....This entry is continued from yesterday, when I started to discuss my one-day zazen retreat in Santa Monica.
So! After we had our lunch (and we did get seconds, distributed with the same elaborate ritual as the firsts), the server came around and poured tea into our rice bowls. I still had a little bit of rice in my rice bowl, so my tea had bits of rice floating around in it.
Actually, I've never been able to understand how people who are trained in the use of chopsticks are able to get every last grain of rice out of a rice bowl. Can you? I can manage to pick up the "clumped" bits of rice, as well as bits of vegetable or mushroom, but I can't seem to figure out how to get the last individual grains of rice. This may explain why the Chinese are going to take over from us as technological front-runners in the 21st century. They have better hand-eye coordination.
After we finished our tea, the server came to our places with a pot of hot water. She poured some hot water into each of our rice bowls. Then, we were supposed to take a single orange-colored pickle, place it in the hot water, and use it, together with a chopstick, to sort of "clean" the rice bowl. Rubbing it around the side of the bowl, picking up bits of this and that. Then, when we had finished washing the rice bowl, we transferred the "dishwater" to the soup bowl and rubbed out the rice bowl with our extra napkin. Following a similar procedure with the soup bowl, we cleaned that dish with the chopstick and pickle, poured the dishwater into the pickle dish, and wiped the soup bowl clean. Finally, the server came back with a special pot for us to dump out our dishwater from the pickle dish. We bowed some more after pouring out our dishwater.
No dessert.
After all of our dishes were cleaned, we stacked them inside each other like Russian nesting dolls and wrapped them up in the napkin we had used as a placemat (did I mention that one of the napkins was used as a placemat?)
When lunch was over, we had ritual cleaning time, which is called "suma" (not to be confused with "sumo", which is fat men grappling with each other). We took the dishes we had just "washed" into the kitchen, and a lucky pair of retreatants washed them again, this time properly, with Palmolive.
I swept the floor, both inside and outside.
After cleaning, we had two more half-hour zazen sessions, broken up by a ten-minute walking meditation session, where we walked around slowly in a circle. After we were finished, there was a one-hour discussion and that was that. During the discussion period, we got dessert - a mug of proper English tea (black) with a slice of pound cake. All for the amazingly cheap cost of $10, including lunch.
I was surprised at how some things came back to me. I spent some time in a zen monastery while I was in college, and I had forgotten how highly ritualized everything is - right down to toilet time. If you have to use the loo, you drop out of line during the slow walking meditation and drop back into line when you come back. No talking, no unnecessary noise of any kind.
I rather enjoyed the silence. The discipline is a little strange at first, but the opportunity to quiet the mind and focus on whatever was being done at the moment - whether eating or walking or sitting or sweeping - was quite refreshing.
I don't know if I'm going to do this regularly or not, but I did enjoy the sitting and I also enjoyed the people.
Be focused, be aware, be cool,
Byrd in LA
Here I go again, messing with your amusing light-heartedness...
Back in the early 60s, from pure hearsay, I decided that I preferred Nichirenism over Zen: I was not a flower child seeking structure and discipline.
More recently I read (in the LA Times?) about Zen monasteries losing most recruits except those who were adult children of alcoholics..people who were comfortable with a large amount of authoritarian abuse.
I'm an adult child of alcoholics. But I rebel.
I shall have corned beef whenever I want it.
Barbara
And you know there are chop sticks, and then there are chop sticks. I've seen Asians (never Westerners) adeptly and with great skill use very thin sticks that are way pointed at the end. Yes, I have watched with great interest while with smooth motions, and a rythmical click-clack of the sticks, every last grain of rice was consumed without a hitch. Me, I be fumbling along with fat wooden sticks that are so big the rice can't help but stick to them. Talk about saving grace. No sleek, pointy sticks for me.