Yearbook 2009

Antaiji


Alexander (Antaiji, 37yo, banker from Austria


Before I came to Antaiji I was reading also yearbook articles just for one reason. To find answers to questions which haven't been answered by the official homepage of Antaiji. How cold is it in winter, how hard is sesshin, is there heating in winter, how much free time is there really, etc. So of course reading those yearbook articles didn't answer many of my questions. I think just one was answered. One German guy was writing about parties at Antaiji, and preceeded his account of a party like " …. after a Sesshin, and whoever did a Sesshin here at Antaiji knows that it isn't exactly fun … ". So this line answered at least the question how hard a sesshin really is. So, this is, why I would like to write this article about what happened last year to maybe provide a little bit of a flavour of what is going on here.

The first which followed was November sesshin, we were just 3 guys, thereof 1 newcomer. It was quite cold, we were sitting in unheated hondo already covering ourselves with a blanket (this year, much warmer, maybe around 16°C in the morning, getting to 20°C during the day), the 3rd guy and I decided to fast, so we two guys were alternatingly cooking just for one guy. The rest of November was rainy, a lot of wood chopping.

December, Rohatsu-sesshin, not so cold in the beginning, but in the last days a temperature drop. Of course in blankets and as many layers of clothes which still enables you to perform basis movements like doing Kinhin etc. Right after the sesshin I was flying back to Austria for 5 weeks. I came back mid January weighing maybe +10kg, which might suffice as an account of those 5 weeks.

January, begin of Rinkos. Everyday, Tenzokyokun, instructions for the cook, by Dogen Zenji. Very, very, interesting. Also and especially with the participation of Docho-san who is a Dogen expert. So this was what there was too little of during the rest of the year. All the Rinko/Dharma-talk/etc. buffers fully recharged. Lazyness. Hiroma heated. No samu. The only negative highlights of the day were the couple of minutes you need from warm bed to warm Hiroma in the morning and from warm Hiroma into fist cold, after some minutes warm bed in the evening. You get used to it.

February. Docho-san's family was living in Kutoyama, the nearest village, during winter. Docho-san always alternated and lived a couple of days with us, then a couple of days with his family in Kutoyama. One day Docho-san tried using skies to go down. Nobody of us was worrying, it was a sunny day, but after 3 hours or so, Docho-san hasn't still arrived in Kutoyama. If you are fast you can do it with snow-shoes in maybe one and a half hour. So Tomomi-san called the police and everybody of us really started worrying. Docho-san's master actually died in an accident at that road during winter, everybody of us had that picture in his mind without saying anything about it. So Ante and I packed for heading down, I started, Ante was still looking for a rope. I sped down, when I arrived, I saw the blue lights of the police and then I saw Docho-san. Nothing happened, he was having just problems with the skies. Apparentely 10 minutes or so after I left, Docho-san arrived in Kutoyama and Tomomi-san called us at Antaiji. Daisen-san could stop Ante but he couldn't reach me any more. After I arrived in Kutoyama it was already dark, too late to return safely to Antaiji. That meant that I was about to spend the night with Docho-san's family in their rented apartment. Usually I'm not good at such things, but in this case, I let completely go of everything and it turned out to be a nice evening. First we all went to Onsen, then we had dinner, I could sleep in a comfortable bed and in the next morning there was a delicious Western style breakfast after which I started to head back to Antaiji. So everything turned out just fine.

March, middle, Takuhatsu, my second time, sometimes a full day, no break, no toilet, standing there, chanting the Hannya-Shingyo. Like Sesshin, maybe a little bit easier, because there is so much distraction. So many people and you always have to concentrate on the sutra you are chanting, this keeps your mind busy, which makes it difficult for the mind to create stupid thoughts, which always happens to me during sesshin. Also here you get used to it.

March, end, newcomers arrive. We have been craving for them. The months with just us 3 guys were, let's say, like mental incest, you know what the others are doing and thinking when. A lot of women this year. Often they are appointed to be my assistants in my hatake (vegetable field) responsibility.

April, Uchuu-san came. And with him professionalism. German landscape gardener. An other guy and Uchuu build a big dry landscape garden in front of hondo. Very beautiful. Something lasting. But also different projects are running. Everything big scale and highly professional at least as far as I can judge that.

April, May, June, almost only worked in hatake, not so hard work, I was excluded from having to work in the rice field or cutting wood, the hardest jobs here. Even in hatake if often happens that the others are doing the real work and I have to sit in the tractor plowing the fields.

July: summer break, samu just until noon. 2 weeks holiday in Thailand, of course no indulging, at least six hours Zazen a day, no internet, no movies just books about Zazen and of course no indulging. Yes, I think that is a fair account of my 2 week beach holiday in Thailand.

August: Docho-san and Daisen-san went to Kyushu doing a kind of Takuhatsu. I helped out a priest in a village in the neighbourhood performing traditional chanting at the households which belonged to his community. We did a short chant in front of almost all the houses from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. Interesting experience. Met a lot of different monks there. We were maybe 15 guys, just 2 of us from Soto-sect the others of that Nembutsu or Pure Land sect.

Also we experienced the Kutoyama Obon-dance festival. All the villagers met to do a kind of ritual dance. Interesting in terms of watching the Japanese community phenomenon.

End of August: Antaiji's doors opened again for newcomers.

Almost all summer long no sun, just rain, rain and rain. Destroyed a lot of vegetables. But the good thing was, I didn't have to water the hatake, which is quite time consuming.

September, October: Again more people, more women. Hatake work decreasing. One day we skipped morning samu and drove to Kutoyama's sports festival. All villagers and their families meet there and do a full morning various kinds of sports competition. Maybe 10 different games. Most of them about skilfulness, but also rope-pulling, running, etc. Nice event. Everybody joins. Children and grandparents. Again this community phenomenon.

In my hatake responsibility I made some big mistakes. Like for example, last year we had kind of a huge jungle of cucumber plants in the vinyl house. We were eating just cucumbers as for vegetables for 1-2 months. We had to install a second fridge to store all the cucumbers. This year, I also planted the cucumbers in the vinyl house, like I have learned to do last year. I was positive, everything was growing, a jungle was reappearing. But when I came back from my Thailand holiday, I was being told that yes, there is a jungle in the vinyl house, but no, there is not one single cucumber, rather it's pumpkin plants. Pumpkin we have been having huge areas full of outside of the vinyl house. So thanks to my expertise we didn't have 1.000 m2 of pumpkin plants + 10 m2 cucumber plants, no, we had 1.010 m2 pumpkins and 0 m2 cucumbers.

In my daily life inside the sangha sometimes the urge for judging others reappears. But then I realize what is happening and try telling myself, no need to judge others, try to master yourself. It is inefficient to waste your energy in hatred, concentrate on your practice, on your life on fulfilling the goal of being or getting near a Bodhisattva. What helps is when I realize that he is here at Antaiji for the same reason as I am. He is having a problem in the world he is coming from, so he is joining the Sangha here. So he is fighting as well. A compatriot. He might not do perfect practise in every respect but who am I to judge. I should concentrate on the beam in my own eye. So if there is hatred, intolerance, disrespect etc. arising, I try to ventilate that energy into improving my own practice. Of course it doesn't always work that way, but sometimes it does.

When I left my old world, one of my problems there was, that I felt lonely. Everybody around me seemed to live a "normal" life, hunting the usual suspects, money, relationship, family, house, car, etc. So I felt like not being understood by anybody. Here at Antaiji, it is the other way round, everybody is here for more or less the same reason, having a kind of a problem with the outer world and searching for answers. So since I have come here I never once felt lonely. If I start doing so, I just need to start socialising with a Dharma-brother or –sister. I mean it is not, that we would talk a lot about our own problems or the meaning of life, etc., it is more that I think I feel what the problem of the other guy is, and I see in his daily practice how he is dealing with it. There is no need for him to articulate it.

A lot of the guys here – by the way, guys in my terminology includes the girls as well, I asked some native speakers what the proper term in English would be and didn't get any clear answer, so up to now, as well as from now on, guys = boys + girls – so back, where was I, yes, a lot of the guys here are doing better practice than I do in one way or the other. Which is a thing that I admire. I am not trying to copy him, it is rather a kind of motivation for me. Of course I have seen a lot of guys coming here, giving 100+%, and then leaving disappointed. For example doing samu on Housan. Officially considered as good practice, but frankly, you need to find your balance. That I consider being of most importance here. I keep telling the guys I see, where I think it makes sense, but, as very often, it is not that this has a material effect. So it is also naïve from my side, to think, that if I tell somebody something, that he stops his wrongdoing, suddenly having a kind of a minor enlightenment, shouting "Yes, Alex, you are right, I was so wrong all the time, you are perfectly right, thank you so much for telling me, from now on, I will exactly do as you are suggesting." Usually, what I am going to tell him, he kind of knows already, and he disagrees. For example, a Dharma-brother or –sister, let's call him or her a Dharma-guy, a DG, does something in my opinion completely wrong. So, if I would tell him, "You know, maybe, …. try … like this …" or so, he just wouldn't listen. Why. Because, he of course already knows about the alternative I am suggesting, and, he has alredy valued my (not) suggested alternative of a lower value than he obviously the one like he is doing. And also of course the tone doesn't matter at all, and I have tried everything. I tried the commanding as well as the suggesting version. None really worked out. In my responsibility as a guest manager, there isn't really much of a leeway. I have to tell the DGs the way we are doing things here, and that's it. There is no macking around here. And also the DGs feel this reality, so usually there isn't any arguing. But everything outside the official rules, everybody does things the way he likes. And because we are different guys here, those ways also differ (a lot). So the point I want to make is: words are meaningless. The only way to deal with my own urge to change things and people is

1. to accept them, maybe there is no change necessary at all.

2. to try to improve my own practice. Maybe my behaviour will teach him more than any words of mine could ever do, the same way as the behaviour of others is telling me a lot.

In April or so I was appointed the responsibility of shika, the guest manager. The socially most untalented guy here is the new guest manager. All right. Before, Daisen-san was shika. He learned me the things I needed to know when I was a newcomer. Daisen-san is exactly the opposite, he is a natural talent when it comes to social stuff. He is telling you a mistake, while deeply smiling, that nicely, that in the end you kind of feel you have to thank him for this criticism. So how about the work of the shika. On many housans (free days) there are newcomers arriving. All of them are getting an introduction about Antaiji's rules, which takes about an hour. Also later I am responsible for teaching them about their mistakes and what to improve, etc. Actually a not so easy task, because always I am the messenger with the bad news, who usually runs the risk of being shot. The reactions of the guys differ a lot when it comes to deal with their own mistakes. The range goes from "No, I didn't do that mistake" to "I have no time now." But of course there are also guys being open to criticism and trying to improve and learn but still I would say that's clear a minority of all newcomers. Also, as shika, I have to share my room with a lot of the newcomers. Sometimes it is like the one leaves and through the open door a new one enters. But, also here, you get used to it. Sometimes it is good for me, because it forces me to enter social interaction. And often they are interesting people living interesting lives which usually I am curious to hear about. When they leave I ask them how their live continues, what they are going to do, etc. This keeps me a little bit in touch with the outer world. So far, there was nothing amongst it, which left me with the feeling that I am missing something. I think for many guys leaving Antaiji before their planned term is over, that they feel they are missing something, feel like wasting their time here and think they can do better at some place else. That's not the case for me. At least not now. I'm not having a better alternative. Of course there are still crises, especially during sesshin, when I am confronted with how my life is going, something I don't have the time for outside sesshin. But even during those crises, deep inside I know that the root of my problems is not somewhere outside, it is somewhere inside myself. So, leading an orderly life, doing a lot of Zazen and also a lot of physical labour is Antaiji's approach. As I will later elaborate in more detail, it hasn't led to a material improvement so far, but, also it didn't get worse. There is just no time for that. That's the good thing about our sometimes tight schedule. So, is not getting worse an improvement? Yes, I would say so. Or at least it is the better alternative. When I was leaving my home country things indeed were getting worse by themselves. So, stabilizing now, means actually an improvement for me.

Overall I would say many things have normalized during the last year. Many things have been horrible in my memory, but now they are kind of normal. For example when I came here May last year, we sometimes had to work until 5 p.m. (usually 3 p.m.). At one day it was quite cold, raining heavily and we had to pull weeds in the flower garden until 5 p.m. I didn't have a proper rain jacket, so I was getting soaked. This was a horror afternoon for me, I counted every second I was getting closer to 5 p.m. This year, working in the rain, why not, a proper rain jacket and rain trousers, then it can actually even be fun, because everything turns quiet and peacefully during rain. Or, also in May last year I had to "push the car" through the rice field, a sort of weeding technique. Hard work and kind of depressing, because the rice field is huge and you think there is no end to it. This year, pushing the car, ok, why not, samu as everything else.

Still I do have the same problems I was having when I came here. My Zazen is still very bad and I can't really see any material improvement. Rather I am kind of keeping the level. Nevertheless I am convinced that this here is the right thing for me to do at the moment. The daily confrontation with your practice is kind of challenging. One of my problems in my old world was, that I didn't feel challenged at all. And if the challenge for money or for the other usual suspects is a challenge for you, that is just fine, but for me it wasn't any more. So here the challenge obviously is not about money or something like that, it is about you. Your practice. No-one else responsible. You opposing yourself. You confronting yourself. You alone with yourself. And because alone this is even more difficult, we are doing this together in a sangha. Still, everybody is alone with himself, I can't do practise for somebody else, but we can support each other in a direct way or just by being there and living and practising together.


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