Hokyoji was an interesting experience for me. Once again, I wasn't totally walled off because all my classmates were there. But I appreciated that I couldn't have done anything remotely like this alone. Some of the stuff that happened on the trip:
I would wake up in the morning at 4AM and wash up for a 4:30 meditation session. At that time of morning my brain would be shot and I would spend the session staring at the wall, half-awake, focusing on staying awake more than keeping my mind in order. This would be followed by a morning service, that is, prostrations and chanting. I enjoyed this more because it gave me something physical to occupy myself with. Finally we would get our bowls and have a formal breakfast at something like 6AM.
By "formal" I don't mean French style. This breakfast was insane, like nothing I have experienced before. We ate on top of the zendo. No spilling. Absolutely no noise was allowed-- especially not clinking bowls. Every time you put your chopsticks down, you had to silently balance them on top of your bowls. At the end of the meal you cleaned every bowl with a special stick and stacked them as carefully as possible. If you dropped your chopsticks or, Heaven forbid, your bowls, that was it: you had to apologize before the altar and leave a donation. Also, everyone would know of your guilt in both rooms, because the sound was very loud.
Now, Brian was berating me the entire trip for not cleaning my bowls in the right order, putting food in the wrong bowls, and drinking the cleaning water before the donation to the hungry ghosts. I felt humiliated and angry. But soon I recognized that this was his way of reminding me to be extra careful. I spill stuff all the time, but at these meals, after I understoof his advice, I took extra care not to drop anything. There were some close calls, but the entire group went through the trip without dropping a single chopstick. Apparently this was a first in Brian's career!
We got to do takahatsu, or traditional almsround, in a poor part of a nearby city. By nearby I mean about a dozen miles away because the temple really was in the middle of the woods. But this was an experience practically no foreigner will ever have and I was really grateful.
I endured vicious-looking barking dogs, itchy feet from the painful straw sandals, wet roads, and a sore throat and donated merit to a dozen households in exchange for small donations. This is apparently a big source of income for this faraway training temple which no longer has many families supporting it.
Sadly, some Japanese people no longer understand what takahatsu means, and one woman donated twice asking us to go away and stop chanting. But chanting is the important bit. During these alms monks chant a semi-magical dharani sutra twice, then either dedicate the merit to the temple (?) if nobody is home, or in the lucky case that someone shows up, dedicate the merit to the donating party and their family. Whether or not you believe in the power of sutras, the monks will not stop the dharani to thank people for the money.
We also got to visit the off-limits treasure house and see those famous scrolls of Dogen, do a short dokusan with the head abbot and climb the mountain to the Zen rock as I have already described. In between this, meditation, and formal meals most of our time was spent. I didn't have much of a spiritual experience doing the things besides the Zen rock but they were all immensely enjoyable and the pace of life at the monastery was something I was grateful for the opportunity to take in.
We also had three unofficial meals, officially illegal under Buddhist rules, but now standard for hungry Zen monks. There were two informal teatimes with sweets, and an informal dinner with unnaturally delicious food cooked by three visiting women. Normally, people tend to thin out on this trip due to being served nothing but pickles and rice all day long. But I got to enjoy mochi, green tea cake, cookies, and curry for dinner (!) and for this I am eternally grateful to the women who cooked for me. They were hard workers who woke up before us, came to meditation at 4:30, and yet somehow made special portions for the vegetarians and lactose and wheat intolerant among us. I left them a present of chocolate. I did not take a picture of them, but my buddy Daniel did.
Soto Zen meditation has not been very useful to me. I think my qi gets stagnant staring at a wall. So far I haven't done much Rinzai but we sit facing each other and it feels a little nicer, easier to focus.
