January 15 1999
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"Yo, wassup" from Tassajara Zen Monastery.
Please do not reply to this e-mail, I probably won't see any replies until April; this is being typed in by my housemate, who got a letter from me snail-mail. If you want to say "yo, wassup" to me:
Adam Coutts Zen Mountain Center 39171 Tassajara Road Carmel Valley, CA 93924
The daily schedule here is packed to the rafters, starting at 3:50 AM four out of five days (the fifth day starts later and has more free time). On regular days, we have five forty-five-minute and one one-hour periods of seated meditation, as well as about a half-hour of walking meditation. We chant (in English, Japanese, and an ancient Indian language called Pali) for about an hour at various times throughout the day. We read Buddhist books for an hour in the mornings, we eat all three meals in an ornate, formal manner that takes about forty-five minutes each, and we work for four hours (so far, I've done the monastic stereotypes: raked, swept, done dishes and chopped vegetables). Various talks by priests, and special jobs like lighting lanterns and ringing bells are worked into the mix also.
Until the end of the day at nine PM we have five free-time periods that add up to three-and-a-half hours total, but that time seems to fill up with changing into and out of robes (I spend afternoons in work clothes, the rest of the day and night in formal Japanese robes), showering (there are some resort-quality hot tubs and baths here to use also), sewing various things, taking care of laundry (all by hand -- I didn't know what a washboard was used for besides bluegrass music before this), and napping.
I came here expecting it to be a lot worse. We have little social time, but there is some and it's fun for me, which is more than I expected. I knew quite a few people here when I got here from my past Zen Center lives. A few I would label "amigos," most are acquaintances, a few are what we would call around here "opportunities to practice Buddhism." Sometimes, I'm comfortable with people here and dig the vibe, other times I feel like the new squid on the dock, and it's not pleasant. Also, not talking for hours on end is intended, I suppose, to force us into ourselves in a positive way, and sometimes I feel at home in myself, not talking, other times I feel alienated and want to connect with people. Also, the social vibe here sometimes bugs me, seeming religiously, hierarchical, rule-based, conservative, serious, and demanding at times.
I expected it to be cold all day here, with snow on the ground or rain falling continuously. Although my room is in a building informally known as "the meat locker," and I can often see my breath in all day, many days it is sunny and seventy degrees outside for the early afternoon hours and not so bad the rest of the day. When the mist clears and the surrounding hills appear, it's amazingly beautiful here.
All of the meditating has been great for me. It has been kick-ass (i.e., energizing, clarifying, calming) to be away from the struggles of my life in the City and just be myself and watch that happen on the meditation cushion for hours on end. I started my time here with five days of just meditation, five-thirty AM to eight-thirty PM (emulating an ancient Chinese/Japanese ritual of requesting entrance to a temple called Tangario). This was difficult (boredom, anxiety, knee and back pain) but also grounding, clarifying, liberating, exciting, mystical, profound, use your own thesaurus to come up with more such words.
I fantasize about and almost begin planning to leave here and go back to San Francisco many times a day, however. My reasons for wanting to and my reasons for not wanting to are extended and complex, but they may boil down to finding the spiritual work here valuable and something I am committed to, on the one hand, and finding the social scene deadening (as I said, rule-based, religious-y, conservative) and feeling like other things in the City (buying a car, my friends, learning C++ programming, learning martial arts) are more important to me than renunciation and religion right now, on the other. My relationship breakup right before I left adds to the confusion of both wanting to be here and wanting to be in my City life.
So, there is a chance that I will come back to my normal life before April eighth, but you'll hear about it immediately if I do. Assuming that I don't, I'd love to hear from y'all while I'm here.