Zen Monastery Reflections
Reflections on my visit to the Zen Mountain Monastery
Background – why I went & the trip there
Overview of the Zen Training Approach
The Eight Gates — the training approach of the monastery
Introduction to Zen Training Weekend
Meditation - explanation of the meditation practice
Practice - explanation of the holistic approach to Zen and life
Lecture and Liturgy – talking and reading about Zen
The Monastery – a little about the place itself
Final Thoughts
Background
Twice in 2004, I visited a Zen Buddhist Monastery in Woodstock, New York. The first time was in August and the second in November. The words that follow are the thoughts I’ve had about the weekends since I attended them.
I went for a few reasons. First, I had studied Buddhism as an undergraduate for my B.A. in Religion. The studies were academic and I always felt like I only understood a part of what was being written and discussed. Second, the summer of 2004 was really stressful and I wanted to learn how to meditate and Zen Buddhism is all about meditation. Finally, it was a good excuse to visit some people I knew in the area near the monastery…
The drive from Cleveland to Woodstock, which is near the monastery, is long and uneventful. There are no interesting sights, generally speaking, and the road is straight. Alone, the drive is ten hours of isolation with your own thoughts and feelings. So, in a way, the drive itself is preparation for what came ahead during my visits to the monastery.
On the way to my first visit, I was nervous because I had not prepared for the experience I might face at a Buddhist monastery. For example, I had never meditated. I worried that I had made a mistake and that I’d either (a) wind up in a monastery with real monks and be in over my head or (b) that it would be some new-age or cult-like experience rather than a sincere experience with Zen practitioners.
Thankfully, as you’ll see, it was a good experience with real monks who understood the limitations of the people, like me, who were visiting their home…
Overview of the Zen Training Approach
The program I attended was called an "Introduction to Zen Training Weekend". The monastery web site accurately describes the experience like this:
…This weekend introduces the most important aspects of traditional Zen training within the context of ZMM’s unique Eight Gates program. You will experience zazen, liturgy, art and body practice, and other areas of training, while also having ample opportunity to ask questions about Zen practice.
Many of us have read books on Zen, been sitting zazen on our own, or have been looking for a teacher. In this retreat you will have the opportunity to experience for yourself that which you’ve been reading about, to find strength in practicing alongside other like-minded students, and to directly eplore the student-teacher relationship. Each weekend is led by one of the Monastery’s Zen teachers, accompanied by senior monastic and lay students, and offers the opportunity for private interview with a teacher.
The Eight Gates
It’s easiest if I preface my discussion about the weekend by explaining how the monks teach Buddhism. If you think about it, explaining Buddhism isn’t an easy task. We, in the United States, are immersed in a culture of Christianity. Buddhism — lacking the Christian concepts of worship, deity, and sin — takes some energy to explain. Getting past our assumptions about what ‘religion’ means isn’t an easy task.
Add to this the fact that there are several types of Buddhism, that translations have varied a great deal through the last few decades, and that there isn’t a central body of Buddhism to govern rules and regulations (a’la the Vatican) and the problem becomes even more complex. People interested in Zen come to the monastery with an understanding of Buddhism based upon self-education using a mix of literature from various traditions and of varying translation quality…
The Mountain monks answered this problem by creating an education program called The Eight Gates. Generally speaking, the Eight Gates are a systematic way to introduce students to Buddhism. Each of the key components of Zen practice are introduced and developed in the program. Most importantly, the program highlights the need for both academic study (reading) as well as daily practice.
Furthermore, Eight Gates emphasizes that daily practice is not limited to meditation but is extended to all aspects of life. Thus, "right action", art practice, body practice, and work practice are all parts of Zen practice. Each element of daily living is placed within the puzzle so that there isn’t a separation between "Zen time" and "normal time". Thus, all time is sacred, so to speak, not just the time sitting in meditation…
"The Introduction to Zen Training Weekend"
The introduction weekend allows students to personally experience the Eight Gates. As such, it covers these three topics:
- Zen Buddhism — The basics of Zen, on an intellectual level, are explained to the students.
- Zen Practice — Students practice Zen living through work, art, exercise, and meditation. This is in contrast to the more academic approach mentioned in the first point. Instead of talking about Zen, students "do" Zen.
- The Zen Monastery — The monastery has a set of schedules, roles, and personalities which make it a unique place…
The schedule is straightforward. The weekend starts on Friday afternoon around 6pm and ends on Sunday around noon. I say ‘around’ because the start and end are meals and these parts of the weekend aren’t strictly structured. It’s a good way to bookend the weekend, in my opinion, because it allows the students to find their bearings and prepare to leave without being rushed or feeling like there are hard time boundaries to cross. The general schedule looked like this:
Friday: introduction to meditation
Saturday: meditation, art practice, body practice, work practice, and a lecture
Sunday: meditation and liturgy
Rather than go through the weekend hour-by-hour, it’s easier to explain the ideas covered during the weekend on a subject-by-subject basis. One important thing to remember is that I am explaining my understanding of these ideas and so it is very possible that I’ve misunderstood or that I’ve explained the ideas here so as unintentionally to mislead you. I think I’m pretty close to the ideas, but I don’t study this regularly and have only visited the monastery twice. So reader beware.
Meditation (Zazen)
Meditation is the best known practice of Zen Buddhism. Zen meditative sitting is known as zazen. In zazen, the person sits very still on a pillow that sits on a cushion. During this time, the goal is to let your thoughts be quiet and to live as much in the moment as possible.
This doesn’t mean losing the ‘self’ or losing all thought. Instead, it means becoming as much one with the moment as possible so that extraneous thoughts are missing. This ability to exist in the moment as yourself is called ‘mindfulness’. (The term is broader than this; it’s not just ‘mindfulness’ in meditation.)
Let me say this, based upon my own experience: Losing all the extraneous thoughts is not easy. It is very hard.
The reason it’s hard is because, if you are like me, as you sit you begin to make up stories or think about ‘why things are’. For example, as I performed zazen on weekend, despite the lack of any distraction my thoughts kept wandering off as I thought about the drive home or whether my foot was asleep or how long we were sitting or why they picked the color of paneling that was on the wall or…
When zazen works as intended, it’s a very good experience. My mind cleared and I was very focused. As I sat, occasional thoughts would bubble up but I was able to put them ‘aside’ and return to the focus I had to start. But to be honest, this is really hard and this kind of experience was rare for me.
If you want to try it, do this:
- Find someplace comfortable to sit where your posture won’t distract you (i.e. no hard chairs or very soft beds/recliners).
- Pick a spot to look at while you sit. It’s best if the spot is slightly below your line of sight. So, if you are sitting upright, try looking at something that is at a 45 degree angle downward from the horizontal.
- Now start counting breaths. Count up to four, then start again at one. Thus, with the first breath count "one". With the second breath count "two". etc.
- Here’s the kicker: don’t think about anything else except sitting and counting breaths. If you begin to think about something that isn’t sitting or counting breaths, let the thought go and start counting again.
Practicing this meditation routine myself, I rarely made it past one. I never made it past two.
Finally, the description I’ve given here is superficial, but without being an expert in it, without transcribing pages and pages of their words and without writing tons about my own practice of it…well, this should be enough to explain it if you don’t know anything else about it. Finally, I come from a Catholic background, which might help explain the perspective from which I experienced this.
Practice: Art, Body, Work
Much like true Catholic practice is more than mass on Sunday, Zen Buddhism is more than zazen.
Zen requires the practitioners to be mindful of their actions through the entire day. During the weekend, the monks explain and demonstrate this through a number of discussions and practice sessions. The monks at the Mountain Monastery break daily practice into three parts to make instruction easier: art practice, body practice, and work practice.
- Art practice is the creative side of ourselves. The art practice session for students was painting with ink and brush on paper and was as entertaining as it was instructive.
- Body practice is the maintenance and awareness of the physical body. A session of yoga-style movements with one of the monks helped to introduce us to body practice by stressing the need to be mindful of our place and position (physically) as we moved.
- Work practice is performed through the entire day in bits. Each day, we were assigned chores to help keep the monastery tidy as we (the students) visited. These chores were simple, such as helping to prepare food for lunch/dinner or dusting or doing light filing work. While we worked, we were encouraged to focus on the task at hand in a mindful manner.
In this way, the monks hope to show the students that mindful living must continue at all points of the day and that ‘enlightenment’ requires a holistic approach to life.
Lecture and Liturgy
Buddhism has a rich body of writing and thought behind it. During the weekend, the monks hold lectures to explain the history of Buddhism, talk about the experience of the Buddha, explain how Zen practice fits into the history of the religion, and answer questions about meditation, the rituals of the day, and more.
On Sunday morning the monks hold a longer morning session that includes zazen like previous days but also includes a lecture and liturgy. The lecture is given by a senior monk, the Abbot if present, and addresses a specific topic related to life and Buddhism.
Liturgy is different and should be explained separately. Liturgy is not the same as that experienced in a Catholic church. Rather than listen to a passage from a religious work, participants read the liturgy together in a form similar to a ‘prayer’ or a chant. The prayers aren’t really prayers, either, in that they aren’t pleading intercession by some divine being but address the ‘Buddha nature’ of the world (which includes the nature within us).
I will admit that I don’t really understand the purpose of the liturgy. Some of it is clearly to help the monks in their pursuit of enlightenment. But other works were a string of syllables that didn’t have any meaning. (They didn’t form words.) When asked about it, the monks said that it didn’t mean anything in any language but were sounds meant to help with meditation. I think.
The Monastery
The physical site of the monastery is a comforting and peaceful area, making it conducive to the meditation and reflection that the students are encouraged to pursue.
The building is an old Catholic monastery and the main building has a large (10 foot tall?) crucifixion sculpture embedded in the exterior wall. Inside, the building is a good combination of common areas, meditation hall, and rooms for sleeping and living.
The location is good, nestled in the mountains of New York near Woodstock. The drive isn’t far from the interstate, but it’s far enough off the main roads that traffic noise or commercial buildings aren’t an issue. My understanding is that it’s about an hour from the city, making a commute from bus stations or airports convenient.
Final Thoughts
My experience with the Zen Mountain Monastery was a positive one. The monks are sincere and the student weekends are not ‘recruiting sessions’ or evangelization efforts. They are simple explanations, to people who may have had little experience with it, of the Zen Buddhist practice and beliefs. The demonstration of this through action — students participate in zazen, liturgy, lecture, and art/work/body practice — makes this explanation that much more valuable.
As one of the people who ‘had little experience’, the weekend sessions I attended had a real effect on my life. Zazen is a meditation practice that has helped me focus and center my life. The concept of being ‘mindful’ in all parts of life also had a positive effect on me and helps a great deal in dividing the important things from the distractions.
If you want more information about my experience, feel free to send me an email. If you want more information on the monastery, you can visit their web site.
Finished on: 7/08/2005
Updated links on: 8/02/2006
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