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Breakfast is called “shukuza” in Japanese Zen monastery, which can loosely be translated as the “gruel session”. In Antaiji though, we have brown rice, miso soup and two side dishes for breakfast, to give us the strength necessary for samu. Here you can see us recite part of the morning chant:

Hitotsu ni wa ko no tasho o hakari kano raisho o hakaru.
Futatsu ni wa onore ga tokugyo no zenketto hakatte ku ni ozu.
Mitsu ni wa shin o fusegi toga o hanaruru ko to wa tonto o shu to su.
Yotsu ni wa masa ni ryoyaku o koto to suru wa gyoko o ryozen ga tame nari.
Itsutsu ni wa jodo no tame no yue ni ima kono jiki o uku.

Jiten kijinshu, gokin suji kyu
suji hen jiho, ishi kijin kyu

Jo bun san bo, chu bun shion
gekyu roku do, kai do kuyo
ik-ku idan is-sai aku
niku ishu is-sai zen
sanku ido shoshu jo
kaigu jo butsu do

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Breakfast chants and Rules for eating

Back in Antaiji, the first rice field has been harvested. The sounds that you can hear at the beginning of the video are the voices of dear that can be heared a lot in autumn, especially in the morning hours. They are in heat during this time of the year.

To make the best use of the nice weather we have these days, we got up and started with the harvest first thing this morning at 5am, before sun rise.. The plan is to finish the first field by tonight, allowing us to do a one day sesshin tomorrow. The other two fields still need time for the rice to ripen.

Ante from Australia is leaving Antaiji today. After dropping him off at Tottori station, I am checking in at the airport to go to Tokyo.

Quite a different atmosphere at Shinagawa:

A couple of minute of zazen in my hotel room:

The panel discussion took place from 6am to 8am. I will be uploaded on the channel https://www.youtube.com/user/BukkyoDendoKyokai during the next days.

Another typhoon has passed, and we have good weather again.

The rice in the southern field has fallen over again, wo we decided to start harvesting today.

The soil in the field is still swampy, therefore we tie the rice on a plastic sheet outside the field. from there it will be transported to the haza construction to dry in the sun.

In the vegetable garden, the weather is just right to plow.

In another area, we are planting the Chinese cabbage for winter food.

And in the Zen garden, Shoko shows where a hole needs to be dug to plant lotus flowers next spring.

The view:

The weather: