Part One - I wrote this around January twenty-third 2000, the nineteenth day out of ninety.
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Like last year, I am existing this winter at the Tassajara Zen Monastery, a complex of about ten large buildings and seventy smaller ones in the Ventana wilderness, twenty-five miles from Big Sur.
I am writing this on January twenty-third. It is strange to me that almost a quarter of the practice period (ninety day retreat) has already expired. The first three weeks when I was here last year lasted for years, but my time here this year has passed in a blink.
I have been feeling less of a need to write a letter like this one than I did last year. I'm feeling more socially connected here; less alone. In general, it has been easier, more pleasant, less difficult, less raw to be here this year. There are a few minor reasons why this may be, for example it has been unmistakably warmer (although I still often feel resistance to getting out from under the warm covers and standing up in the unheated, uninsulated cabin in the below-freezing woods), and I am perhaps better prepared (I wear slip-on shoes in the Zendo (meditation hall) and back instead of lace-up. That's easier. And I brought a big box of snacks - trail mix, Cheerios, potato chips, Ritz crackers - so I am rarely hungry).
The main reason why I think that being here this year is easier than last, however, includes the fact that I came here this year together with a "special friend," i.e.: Kendra, rather than in conjunction with a painful breakup (although the usually pleasant comfort of being with Kendra, rather than the intense rupture and suffering of last year, seems to mean that I must constantly re-generate my reason for being here, instead of it being painfully obvious - the same is true for my reason for being with Kendra).
The other big reason may be that this is my second practice period here rather than my first; this means, for example, that I know more how things work here, I know more what to expect, I have more of a connection and informal relationship with the other monks, people ask me what I think more and tell me what to do less, and I have a regular work-period job rather than being constantly shuttled around to something different and beginner-level each day.
My job is Tenzo's assistant, which involves putting food away when it arrives here over the mountain by truck, making sure that the food storage areas are orderly, taking recycling from the kitchen out to bins, and making granola and gamasho (a Japanese condiment that people are oddly enamored of around here - I don't understand). I like my job - I enjoy having my own area of responsibility and supervising myself, working physically, feeling like I am helping the kitchen monks and the Sangha (Community) at large. Some days I work past the end-of-work bell to get a job finished, defrosting a freezer, waiting for the granola to bake, separating out what's still good from a box of moldy yams.
The schedule I am living on is similar to last year's (and probably similar to the one here thirty years ago, or the one a thousand years ago in China) - wake up at 3:50 am, on my meditation cushion by 4:15 am, be evenly and non-reactively aware until service (bowing, chanting) at 6:10 am, an ornate formal breakfast in meditation posture at 6:45, study (reading Buddhist books) after that. Then, at 9 am, comes either twenty minutes of Soji (temple cleaning: raking, scrubbing, sweeping) and then an hour-and-a-half of meditation, or a lecture and then some sitting, or a morning of work. At 11:20 am comes a ten-minute service followed by another formal meal. At 1:15 pm is work, in work clothes, which lasts until 4:15. At 5:50 pm it's back into robes for anther service followed by a formal meal, and at 7:30 pm is an hour-and-a-half of meditation. About every fifth day, we sleep an hour later and have two of our meals at tables and have most of the rest of the day off. For a five-day period coming soon, and a nine-day (!) and seven-day periods later, we have Sesshin (meditation pretty much all day.)
Meditation, watching and experiencing how my mind creates my experience of myself and of the world around me, has been, as always, great. I have, however, been falling asleep in the Zendo during meditation periods more than I am used to, which bums my trip. I am unsure what, if anything, I can do about it. In the beginning it was more understandable, I was up all night the night before we got here, emptying my bedroom for my sublettor and packing up for here (once we got out the door, Kendra drove most of the way here while I slept). But now, I have been sleeping whenever I can, a little over six hours each night, during breaks during the day, on days off, and I am still putting the Z's into Zazen. Some people here, especially the older ones, are apparently complete with four to six hours of ordinary sleep a night, but not me.
Kendra and I share a tiny cabin (number nineteen) that we have made cozy and livable by putting a rug on the floor, five comforters on the bed, and raiding unused rooms to obtain three painted wooden dressers. I like being in it, even if it is sometimes cold. We have a "Butt-a-Day" calendar that I gave her for Christmas, each day it has a new picture of some cheeks, some arty, some pornographic, some not that interesting in either direction. Living and being with Kendra has been mostly pleasant - often great, sometimes difficult. No big surprise, I suppose. For example, I was not aware before coming here what a rural girl she seems to be and, in contrast, what a non-rural guy I seem to be.
When Kendra and I first got together last year, she had just ended a two year relationship with a guy who lives here and who was also my friend. The guy, Soren, was apparently upset over how events unfolded. I was uncertain how it would be to be around him, but it has been a pleasant surprise. We went on a long hike together two days ago (it was pouring rain) and tha brothas worked it out.
I have started sewing a Rokasu (a small cloth item that looks like a bib that figuratively represents the robe of the historical Buddha and more concretely signifies commitment to Zen Buddhism). It is perhaps unusual that I have lived at the various Zen complexes for two years and sat about a hundred days of sesshin and have not sewn one yet. "Finally!" is what Gaelyn said when I told her I was joining the sewing class. Also in the class are Burt Dwyer, Helen Appel, and Meg and Jeremy Levie, all sewing Okesas for priest ordination with Reb in April, and Kendra, Soren, Dale Kent, Samantha Oslergard and probably other people, sewing Rakasus for Jukai. I am sewing with Rev. Paul Haller Roshi Diosho Tathagata Sensei.
Every once in awhile I notice how clean and beautiful and nature-ful it is here. There is a river/creek-themed phenomena breaking over rocks fifteen feet from the biggest window in our room; right now, it's been raining for three days straight, so it is swollen and violently rushing, muddy and overflowing.
Most mornings and nights in the City, I rub a cotton ball soaked in rubbing alcohol over my face to clean it. When I'm done, the whole thing is usually brown and gray, covered with the exhaust and other city grime that my face collected over the day or night. Here, I only do this ablution when I first wake up, and when I'm finished, the cotton ball looks about the same as when I started. I try not to think about what this means for my lungs' health in the City.
In class with Tenshin Reb Anderson, the former abbot, we have been studying Shamata, deep concentration that lets go of analysis. Shamata is one of the two traditional aims of Buddhist meditation - later we have been informed that we will study Vipassna, the other one, which is seeing beyond the "illusion" of a world of independently existing, real things and instead experience life as. . . I'm not sure what, an interconnected flow of impermanent events happening is, I think, the idea. In any event, on the topic of Shamata, we've been hearing the regular Reb teachings to not activate our minds when a thought or perception arises, not to spin off into additional story or analysis, but just to notice the original thought as a thought, to have a mind like a wall instead of a mind like a hysterical monkey, to shine the light of the awareness back on itself and watch what we are aware of, moment by moment. This much is the funky-fresh dope-ass jam, but he's also been quoting some old scriptures about, for example, watching out for emotions, "they're like a coiled snake," that I'm significantly less subscribed to.
Like last year (and like my life in the City, for that matter,) I've started a number of books and stopped a while in to them. This has included "Krishnamurti for Beginners" from the Readers and Writers Series, a book I would recommend avoiding even for people that like that series. More pleasantly, I have been reading "Thoughts Without a Thinker" by Mark Epstein - not the most mind-blowingly cosmic Buddhist book I've ever read, but otherwise great. I appreciate its integration of the settled-down spaciousness of Buddhism with the depth and tricky wizardry of psychoanalysis, and I like that it is full of practical insight about the mind and its pacification. I've also been reading an amusing, strange and interesting book, "The Record of Master Yun Men" - transcripts of interchanges between a 10th Century Chinese Zen teacher and his students; Yun Men used sarcasm, double meanings, subtle hints pop-culture phrases (the equivalent of advertising jingles), and told students to go to hell in an effort to cut through the delusions and fears of his students and have them realize the perfection of the moment here-and-now.
I feel concern about the following: money (I don't have much right now); getting a job and - once I start a new job - maybe getting more irritable and maybe not feeling as expansive, nowhere-to-go, nothing-to-do that I often feel here even when I'm busy. I suppose that I am pleased because I believe that I can find well-paying and reasonably pleasant employment once I look.
Many days, I see confer trails inching across the high bright blue sky; it would seem that this part of the world is a handy passageway for north-south flights. Last year, when I saw these, I often noticed that I wanted to be on a plane, going somewhere interesting. This year, however, I'm usually glad to be right here.
Now it is February sixth - it's taken me a while to finish and copy this letter from its first draft. I realize, reading it over, that it covers a lot of the same ground as my letters last year, but I suppose that is because my experience is not that different except for being easier.
As with last year, please do not respond to this email; I wrote it out by hand and my main man Rich (thespian@slip.net) typed it in and sent it out. There is barely electricity here, much less email. Also, as with last year, this letter goes out to lots of people with whom I have lots of different types of relationships, so if its tone or content seems unusual to you, that's why.
I will be here until April fourth.
Peace,
Adam
"Things are not as they seem, nor are they otherwise."
--Lankavatana Sutra