Most Sogenji monks spoke English, but the services, ceremonies, and Abbot’s talks were all in Japanese, so at first I felt bewildered about what to do and where to go. The schedule was challenging—awakened at 3:30 a.m., to bed at 9:00 p.m. with days full of zazen, ceremonies, and work tasks. For the first two weeks my back and legs ached from long hours of sitting and rushing to keep up with the other monks. After that my body adjusted. I needed only the twenty minute nap after lunch that all the monks took to get through the long days. Being able to follow the rigorous schedule would give me the new confidence I sought.
It was a privilege to live amidst the graceful beauty of Sogenji’s 350-year-old structures and gardens, first built in the early Edo period. One entered the monastery by a long walkway up through ancient pine trees from the residential street on which Sogenji was located. The monastery’s classical, two-tiered Buddha Hall at the center of the compound greeted the visitor. Its two tiled roofs and majestic, curved eaves bespoke both serenity and power. Inside the cavernous Buddha Hall every morning from 4:00 to 5:00 a.m., we monks sat and chanted in Japanese. We chanted so rapidly it took me two weeks to get my tongue around all the syllables.
This daily hour of rapid, full-throated chanting was invigorating. Afterward, we processed silently downhill to the zendo for zazen. On my first morning, once we were settled on our zafus, a bell was rung, and, thinking it indicated the start of zazen, I was startled when everyone leaped up and ran out of the zendo. Bewildered, I followed as quickly as I could, back up through the woods to a spacious room between the Abbot’s apartment and the Buddha Hall. There we sat and waited to be called for sanzen, the daily private interview with the Abbot. Later I learned that the monks ran to be sure they would get to speak to the teacher. This racing was a monastery tradition but actually not necessary because the Abbot saw everyone every day. I learned to run too but never fast enough to be first in line. My best was to be second, once only.
The resident monks each worked on a koan with the Abbot. As a visiting monk, my daily sanzen consisted instead of the Abbot demonstrating the powerful, slow breathing technique of sussokkan to calm and focus the mind. Following my sanzen, conducted mostly in silence as I knew little Japanese and the Abbot, little English, I enjoyed the solitary walk back down through the woods to the zendo for more zazen.
There were many aesthetic pleasures to enjoy at Sogenji: Outside my room at 3:50 a.m. each morning, I relished the exuberant stars in the black sky as I waited to join the other women monks and walk arm-in-arm up to the Buddha Hall. On rainy mornings, I found equal pleasure walking huddled under umbrellas, large raindrops spattering on ancient granite steppingstones. And each time we entered the dark, cavernous Buddha Hall, a tiny thrill of fear energized me.
Later, after morning zazen, I enjoyed bustling from the zendo in tight formation with the other monks to crowd before the kitchen altar. There we chanted a fast and guttural, possibly animist, chant, to the “kitchen god” before entering the dining area to sit at a long table for our oryoki meals. Though I never knew the meaning of the chant, its primitive energy cheered me.
The resident monks rotated daily as tenzo (cook). A second monk acted as assistant cook. Several times I was allowed to be assistant, washing rice and chopping vegetables. I was amazed at how fast the tenzos worked to cook three meals a day for twenty-five people. At day’s end I followed the tenzo in ritually closing the monastery. In the dark at 9:00 p.m. we walked the entire compound, striking two wooden clappers (hyoshigi) together sharply and shouting an ancient incantation to ward off any evil spirits lurking on the grounds. It was spooky, especially as we scooted by the graveyard to enter the furthest, dark building, the Founder’s Hall, where intruders conceivably could be hiding. I had to laugh: middle-aged and still afraid of ghosts.
The monastery week offered many sensory pleasures. During zazen in the zendo, which was located next to the graveyard, I was soothed to hear the occasional splash of water, the hollow clink of watering cans, and the swishes of bamboo brooms as neighborhood family members faithfully cleaned the graves of their ancestors. Once every five days when we monks had a partial day off from the normal schedule, I luxuriated in the monastery’s wooden hot tub (heated by a wood fire) in the bathhouse with the other women. On summer evenings, I relished sitting zazen as twilight softly turned to night. On a few nights at dusk in August I was astonished to hear bullfrogs in the Zen garden pond clear across the monastery compound “throat singing” in two deep tones, like Tibetan monks.
Both the aesthetics and the practice at Sogenji were rich culturally and spiritually. I enjoyed finding my way in Rinzai Zen practice and into friendships with monks from Japan, Europe, Australia, and the U.S. After my summer residence, I was permitted to attend several seven-day sesshins throughout the year. I also stayed at the monastery some weekends. I have many good memories of Sogenji and Japan, one of which relates to my mind’s development.
Participating in monastic practice, as well as living in Japan with only the most rudimentary literacy, did have the effect I had wanted. Experiences intensely different from what I was used to shook up my mind. Before moving to Japan, I had been warned about “culture shock.” Though I read several descriptions of this phenomenon, I could not have imagined the actual experience. On three occasions during that year in Japan, one at Sogenji and two in my teaching life, I experienced culture shock.
These episodes were characterized by mental confusion that built up over a few days concerning particular situations in daily life and work. One was about my sophomore English students’ behavior. They wouldn’t speak in class. I tried many ways to get them to talk, but they refused. I concluded that their resistance meant they did not like me. Only at the end of the year did I come to understand: they did not want to disappoint me. Their resistance was out of respect.
At the crisis point of this and the other culture shock episodes, I realized I had absolutely no idea what was going on. My brain felt both clogged and dizzy. I couldn’t relate cause and effect. On the surface, things appeared to be understandable, but in the state of culture shock, for a few hours I felt intensely confused. I observed activities and analyzed their meanings from my Western perspective, but my analysis completely missed the boat. My mind whirled, I couldn’t catch my breath. I had no process for sorting things out. I just had to capitulate to not knowing. It was humbling—and enlightening. The antidote for an episode of culture shock was simple and at hand: I just needed to talk to another American or European who had lived in Japan longer than I had. With their support, in an hour or so, my frenzied mind would calm down. I would see the humor in the experience; I felt cleansed, like my mind had been rinsed. I had come to Japan to shake up my thinking. This was the shaking.
Being functionally illiterate in Japanese gave me new respect for immigrants finding their way in new countries. Being illiterate also made it necessary to fall back on an unconscious awareness I didn’t know I had. For example, I could find my way to and from locations even though I couldn’t read street signs or understand the directions I asked for when taking the bus or train. It was harrowing to feel lost, but apparently my unconscious mind recalled the details for getting to and from where I wanted to go and staying safe, for I always found my way.
These “peak experiences” of culture shock had the additional benefit of boosting my self-confidence. When I returned to California a year later, I felt able to make several major life changes. I did not return to corporate work but found jobs in the nonprofit and education worlds. I did not return to Zen practice at Kannon-do but participated in a variety of meditation groups—a Vipassana group in Palo Alto, which introduced me to retreats at newly established Spirit Rock in Marin County; two different Tibetan Buddhist groups in the San Jose area and their associated retreats. Most importantly, I found Tenshin Reb Anderson of San Francisco Zen Center, who would become a significant teacher for me.
Reb’s ability to elucidate