Japan 6.10: The Silent Meditation Retreat at the Horakuan Rinzai Zen Buddhist Temple

     I had intended to write this entry right as I was arriving at my next location in Mongolia, but I only had one full day in my hotel before going out into the countryside, and I forgot to write it that day!  

  From Tokyo Station, I took a bullet train to Nagano, a subway to Suzaka Station.  Once there, I sat on a bench waiting for a bus.  There were three other non Japanese people waiting nearby, and sure enough, they boarded my bus towards the temple.  We began chatting on the ride.  One was Swiss, one Israeli, and one German.  Two women, one man, with ages from 22 to 38.  We got off at our stop and two miniature sized mini vans were waiting to bring us the final few minutes to arrive at the temple.

Weird blue building at the bus stop.

  This was to be a silent meditation retreat, but the first day was more of an orientation, and talking was allowed.  The other man, a 38 year old pediatrician from Switzerland, was my bunkmate.  We were given a two story loft, with a wide staircase and curtain dfferentiating our areas.  We had a bathroom, but had to slide a large and heavy door open, and take a single step outside before accessing it.

The building on the right was our house.

This was my room, and the steps leading up above was given to the Swissman.

  The two women were put up in the main house, which was much nicer, and obviously had a bathroom that didn't require outdoor access.  We were given time to unpack and then met up in the house.  This meditation retreat was run by a seventy year old German woman, who moved to Japan many years ago and married a Japanese Buddhist monk.  At one point I asked if Japanese people ever came to her retreats, and she said that they worked too much to go to a retreat for vacation, and that they wouldn't be introspective enough to want to grow as a person.

  We were shown the meditation room, given some laminated cards with Buddhist mantras on it, and were led to some of the outdoor shrines.  She showed us the meditation room and had us sit at the dining room table.  The dining room had a table near the ground, but the floor actually dropped down below it, giving a bit of room to put your feet down.  This worked well for short people I assume, but my legs always had to be at an angle.

  She went over the routine of the days.  It has been about two weeks since I have been there, so I will do my best to remember the schedule.  We would be woken up with a bell at around 5:40.  We were expected to arrive at the house by 6:00 to begin walking meditation.  This brought us down the hill, into a forest path, down to a waterfall, up a driveway, and to visit 5 shrines around the property, with the final one being in a separate building.  We were encouraged to step along with counting for breathing and exhales, with one more step for exhaling.  For example, three inhale steps, four exhale steps.  I tried this for the first day, but found that it had an extremely prominent anxious effect on me, so I switched to simply breathing and relaxing during the walk.

  At each shrine, she would say a mantra, and we were to repeat it.  This would happen three times per shrine.  At the building, she would begin a routine of chanting, followed by us repeating a six line mantra about four to five times.  We would then walk to the main house and into the meditation room.  We were taught to bow once at the doorway entrance, once to the shrine, and then once in the opposite direction of our assigned meditation pillow.  We would then sit cross legged.  She would always use something like a tuning fork on a bell three times, followed by two very loud wood block claps.  We then had thirty minute meditation.  At the end of the first night, we had to turn in our phones.

Front of the main buildings.

    After mediation, we had breakfast.  Every meal throughout the four days was completely different, all wonderful.  Tea was served at every meal, but since I do not like tea, she showed me where the coffee was stored so I could make it for myself whenever I wanted.  It was an odd method for making coffee, with two handles that held the coffee grinds over the middle, and then you pour hot water into it.

    After breakfast, we would be free until 8 or 8:30, I can't remember.  At that point we began samu, which is meditative simple work, in this case, gardening.  Each day I had a different assignment, ranging from raking rocks out of a grassy area, pruning trees, repairing a small wood bridge, and removing dead foliage.  We would then have a tea and snack break, followed by creative meditation.  On the first day, she encouraged people to craft their own prayer bead, made up of 108 separated beads, representing the Buddhist Earthly Desires.  Since I had no interest in prayer, I decided that my form of creative meditation would be in the form of photography.  That being said, she would also give us some smaller assignments, such as tracing buddha pictures.  An interesting aspect of tracing Buddhas, is that we were instructed to draw the eyes last, as that is what would awaken them.

The tea and snack room.

Entrance to the chanting and calligraphy building.

The beads used to craft.

  We would then take a short break until lunch.  After lunch, we would have a two hour break where we had the ability to collect our phones.  When we returned the phones at 2:00, we would have our second thirty minute meditation of the day.  This is the meditation session that would feature prayer beads.  I was given a set of leftover prayer beads, since I was the only one that didn't make my own.  We were told to slowly run our fingers over the beads while meditation, and to make an affirmation.  I asked what an affirmation was, and she told me it was either a wish for the world, such as hoping for peace in Ukraine, or to repeat something positive about yourself, or to wish for a form of well being for someone you know.  I wished for my friend to get her Italian villa one day.

   This was followed by another short break and then a thirty minute to an hour calligraphy lesson, run by her son, Kai.  He is a very friendly and patient fellow, who taught us traditional brush strokes of different characters.  On our final day, we were also given the characters to spell our names.

My first Buddha tracing attempt resulted in a picture of a Buddha who got into a bar fight and lost.

This was the first set of calligraphy letters.  I think it is supposed to represent something regarding a protagonist.

The lower left characters spells my name(not UA).

  Following calligraphy, there would be a short break until dinner at 6:00.  After dinner, she would turn on the heat for the showers, so we either relaxed or showered.  At 8:00, there would be an hour meditation followed by lights out and bed.

   I wished that there was more instruction or guided meditation.  Aside from a handful of short recitations, and some handouts with things to ponder, we were left in silence.  She challenged us to count to ten, counting on each exhale.  I don't think I was even able to get to five on the first day, without thoughts flooding in.  By the end, I might have been able to hit this goal once or twice, maybe.  Some of the time I simply spent relaxing.  Sometimes I attempted to quiet my mind, or try to absorb nearby sounds.  I really do think a more guided meditation would have benefited me more.  Without realizing it, photography ha always been a slightly meditative time for me.  Holding my eye up to the viewfinder has the effect of blocking out the rest of the world and its noise, allowing me to focus intently on a goal and finding beauty.

This was the bridge that I repaiured, with the help of the other fellow.  We took out the broken board and replaced it with 2 new ones.  We needed the second one to stabilize it so it wouldn't bow in the middle.  We then had to manipulate the rocks on both sides to secure it.  We had to completely reorganize the rock layout.  I should have taken a "before" picture first.

  I spent a lot of time reading at the retreat.  She encouraged reading Buddhism related books.  On my kindle, I had Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse.  It was a surprisingly compelling read, and not the kind of ok that I would normally read(I must have picked it up for free with some deal).  It was the journey of a man to find the meaning of life.  He tried to be a minimalist monk who lived in the wilderness, eventually abandoned that and tried living in a city and finding love and learning a trade.  This led to him succumbing to human excess, leading him to once again dropping everything and searching, eventually finding peace living alongside another man, running a ferry in the countryside with no one else nearby.  His final challenge involved caring for his son, that he had not known he had.  He dealt with the frustration of his child having a very different path from him and had to learn to let him go, to live his own life.  There were many truths in this story, with the standout being that you can teach knowledge, but not wisdom.

  My roommate was named Carlos, and I loved his dress style.  I asked him what kind of clothing it was and he shared the name of the brand and style.  It is a European brand, but there is an American branch that only sells direct.  I plan to try it out upon my return.  A memorable moment that I had with Carlos was on the first night, when we were allowed to talk.  We were waiting outside for the others(we actually were in the wrong location, and they were all waiting for us elsewhere), he asked about my life.  I told him about getting custody of Miles, along with that whole story.  In response he said something akin to, "How does that make you feel?"  I thought that that was a brilliant and elevated response question.  Every time I interacted with Carlos he had a smile on his face and gave an aura of peaceful pleasantness about him.  I greatly enjoyed having him around.  We made sure that we were both on time to expected gatherings.  

  One creative assignment was to draw commitment in nature and commitment in your own life.  I drew a wasp nest and occupying wasp that I found while practicing photography.  I drew myself staying in America to raise Miles.  The second to last day was gloomy outside, so I took the opportunity to do photo editing on my laptop as my creative meditation.  I felt that despite being electronic, it fell under the creative and meditative umbrella.

  After each meal, we washed dishes in pairs, with one washing and one drying.  The following meal would have the other two people doing this work.

  While we stayed silent the vast majority of the time, calligraphy required some speech to ask specific questions or to ask for help.  She was not ultra strict about it, as it was sometimes necessary.  That being said, I definitely was chastised at least once for breaking protocol.  I definitely felt a school vibe, where I was always on the edge of rule space, often going just over the line before retreating back across it.

  I noticed that when I received my phone back each day, it would be accompanied by higher levels of anxiety and overall higher stress, and I felt more relaxed and at peace without it.  This was so readily apparent because of the twenty two hours of the day without it and how relaxed I felt during this time.  

  Overall, I enjoyed my time at the retreat.  What I enjoyed the most, despite the silence, was the comradery with the other people.  I wished it had been a regular meditation retreat without the silence, but even with silence, there are many ways to communicate and enjoy a shared space with others.  I do not feel like I was able to make much progress in learning to meditate, however.  Maybe I would have been better off having had more experience beforehand.