitter half the time, i tend to start cleaning the apartment when i get on a phone call. but here if i’m chopping carrots, i’m just chopping carrots. if i’m cleaning toilets, i’m just cleaning toilets. mindfulness go brrrrrr

people

there’s an amazing mix of people who’ve been here for decades, people who’ve been here some years, people here for the year, people here for the month, and people here for a week or weekend or day. great opportunities for deepening relationships and also meeting and welcoming newcomers. i love a scene where people are all deeply invested in practice, in practicing wise relationship and wise speech, are nerds about stuff i’m a nerd about. i’ve had wonderful nourishing conversations with many people, and meaningful friendships forming.

somehow we find time for fun - once a week in the 5-6pm break one friend of mine organizes a touch football game. last hōsan (the ~48hr break at the end of the training week) we went on a hike and then watched Spirited Away in the evening. there’s some musical instruments around, there’s an art room, there’s a creek to swim in.

the monastics are very much around and commingled with the lay residents - we work together, eat together, meditate together, etc. there’s also a huge broader ZMM sangha that’s not just residents - there are lay students who are very dedicated and have been here for decades too, and love how this tradition really seems to value and respect them.

zazen and shikantaza

zazen is kind of the same thing as insight meditation and kind of not. all the ritual gives the zendo a different feeling than the hall at IMS, for example. we’re wearing grey robes every time we practice in there too (monastics in black, senior lay students in white). on the zabuton we’re not supposed to have all kinds of extra cushions and adjustments etc - keep it spare. sit in lotus or burmese on one zafu, or kneel in seiza on a bench or zafu, or sit in a chair if needed. keep the hands folded in the cosmic mudra, keep the eyes open, and keep. perfectly. still.

eyes-open is a different vibe for sure than eyes-closed. i’ve found it to be a more grounded and immediate kind of alertness. it’s not as easy to kind of “leave reality” somehow, it seems to confront this mind a bit more with a sense of really being here in this room every moment. and there’s just sense data coming in at the eyes in a much more information-rich way, and one has to learn to work with that, just as i’ve already learned to work with sounds coming into the ears. no earplugs, no eyelids :)

in the past i’ve been very against the “keep perfectly still” thing, because i was introduced to it at a goenka retreat, where it only served to make me grit my teeth and bear it, trying to force myself in an unhelpfully effortful way to toughen through it. the sitting periods are shorter here than at goenka retreats, and there’s also more advice given on how to actually sit comfortably. i’m not sure what it’s like for folks who are brand new to meditation (and i’m also not sure how one would teach zazen in a trauma-sensitive way), but i have found the premium on stillness to be very supportive. basically i’m getting called on my BS habits of fidgeting or changing postures in meditation when actually, it turns out, i don’t need to!

the boiler plate meditation instructions here is that you start with breath meditation (using a counting method and then eventually dropping the counting), and then eventually do either shikantaza or koan practice, (or maybe both? idk). i am super curious about koan practice and would love to try it one day, but for the moment i am PARTICULARLY EXCITED ABOUT SHIKANTAZA!! here’s why, in a nutshell:

i don’t fully understand how straight vipassana leads to fully seeing through the illusion of the self. i mean i trust it works for people, something like when the mind sees clearly enough the arising and passing nature of phenomenon, it kind of breaks whatever belief there was in a non-arising and non-passing self. but an issue in just applying mindfulness to everything is that “the observer” can get very reified and identified with. so it’s “ME seeing physical sensations, ME seeing subtle emotional and mental phenomena,” even “ME seeing the sense of self fluctuate in its solidity.”

in addition to this, my personal psychological makeup can get super tangled up when meditation involves tasks. i can do a sit of breath practice or metta practice or noting practice etc, i can commit to those for days or weeks of retreat practice even, but what i’ve found on the long retreats i’ve attended is that as time goes by, my intuition leads me to doing less and less, as techniques start to seem more and more inscrutable.

shikantaza is all about doing less. actually, it’s about doing nothing. the method in english is called “just sitting” or sometimes “silent illumination.” one book i’d like to read calls it “the method of no method.” it is a no-method of complete trust. this mind does not need my intervention to find freedom. every moment of experience is already all-encompassingly perfect, and in no need of influence.

what an immense. relief. i’m finding this practice to be beautiful and profound.

(n.b. i’m like a fetus at shikantaza and so these reflections should be taken with a big grain of salt. also i still love and have benefited greatly from concentration and vipassana practices and would happily recommend them to anyone. maybe marvin has the right idea here)

future plans

like i said, i could just call my nomad arc a success and set up shop here for a year or more. i’m sad to be leaving, even as i’m excited for what’s coming. after the sesshin this coming week (all-day silent practice), i’ll be heading onwards to basically see a ton of friends all up and down the east coast for a few weeks, and then hopefully find my way to some other monasteries or practice centers around here, and then start heading west.

there’s a momentum that’s rolling now and i don’t want to arrest it too soon. there’s a wanderlust that isn’t fulfilled yet. i think that if i spend a good chunk of time away, spend some time in other communities, and still have a feeling like “woah, ZMM is it, that is the place to be,” then i can return if i wish to with the confidence of knowing i allowed my intuition to be more fully informed before making a long term commitment.

jucier reflections?

trying to let the masks fall away. trying to be honest with myself around what i want and why. taking in appreciations from others as best i can, when they’re offered. hoping i’m not too self-centered. trying to be good to the people around me. trusting and hoping in dharma practice as a service to all beings. reflecting on the phrase “when you pray, move your feet.” praying.

(a few friends have offered to help support my travel for which i am extremely grateful, and i’ve now got a patreon set up for that 🙏🙏🙏)