Zen

Bongggggg. The bell sounds. The meditation begins. 1.......... 2............3.................

I work for a wonderful group of people in Kyoto. They run a children's school. Every Friday we have a meeting. But it's not a meeting in the American sense of the word. We never talk about problems, although sometimes there are some. We talk about fun things. Usually we go around the table and tell some good news from our week. About once a month we skip the meeting altogether and go somewhere special. When the cherry blossoms were in full bloom we had a picnic down by the river.

One month we went to Daisen-in, an important Zen temple in Kyoto. It is there that the green tea ceremony was actually developed and popularized by Sen No Rikyu. The temple is unusual in that it welcomes foreigners and beginners to practice with them. Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m., beginners are welcome to come and sit in a Zen meditation class with the master. That was how I first found out about Daisen temple. I had done meditation for a long time off and on. But I had never tried Zen. All I had heard about it was that the master walks around and hits you with a stick now and then. I was curious what that was about. 4.............5.......................6...............................

I got there a few minutes before 5:00. I was ushered out to a patio in front of a gravel garden. The gravel gardens of Kyoto are famous. They are made meticulously by the monks who sweep and rake the gravel into designs that are said to promote peacefulness and a meditative state in the observer. This particular design was dominated by two large cones about two and a half feet high and perhaps two feet in diameter. They were separated by a distance of about four feet. The rest of the garden was raked into parallel lines that sometimes looked like waves. The other students, all Japanese, were already seated. An assistant came out and put down some mosquito coils. That was a relief. Nothing worse than being bothered by mosquitoes when you are trying to attain enlightenment. He also made me take off my watch and ring. 7................................8......................................

Soon the teacher came out. He was a monk. His head was shaved and he wore loose fitting monk's clothes. He had an intensity about him that was appealing. He stood in front of us and gave instructions to the group. Occasionally he would turn to me and say a word in English. He rambled of a long string of words in Japanese and then turned to me and pointed to his head and said, "Empty." Then another set of instructions. To me he pantomimed breathing and said, "one to ten" meaning, "count your breathes from 1 to 10." This will help you focus your mind. If you get lost, just start over again." Another string and then he looked at me and pointed to his eyes, and then to a point midway between the two cones. "Look there," he said. He then showed us how to sit, in lotus posture if possible. That means that the opposite foot should come over the area just above the knee. So when you do it properly you look a little like a pretzel. There was no way I could do it so I just sat cross-legged. 9.....................10.................................1......................

Next he demonstrated the hit. He held a narrow paddle that looked a little like a child's cricket stick. He approached the man sitting next to me and demonstrated the hit and the proper protocol. First the student put his palms together. The teacher walked over with the stick and bowed to the student. The student bowed back and then placed both palms on the floor. This exposed his back to the teacher who took the stick and patted the student with it. Two times on the left side and two times on the right. That didn't look so bad. Some of my anxiety vanished. 2.....................3..............................

The teacher walked over to the left side of the porch and slapped some sticks together signaling that it was time to begin. Then he rang a small bell. I listened to the bell's ring fade away and then started trying to pay attention to my breathing. 1.............2...........The teacher starting walking in front of us with the bat slung on his shoulder like a baseball player waiting for a pitch. He looked a little menacing, but maybe that was because I was afraid to look at him. If I looked at him he would know that I was not meditating on my breath. 3............4..........

After a few minutes, the man sitting next to me put his palms together. The teacher walked over and bowed. The man assumed the position. Then I heard it, "Whack. Whack. .......Whack Whack. Two on the left side and two on the right side. These hits were different from the demonstration hits. He was really bearing down. My alarm returned. What if I couldn't take it?....5.............. The teacher climbed down off the porch. As he did I thought, "I should experience a hit. After all it may be my only chance. But the teacher had just gotten off the platform Maybe he would be mad that I had made him climb up two times unnecessarily, so I waited. I continued to stare at the rock garden and tried to count my breathes. ..6....... . Then I noticed something as I continued to stare. The two cones in the garden looked a lot like breasts. The more I looked, the more my vision started to blur. I couldn't get it out of my mind that these were breasts that I was meditating on, and large ones at that. Was this some kind of joke? .........1............I tried to focus on my breath and not think about the breasts, but the more I tried not to think about them, the more I felt I was looking at breasts.

It was about this time that I decided to brave the paddle. The priest was walking by again. I put my palms together. The priest saw me and stepped up onto the porch. .......2............We bowed and then I placed my hands on the wooden floor. He reared back and hit me right over the shoulder blade, whack whack. Ouch. It stung. He switched to the other side. OUCHHHHH. We bowed again and the priest stepped off the porch and continued on his walk in front of the group. My back continued to sting for a few seconds. However it felt good in a way. My mind was certainly clearer. I got back to my breath and focusing my eyes on the garden. ...........1.............2.................3...................

After about one minute, the breasts came back. Now there was another problem. Perhaps it was the pattern of the gray and white gravel or something else but now it looked as if the breasts had hair. It was not just a little hair, but forests of hair standing straight up. It looked so strange that I felt I was going to laugh. I bit my lip to keep from laughing as the priest walked by again. On the return trip I again asked for a whack. After he whacked me, the breasts were still there , but the hairs went away. ........1...................2...........................

One of the best things that I did for the school I work for was to write a little song for the children to sing right after they come into the class. We call it a warm up song and it sets a nice mood for the rest of the class. This song is called the Bug Song and it goes like this. "There's a bug on my nose. There's a bug on my nose. There's a bug on my nose can you see? There's a bug on my nose, There's a bug on my nose, and he's walking to my ears. (or wherever). You may wonder why I mention this now in the middle of this story about my meditation experience.

I mentioned that we were meditating on an outside porch facing a Zen garden. There were these large black ants also on the porch. About this time I started noticing that there were a few of them crawling on me. I felt one go up my pants............3.............. I tried hard to keep following my breath but I kept feeling this little tingle tingle. "Please turn around ant. You don't want to go there. You don't want to go there."..........4............5............... Thankfully he turned around. Then I felt one on the front of my neck. Then he crawled onto my chin. Despite my best efforts, I started to sing the Bug Song in my mind.

"There's a bug on my chin, there's a bug on my chin....... and he's walking to me ear." Oh no not my ear. I felt him go around the outside of my ear. "There's a bug on my ear......." ..........1............the priest marches by....."please don't go in, don't go in," and thankfully again he didn't go in. Instead he marched around my ear and swung around to the back of my neck and up to the other ear. "Please don't go in....".......2...............3............I see the priest turn the corner and start walking again towards me. The ant makes a slight turn and dead ends into the back of my ear at a place near my earlobe. Then I felt nothing. He seemed to be stunned. Just then I felt a terrific pain. He bit me. He bit me. Without a thought, my hand shoots up and slaps at the ant. He goes flying onto the wooden porch. I sneak a peek at the priest, bat in hand. He gives me a terrible scowl. If looks could kill and if Buddhist priests were allowed to kill, I would surely be dead now. I had violated two rules at the same time. You're not supposed to move, and you're not supposed to kill anything. I decided that I wouldn't ask for anymore whacks. ........1.............2.................

Strange though, there were no ants on me after that. I felt really tense. Wasn't this supposed to be relaxing? Maybe I was doing something wrong. Just then. Gongggggggg. The bell rings. The meditation is over.