“You sit on the zafu facing the wall,” John explains. “You put your left foot
on your right thigh and your right foot on your left thigh. It is very important to sit
up straight. Then you rest your left hand on the heel of your left foot and place
your right hand on your left hand. The ends of your thumbs touch lightly; your
hands form an oval. Your eyes are open and you look at the wall, but don’t stare.
Go ahead, try it.”

I sit down on the zafu and with some difficulty get myself into the full lotus
position John has described. “How long do we sit like this?” I ask.

“Fifty minutes at a stretch with ten minutes of kinhin (walking meditation) in
between. In the morning, the monks signal it’s time to get up ten minutes before
five. Then we do two sessions of zazen before breakfast. We do another one
before lunch and two more after supper. We go to bed at ten o’clock. Every day is
the same except during sesshin.”

“Sesshin?”

“Then we do fourteen hours of zazen a day instead of only five. We just
finished a three-day sesshin yesterday — except in summer, sesshin is five days.
There won’t be one next month because of the summer heat. During sesshin no
talking is allowed at any time anywhere. You don’t need to worry about that now.”

“I find it very difficult to sit in the full lotus. Can people sit in the half
lotus?”

“Sure, you can sit in the half lotus, but its not as recommended. Put your left
foot on your right thigh and leave your right foot on the floor.”

“It works better for me if I put my right foot on my left thigh,”I say.

“You can do it that way too, if you want. It’s almost time for noon-day
zazen,” John continues, “so we’d better go. When that’s over, you’ll know what
it’s like.”

“Is that all I have to know?”

“That’s enough. There is only one rule at Antaiji: You have to do all the
zazen they do or you have to leave. Once you leave, you can never come back.
That’s it.”

In ten minutes, my new life is about to begin.

page:

48

Japanby Morley Evans

November 21, 2000