Blog

Group leader Eko, Tsukan from Oregon and Yudai, a rikshaw driver from Asakusa meet with Muho to discuss a government sponsored project that involves felling trees around Antaiji. Gusho, a Japanese monk who is laso part of the so called “Antaiji forest group”, was tenzo in the kitchen on this day.

During the next three years, we will cut dead pine trees, fell cedar and cypress trees (to be used in the kitchen and boiler stoves, as well as in the wood stove for heating during the winter) as well as the bamboo groves that keep extending around Antaiji.

You are looking at the new Antaiji Homepage. It will need refining here and there, but in the long run this will be our official “window” to the world. Have fun checking it out!

Muho was away doing sesshins in Europe until the middle of August. Carrots, daikon radish, chinese cabbage and buckwheat will be sewn out during the summer, to be harvest before the winter. A lot of grass cutting and weeding is done during this season as well.
After the end of summer, a number of new, motivated practioners will join us for the autumn season.
Video about the “wabi sabi” aspect of Japanese culture: http://youtu.be/5aLc7pF8eHs?t=30m45s:

We finished planting the rice in May, and are now busy weeding the fields, cutting grass and caring for the summer vegetables. Potatoes will be harvested around the end of June. That will also be the season when the hortensia flowers will be most beautiful. We entered the annual rainy season already, but did not have much rain so far…

Enlightenment on TV

If you are in France or Germany, you can watch a program called “Zen gardens – enlightenment in stone” on June 6th or 13th. There should be some takes of Antaiji as well, featuring abbot Muho with a black eye. Link to the description at “Arte” channel: http://www.arte.tv/guide/de/047068-000/zen-garten(German) or http://www.arte.tv/guide/fr/047068-000/zenitude-et-plenitude (French)

Here is the part about Antaiji in French:

The snow melted in March and the Antaiji practioners are back in the fields, plowing, seeding and weeding. There are also lots of trees to be cut, a stone wall to be build where we extend a rice field, and a new water supply to be made. We still accept practioners, but people who come to Antaiji should be prepared to stay for three years (to be able to contribute to the self-suffivient lifeI and speak basic Japanese.

Major samu

Samu (labor) takes places on the days between sesshin:
Raising the rice paddies and reparing the rice fields.
Plowing the vegetable fields and sowing seeds (potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, bell peppers, eggplants and lots of greens).
Digging for bamboo shoots and collecting other wild herbs.
Extending the new rice field andf buildign a stone wall.
Cutting trees, chopping wood.
Repairing the roof.
Plumber work to create a new water supply.

Dharma talks

On the night before each long sesshin, the abbot gives a talk on Adult practice.

On the days before one day sesshins, the practioners take terms lecturing on: Shobogenzo Zuimonki
The practioners read the text, explain it and reflect on how it relates to their own practice and their life here.