I wrote this essay in Spring of 1996, during my first residence in a Zen center.
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I am writing you from the Green Gulch organic farm/Green Dragon Zen Temple, a Buddhist practice center half an hour North of San Francisco, in Marin County. It consists of a bunch of sturdy, Japanese-decorated buildings in farmlands in a strikingly beautiful wet, rainy valley near Mill Valley and Muir Beach. I am here with around thirty other students of various ages and levels of experienced, a few more men than women and all but three non-Hispanic white, for a seven week "practice period" of Buddhist meditation, study, and work. It's been going well so far.
Our daily schedule is as follows: I sleep in a small room with two other men in a dormitory style building (named "Cloud Hall") off of the large Zendo (meditation hall). We wake up at 4:30 AM six days a week to the sound of a traditional Zen wake-up bell being rung as it goes up and down the hallways. This was at first difficult and irritating, I was grumpy most mornings and hated Zen Buddhism, but now I am used to it and even like the integrity of waking up early and at the same time daily. We have until ten of five to get into the Zendo and sit on our cushions, and I use the time to dress, use the bathroom, and do yoga (in the last week, to avoid struggling with sleep all meditation time, I have also been drinking contraband Diet Coke before leaving my room). At five, we begin forty minutes of sitting meditation (called "Zazen"), accompanied by ritual bells and drums hit at certain times.
My zazen has been going better all the time. We have been instructed not to think about trying to get anywhere or achieve anything during meditation, but there you have it. At first, when I first got here, my mind wandered endlessly, often to World War Two naval history (my passion when I was about ten) and to what songs to put on music tapes to make for friends. My breathing was rapid, and I had anxiety-based nervous tics that I was sure were driving the people on either side of me in the Zendo crazy, even though they said that they didn't know what I was talking about.
I could also feel myself settling into my experience, I could feel myself making headway against spacyness and other avoidances of the present moment. It's easier now, four weeks later, I've reached some of the bliss states of a concentrated mind that ancient writers described, I think. It helps for me to think of the teachings of Reb Anderson, our practice period teacher, the former abbot, and a confrontingly spiritual and profound man : he has asked us to just be ourselves, with nothing added or subtracted, and to not try to be or do anything special when on the cushion. I am doing my best to just observe, without meddling in any way. I've also been sitting in more traditional Zen-like postures, half lotus, instead of kneeling, even though it hurts more.
After the first period of sitting comes twenty minutes of snail-paced meditative walking ("kinhin"), followed by forty more minutes of zazen. When done with that, we have morning service, the first of four daily services, which each consist of five to twenty minutes of chanting scripture in both English and Japanese and ritual bowing. It's all quite religious-y, it at first seemed offensive to me and contrary to what I thought Zen Buddhism is, but I've grown to find some meaning in the ceremonies.
At seven am, we have the first of three work meetings of the day, where announcements are made and work is assigned; this is followed by temple cleaning ("soji"). My soji assignment the first week consisted of cleaning a bathroom, the second was setting out dishes for breakfast, the third was doing the last night's dishes before breakfast dishes began flowing in, and now it is Zendo cleaning. Between 7:20 and eight is formal breakfast, complete with ritual bowing, chanting, a no-spoon-on-bowl-noise rule among the many rules. I usually find a ten to twenty minute break after that, before the largest, community-wide work meeting (attended by people in my practice period program, the paid staff, and the clergy), which usually takes longer that it might otherwise because of announcements of lost socks and requests to not make fun of people who eat a lot.
From 8:40 to 11:45 (like all of these times, it's the same daily), we work, with a short tea break in the middle. I have been working on the farm (clearing brush, creating seed trays, shoveling horse shit onto compost piles, harvesting kale, digging ditches), but I just got a new assignment, "General Labor", which seems to connote giving birth but otherwise fails to explain itself. The other departments are maintenance, garden, and guest program (i.e. cleaning the nice hotel-like building where outsiders who come to G.G. stay).
It often rains hard before and during my work period, it is often cold and sometimes hot, and there are times when I think, "I'm sorry, but I cannot currently be described with any other adjective than miserable." All in all, I usually enjoy it, however. I like getting out of my comfort zone, expanding myself in that way, I like the comradery, I like working hard and productively and physically, and I like applying Zen teachings to work, i.e. thinking about only work while working and then being done when I am done.
At quarter of noon comes more service, then we have forty-five minutes for lunch (usually soup, salad, and the awesome, freshly baked Green Gulch bread, a gourmet luxury send out to restaurants all over San Francisco). Then comes another work meeting, and forty-five minutes more work.
When the two-hour break period starts at two pm, it takes me a while to walk back from the farm, get out of my rain gear and/or work clothes (I have some fisherman's hip waders, olive green and coming up to my armpits, that are very effective in rain but somehow failing as babe magnets), and shower. Sometimes during break I exercise, sometimes I nap, I often take care of the little things I need to. When four pm comes, I often wonder where the time went, however.
At four, we have an hour of study hall, where I have been asked to read Buddhist texts, although some people read novels and I, for example, wrote the rough draft of this letter there. At five, we go to the Zendo to meditate again for forty minutes, followed by service, followed by ninety-minutes for dinner (often pasta or rice or soup and salad or steamed vegetable - superhealthy but almost always weirdly spiced, California health-food style, it's taken me some getting used to). The break usually affords some time to socialize or otherwise relax.
At 7:30 pm, three nights a week we meditate, one night a week we get in small groups and discuss Buddhist theory and experience (and I get to blind everyone with the brilliance of my philosophical insight!), and two nights a week we have class. One class examines Zen Koans, the confronting and non-logical instructional stories, the most famous of which have been abridged as, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?", "Does a dog have Buddha nature?", "What was the face that you had before your mother and father were born?", and "If a tree fell in a forest and there was no one there to hear it ...". The other class examines an ancient Indian text, Nargajuna's Mulamadyamkakarika, which examines the Buddhist teaching of dependent co-arising, or how the entire universe is interconnected and nothing exists or "happens" except as an action of the entire show. Both classes are powerful, mind-altering experiences, except when I fall asleep. Reb, the teacher who I mentioned before, teaches both classes.
I usually get into bed and turn out my light within ten minutes of class or meditation ending, given that I will rise seven-and-a-half hours later. I almost always, however, lie there for a while, awake and wound-up, before dropping off. Sleep is usper-importanty to me, almost nothing interests me except getting to sleep at night and I take great pleasure in finding ten minutes or half an hour where I can to nap. I have had a conflict with one of my roommates, who I was friendly with before this happened and liked fine, because, often, while I was asleep, he would enter and pop on the overhead lights, and, I felt slam the door and stomp around as he passed by my mattress on the way to his, a ruckus that was serving to wake me up from my sleeping. I was enraged, especially after the fifteenth time and after I brought it up with him and he yelled a little and said that we had nothing to discuss. I finally talked to the coordinator of guest students, who has become something of a friend and who was going to have a conference with the two of us. I also wrote my roommate a note, and he wrote me a generous and understanding one back, so it looks like the conference is not needed, case closed.
The daily schedule varies on three days : Sunday morning, instead of work, I have a basics of Buddhism class (the teacher seems to appreciate my input on the things that I have learned something about) followed by meditation and a lecture (by a different person each week, often Reb) that are attended by hundreds of people from around the Bay Area. It's weird to see the Zendo filled that many chairs and people, all streaming in with facial expressions of spiritual seeking and hunger, when it is so empty during the week. After lecture, I serve them tea, it's usually festive and fun all morning.
Thursdays and Fridays are also different. We meditate until noon on Thursdays, no work periods. This sitting is a powerful deepening for me, I feel centered and aware afterwards. One annoying feature, however, is "oryoke" (I call it karaoke)-style eating., a complicated ritual way of serving, being served, folding and unfolding an eating kit, and eating, all in the Zendo, as we sit on our cushions. It makes the regular formal breakfasts look like the crowd at a ZZ Top concert getting rowdy, Rowdy, ROWDY in comparison. I can see the point of such formality, however, it is serving to make more aware and careful.
After the sitting, we have a long "Nenju" (holiday-break) ceremony and are then off until Friday after dinner. I have used the time to do laundry, exercise (running, pushups, the rowing machine in the basement, yoga, a long hike with other students), take care of business, sleep late, eat the more normal-world food they serve during our days off, and hang out with my girlfriend Mary come to visit.
The first week, I left the valley during the two-day weekend break to get stuff from my storage space and from stores; I hadn't realized that we would be asked not to leave during the entire seven weeks, and I wanted to stock up on all that I would need. I had to move Heaven and Earth to get permission, however. At first, the Director of Practice ("Tanto") said that if I left that I should not return. Lots of people leave here during the day to go to do jobs, so I had no idea of the hassle involved, expecting that m y departure would be similarly breezy. Apparently, me and my desire to work at the discipline demanded by the schedule being unknown qualities to the staff here, they took my desire to leave as a sign that I was not serious about being here. I explained that I wanted to do the program, that I was excited about it and intended to follow all guidelines and attend all scheduled events, and that I had no intention of leaving a second time, but could I please leave once to get my affairs in order. They seemed well pleased with this line of conversations and sent on my way South with official Zen blessings.
Out schedule was also altered for two days during out first week for full-day zazen sittings. One was "tangario", or a sitting done all day without breaks and seen as representing a sincere request to be part of temple life, and the other was a regularly scheduled monthly one-day sit. We will also sit all day for five days straight (a "sesshin") starting the night of Sunday, March 24th (it will end right before my twenty-seventh birthday!). The stomach-grumbling factor is high because all meals are eaten in the unfortunate oryoke style on such all-day-meditation days.
Food takes on added significance here because it is sometimes the only diversion. There is no music here, I miss it. This place is different from the Esalen Institute, where I was last Fall, in that expressive fun and emotional expressiveness are discouraged and spiritual rigor is required, rather than vice versa. All of us know that everyone else here is pushing themselves superhard, there is a sense of comradery, but the whole fun aspect is sometimes a little underdeveloped. In fact, if what Alan Watts called "hip Zen" is alive and well and drinking and fucking over across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, what he called "square Zen" is alive and well and enforcing the rules here. Some number of tenants here fall into the grumpy end of the affective spectrum, I've observed.
Many people here are also groovy, in all the ways that people are groovy. The bottom line of this report from the frontier is that I am finding this experience valuable in both obvious and hidden, subtle ways.
A saint is not someone who attempts to extinguish or has succeeded in extinguishing the Fires of Hell, the passions, as is commonly assumed. A saint is someone who lets the Fires of Hell burn freely but tempers, channels, and guides then with the Structures of Heaven.
William Blake
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