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The Alchemized Spirit
It is my mission in life to help you heal self-doubt, self-sabotage and imposter syndrome through blending neuroscience and ancient spiritual wisdom. I want you to achieve you dreams, your deserved success and your true potential so that you may do what the fuck you came here to do. And do it easily, effortlessly, with courage, confidence and joy!
Hosted by Ashleigh van der Hoven, it is my life's purpose to awaken reverence in others. Reverence is a deep and profound love, respect and awe for life.
I believe it is this reverence for life itself that will awaken you to the brilliance that lies within you so that you can meet the brilliance that awaits you without.
My work is ancient ancient and modern spirituality, practical psychology, neuroscience and subconscious mind reprogramming.
Each week, you can expect the latest tools, insights and spiritual principles to help shift your energy and mindset in a way that will affect your life in real-time.
Cant wait to make magic with you!
Stay Golden,
Ash
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The Alchemized Spirit
My wild-a$$ journey living in a Zen Monastery for 3 Months | Ep. 12
During my stay, I navigated through the complex practices of Zen Buddhism, understanding the different lineages such as Soto Zen and Rinzai Zen, and learning the detailed customs that shape Soto Zen practice. Experience with me the daily schedule of the Zen practice period, the significance of taking breaks, and how chanting ingeniously incorporates elements of Shinto and shamanism. But this spiritual journey was also a cultural one, where I rediscovered my Afrikaans heritage, finding a sense of identity and pride within the monastery walls.
In the final chapter of this exploration, I shared how Buddhist precepts were incorporated into our daily lives, including non-violence and vegetarianism. Come with me as I participate in a 4:30am procession and uncover the intricacies of Japanese tea ceremonies. Experience the nine life-altering lessons I learned during my time at the monastery, along with insights and recommendations for those considering a similar journey. Whether you're seeking a spiritual awakening or just curious about Zen Buddhism, this episode offers a personal and enlightening glimpse into life within a Zen monastery.
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Hello everyone, welcome back to this week's episode of the Elkmae Spirit podcast. I've taken a little break. It's been a wild, wild couple of months in my life. I am finally back home. If you know anything about my story, I was in the US for a year and a half and I couldn't leave because of various visa issues and immigration issues. I'm back home. I'm back home with my family. I got to see all my nieces and nephews. I absolutely love and adore my family, so, so much. They're like the most important thing to me in this world. It was really really tough being away from them and feeling like I was missing out on crucial stages of life. With my nieces and nephews, I'm just so happy to be home. Also, cape Town is just the most beautiful city in the world. It gets wild. I'm like why don't I live here? But yeah, there's a lot of reasons I'm not going to get into right now. Yeah, I've got my American plan, but yeah, I definitely want to be back here one day living in Cape Town.
Speaker 1:And yeah, it's been a year since I went and spent three months in a Zen monastery and I've got other episodes about how I got there and I'll tell you a little bit today because, finally, I've been saying for almost a year that I'm going to tell the story of what happened while I was there, because I was sharing my journey on Instagram a lot, but I wasn't going into detail. And the truth is, when I came out of there, people asked me like how was it? What did you learn? And people think you're going to spend three months at a Zen monastery and you're going to be changed for life. And I honestly didn't feel that way when I left and it was really hard for me to process what I had been through because I wasn't quite sure, like I couldn't put my finger on it, and it took me like talk about integration. It took me such a long time to really be able to process what I learned, what happened, because it was like the most incredible experience ever and it was also filled with a lot of grief.
Speaker 1:You know, when you sit down and you take away all distractions and you really just do nothing and sit in meditation for so long, stuff comes up that you've been suppressing and I don't care who you are, how freaking spiritual you are, how much personal development work you do. There is shit that you have been covering up, and that will come out when you are staring at a wall for at least two and a half hours a day, sometimes 14 hours a day, and sometimes 14 hours a day for seven days straight, without anything in between. So it was wild and I went for two months. The official practice period was two months and then I left for two weeks for Christmas and I went back for another month in January, which is crazy, because so that's why I say I spent three months there Because they had another practice period, intensive in January, and I was invited to come back and that was really. That was really amazing. But, all that to say, when I left I didn't exactly know what happened, and then it took me.
Speaker 1:I went back this year in June for two weeks. I wanted to. Just there was a teacher there that I really enjoyed learning from and he was going to leave and go traveling, and I wanted to go back and learn from this Zen master I'm hoping to have him on the podcast. His name's Kokyo and so I went back for another two weeks and it was really in me, going back for two weeks, that I was able to process everything that I'd been through and I'd had six months of integration of everything that I'd learned, and it's really interesting because and this is what I loved about it it's not always an intellectual thing that you've been through.
Speaker 1:Meditation is actually a very somatic experience. What do I mean by somatic? Somatic is like in the body and I mean I'll get to it the details, but it's not for me. I thought that I was going to go crazy in my head meditating so much, but the real challenge is actually in your body. It's weird, like sitting there, or it's not weird. Your body is not designed to sit Like you go speak to any chiropractor. Your body is not designed to sit in a chair. The human body, it's not designed to sit, definitely on a meditation pillow, and our bodies are designed to like stand up and walk and sleep, you know. So the physical pain that you go through is a very real thing, and then your emotional body lives in your physical body and so all the stuff that you're going through it's like this emotional shit, just like moving through your system.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I'm going to get to all of that, but I'd like to start at the beginning. I also have nine lessons that I learned in the Zen monastery that I finally, two months ago, was able to summarize. I was like, okay, what did I learn? Because everyone's like, what did you learn? And I couldn't really tell them. I don't know, guys, it was a fucking crazy experience. It took me seven months to really be like, wait, what did I learn? And again, when I went back now, you know, in June, for two weeks, I was able to really get on top of, to understand what I'd been through. You know, going back to that place and yeah. So I have nine lessons for you and I'm going to tell you the whole story today, from the beginning.
Speaker 1:So I had just gone into America and all this visa stuff went down and I wasn't able to. I wasn't allowed to run my business because I was not on the right visa and I had to shift from a tourist visa to another visa and I wasn't able, on the new visa, to be able to run my business. So I had to shut my business down and it was pretty devastating because, you know, I had, you know, in my story, I didn't work for a year during COVID and then I finally was able to. You know, that sent me to my dark night of the soul and my inner critic came out and I had depression and anxiety and then through that I learned mindset and manifestation. And then I manifested like the best fucking year of my career. And so I, you know, I went to go visit my partner on a tourist visa. He'd moved to San Francisco for a job, an amazing job, and we were going to just do long distance until we figured out a plan for me to be able to be in the US and be able to work. So I went on a tourist visa and then, to cut a really long story short, I had issues at the airport and they let me into America, but then that kind of changed the game. I'm not going to go into the details of that. So there's a lot of unexpected shit and I just, you know, I had this amazing year in my acting career.
Speaker 1:Part of me learning mindset and manifestation caused me to start this business and get certified as a coach, and I think I officially started my business in February and all this went down in America in like April, may, june. So I had, like I was devastated and I was, just, you know, getting momentum and now I had to shut everything down and I just said to the universe I was like you know, fuck it, I accept the situation and I'm in and I surrender and tell me, show me what to do, like I have this prayer that says where would you have me go, what would you have me do and what would you have me say and to whom? And that's my surrender prayer. It comes from a course in miracles and next thing I drive past this Zen monastery, we went to the beach and the road down to the beach was super windy and I was on my phone in the back. My friend Keenan and Justice were in the front of the car.
Speaker 1:Justice is my partner and I was sitting at the back and I was on my phone and because the road was so windy, I was feeling really nauseous and so eventually I put down my phone and I was looking out the window like trying to focus on something to stop me from feeling nauseous, and this sign just passed me and the sign said Green Dragon Temple closed for retreat and I was like what the fuck is this place? Dragons and temples and retreats, like I didn't know what this place is, but there was no signal in this area of San Francisco, near this beach. It's Stinson Beach for anyone who knows it's more values Stinson Beach, that area, and I was like what the hell? So I remembered in my head I was like Green Dragon Temple closed for retreat, like Green Dragon Temple retreat. And so three hours later when we finally drew like finished at the beach and worst day at the beach ever, by the way, it was like foggy, typical San Francisco, northern California. I was like literally sitting on the beach in a puffer jacket like laughing. I was like this is not, this is not a beach day and started like drizzling. And you know, we were just like desperate to be at the beach. And we drive out there three hours later and I look at, I Google this place and I see, oh my God, there's a Zen monastery here. And I look at their events and everything and I see that they have, in six weeks time, a practice period coming up so you can go stay there for two months. It's about $1,200 a month.
Speaker 1:At this point, when I decided to shut my business down, I budgeted whether you know, I budgeted some of my savings to be able to last over 10 months. So I was like, okay, if I can just live off $1,000 a month, then I'm going to be fine, you know. So I was already budgeting. I was like, cool, you got to stick to $1,000. And then I saw this practice period coming up and I was like, whoa, it's pretty much exactly what I'm budgeting for. I'm probably more likely to stick to my budget if I'm staying in a monastery because San Francisco is so expensive. Let me just apply for this thing. And it was $30 to apply.
Speaker 1:And a big thing was that you needed previous Zen experience or formal meditation sitting experience. Now, guys, I'm not a fucking meditator. I was not a meditator at that stage. I was like if I do five to 10 minutes two or three times a week, I'm fucking flying. Like that's excellence, that's like an excellent meditation practice for me. And I think the longest I'd ever sat on my own was 20 minutes here. Like I can count on one hand. That happened over the last whatever eight years of my life, but I did have some. I have gone through months where you know I will regularly, every single day, sit for 10 minutes a day. So I see you need this previous experience and I'm like well, I don't have previous experience, but my brother is very into Zen and I spoke to him and he was like he had a look at the monastery and he's like, yeah, this looks super legit. And it turns out that his Zen master in South Africa was actually ordained through the lineage of Zen masters that existed at this Zen center, this Zen monastery that I was going to. So that was like the first sign in synchronicity and I was like, okay, cool. And then during this time, I spoke to a friend that I hadn't heard from in years and he was actually we were talking about spirituality and he was also, at the time, going to spend time in the Zen monastery only a week, but in Europe. So all these kind of coincidences.
Speaker 1:I'm a big sign person. I'm in constant communication with the universe and God and I'm like you know I, the way I live my life, is God comes first, spirituality, my conversations with spirit, always come first and I really let that guide me, especially when I'm in fucking crisis. And I was at this stage because I had to shut my business down and all the stuff was happening, and I was like, okay, this, maybe I've been led to this place so they're not going to let me in, like I have no formal sitting experience, but fuck it, let me just pay this $30 application fee and apply and write a letter. And so I wrote a letter and of motivation and I said I'm a you know spiritual life coach and I'm very into my spirituality and I wrote a really good letter and then I kind of like I didn't lie in the letter but I definitely made it seem like I meditate more regularly.
Speaker 1:The way I described my meditation practice was like I had the meditation practice I'd once had for like nine months, three years before, where I meditated, you know, four or five times a week. So I described that period of my life. But if I'm really honest, when I wrote the letter my meditation practice was nowhere Like. It was like once or twice every two weeks for 10 minutes, you know. But I told them no, I meditate regularly three to five times a week, 10 to 20 minutes at a time. I'm not exactly proud of it, but I did have. I had been meditating on an awful eight years, you know. Anyway, I just that that year was rough and I let my meditation practice go. So I write this amazing application later.
Speaker 1:I'm really good at writing and university I studied finance and economics. I used to get like 85% for my economics essays, that's, and apparently over 80 is like journal publishable or whatever. So I'm a good writer, like I know how to get my you know, I know how to write a good letter, and so I write this letter and I think I'm probably not going to get in anyway. And if I do get in, that's the sign. You know, it's a sign from God. God will decide whether I go to this monastery or not. So I apply and obviously spoiler alert I get in and the day that I got in I started shooting myself because I looked at the schedule.
Speaker 1:They have like a mock schedule that you can see and one meditation sitting is 40 minutes and there are two a day. Now I've never sat longer than 20 minutes. Okay, now we have we're waking up 5am and sitting for 40 minutes and then in the evening for another 40 minutes, and I'm like that seems really hectic and I'm starting to get scared now because I'm like I don't know, I'm just not, like I don't know, I'm not. It's almost like entering a marathon and feeling like you haven't trained for it or you've never done it before or you're not fit enough for it. So I start the second I get in, I start meditating at least for half an hour each day right, which was kind of cool Almost each day, pretty much each day, because I'm starting to freak out, I'm like I'm going to lose my mind, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown in this place and I'm shit scared. I'm really excited because it's like been a dream of mine to live in a monastery or a temple or ashram, some kind of spiritual center, for a period of time in my life. Like this is a massive bucket list item for me and but I'm fucking shitting myself because I'm just like and guys, you have to understand I'm an ADHD child.
Speaker 1:I was put on Ritalin at the tender age of 10 years old. I was also taken off it two weeks later because it didn't work, but I had so much energy as a child. So when I hear the word sit still, genuinely there's trauma behind that for me. Usually, every time I heard the word shit, shit still, sorry, sit still. It was an adult shouting at me, whether it was I love my parents, whether it was my parents, whether it was teachers, it's just like actually, sit still. You know, it's like this aggressive statement. My siblings wouldn't even take me to a movie when I was younger because I couldn't sit still through a whole movie. I remember when I was, like I don't know, 12 or 13. I once sat through a whole movie and my siblings were like what the fuck? Like that. I remember being like whoa, I made it through the whole movie.
Speaker 1:So, going to this place and sitting still, it was not like the living there was exciting, but the meditation I was very, very scared about. So let's cut a long story short and arrive at the day that I had to go there. And I actually looked at my Instagram and, if you're interested, I'm going to make a highlight on my Instagram of my monastery stay and you can see how scared I was the day that I arrived because I actually started videoing it. So my only saving grace is that when I so, I looked at the daily schedule and we have one sitting in the morning and one sitting in the evening and then I looked at a mock schedule for a one day sit so sitting for the whole day, which I was scared about but I saw that that one day sit was two weeks into the practice period. So I was like, okay, that's cool, like I'm going to warm up to it again, like it feels like training right, like I've got two weeks to prepare for this. One day and I'll be, I'll be sitting 40 minutes in the morning and 40 minutes in the evening leading up to that day and I should be fine by the time that day comes. And then, on top of that, my saving grace for that day and this is typical of most formal sitting practices in Zen.
Speaker 1:It's like when you sit for a whole day, it's called Sesshin. So you have a one day Sesshin. Sometimes you get a three day Sesshin. That's the traditional name for like a formal, like a whole day of continuous meditation. But the great thing is you never sit for longer than 40 minutes. So you sit for 40 minutes and then you have a 10 minute walking meditation and then you go back down and sit for another 40 minutes. So me, being who I am and ADHD and energetic, I'm like, thank God there's that 10 minutes and I think I'm going to be okay. Like if I can just make it to the 10 minutes walking meditation, I'll be fine.
Speaker 1:The 10 minute walking meditation is called Kinhin K-I-N-H-I-N. So it's Kinhin is the walking meditation part. It's always 10 minutes. And then the 40 minutes of sitting in meditation is called Zazen. Yeah, so 40 minutes and I'm like, okay, cool, I've got two weeks, this is my game plan. I'm thinking we sit for two, two 40 minute sessions a day for two weeks and I can prepare for this one day, and the one day is going to be okay because at least I have walking meditation in between. You know, the 40 minutes sits.
Speaker 1:So I'm planning all of this in my head, thinking okay, and I'm speaking to my brother and my brother's like, look, ash, the truth is, you can just leave. You know, if it becomes too much, you can just leave when you want to. So so I'm going to have to probably do this podcast in two parts, now that I think about it. Let's see how far we get. I feel like one part has to be the story and then the second part has to be the lessons, because I just want to really describe the whole process to you so that you can get an idea of what it means to be courageous and frightened and still do something. And I also want to describe to you in the story, like how kind of my every day, like the everyday experience of being in the ZEN monastery. And then I want to just I really want to explain the lessons that I learned, which are like two separate things, anyway.
Speaker 1:So I arrived there, shit scared, shit scared. Go look at the highlights on my Instagram. You can see like I'm like I was shaking. You guys shaking justice Drop me off. Really cool, because it was 40 minutes from where we lived in San Francisco, so he dropped me off. He could also come visit me. He came and visited me like two or three times. You weren't allowed to leave. You're not allowed to leave during a practice period, when it's non practice period, and you stay there because you can go, stay there outside of a practice period. You're allowed to leave, but a practice period, everyone stays there.
Speaker 1:It's part of like the container Justice drops me off. I'm fucking out, literally shaking, like what have I? Why am I doing this to myself? Like this is I'm so scared to be no one sitting, nowhere, being no one doing nothing. It's just like my worst fucking nightmare, and that is part of why I wanted to do this, because I have a fear of being no one sitting, still doing nothing, going nowhere, and I wanted to. How I live my life is I run headfirst into my fears. I do not want my fears to control me and I do not. I know that growth is through the things that fear I fear the most and so I'm really really proud of myself actually for going and doing this thing, despite how scared I was.
Speaker 1:My partner, justice does, he's really into, he's about to do an Iron man, a full Iron man next weekend and he's done a bunch of half Iron Man's and he loves to run marathons and I told him I was like my love, this is like my Iron man. You know, going to Spain all the time meditating in a monastery, it's like shit scary, it's endurance, it's. You know, this is my, this is my Iron man, anyway. So I get there super scared but you know, very happy about my plan, very happy that I get we meditating two hours, you know, twice a day, 40 minutes in the morning, 40 minutes in the evening, and I can work up to this.
Speaker 1:First one day sit. By the way, at the end of the two months practice period we sit for seven days. So I did know that that seven day session so we have was coming up at the end, but in my mind I was like cool, we've got this one day sit after two weeks. There's, we had three one day sets that were spread out two weeks apart. So by the time you get to that seven day session, the seven days of silence, like freaking meditation marathon, you've already sat. You know they've, they've, they've trained you, which they really have actually. But anyway, some day I'm with my plan. When I get there, the woman who organizes the whole thing tells me I'll get this, guys. She tells me, tomorrow you're sitting, tangario. So I'm like what the fuck?
Speaker 1:By the way, also, guys, I know nothing about Zen. Nothing about Zen, very, very little about Buddhism. I'm spiritual and I'm pretty non secular and but I know, fuck all about Zen, whatever, and everyone there. This practice period is like they've been practicing Zen for years and years and this practice period is like their pilgrimage of of really going deep into their Zen practice. And here I am. I don't know anything, like I anyway. I know nothing. I'm like I know Buddha and I can't tell you any other freaking Buddhist teachers, like any modern day teacher, and the Dalai Lama, obviously, and beyond that, I know nothing. So there are so many words and terminologies and Japanese words and Zen, and now I know so much, but I got there not knowing anything and when people were having conversations I was just like what the fuck are you guys talking about, anyway? And that was really great for me, by the way, I actually loved it and I it was very humbling for me because I like to think I'm so spiritual and I know so many things and you know I'm a coach, so and it was just so great to just be a total fucking beginner and really build my practice from from that place.
Speaker 1:There's a whole thing in Buddhism called Zen mind beginner mind. There's a book actually written by Suzuki Roshi, who was the Japanese Zen master that came to America I think it was like in the nine, in 1920 or something, maybe even a little bit before, and he started. He brought Zen from Japan to the West and started the San Francisco Zen Center, and this monastery that was just outside of San Francisco is part of the San Francisco Zen Center. So, again, this monastery that I'm staying in is the oldest. This, this community of Zen practitioners, is the oldest Zen center in the West and headed by Suzuki Roshi, and Suzuki Roshi wrote a book called Zen mind beginner mind. It's a very famous book and it's literally about how to approach everything in life with a beginner mind. So I was pretty much nailing the practice, since, like from the beginning because I literally was like such a beginner, I didn't know what the fuck was going on Anyway, this woman tells me tomorrow you're going to be sitting Tangario.
Speaker 1:And I'm like what, what is that? And she's like, oh, it means like, it's an expression, and the idea is to shake your sleeves off because all these practitioners wear the same practitioners wear robes, these black robes. And she's like you've been preparing, everyone's been packing and traveling and preparing to come to this practice period. And you know, tomorrow morning you get to just shake your sleeves off and sit for the whole day. And I'm like what? And she's like, yeah, and I'm like the whole day. She's like, yeah, and I'm like so, not so, guys, the whole day. And wait for this. This is on our first day. She's telling me this at like 5 pm. We are sitting tomorrow from 5 am to 9 pm, without the walking meditation. So Tangario has no breaks. The only breaks that you get are when you leave the meditation hall to go for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Speaker 1:So me and my whole plan about how I'm going to sit in the morning, in the evening and work my way up to this one day, and even in the one day Seisin was sitting meditation. Even then, I only sit for 40 minutes at a time and then we get to walk. No, brah, you are going to sit tomorrow from 5 am to 9 pm with no breaks, and I was already shaking about being there and I was just like what the fuck? Like what the fuck? And that night I couldn't sleep. I was so scared. I was so scared, you guys, I couldn't even sleep properly. I had so much anxiety running through my body. I was like, how am I going to sit there the whole day tomorrow? I've never done this before. I you know, I'm not a good meditator Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:And I wake up the next morning at 4.30, by the way, 4.30 am. We woke up every single morning. I have my coffee and I go to the meditation hall and I just, you know I'm grateful for the meditation practice that I did have, because I just thought, okay, you just need to sit here and focus on your breath, and if you don't focus on your breath, you're going to go fucking crazy, like if you think about how many hours ahead of you, you are going to go crazy. So my lifeline was be in this present moment and focus on your breath and you can take. So what I would do is I would sit for almost two to two and a half hours at a time and then I would leave the meditation hall to go to the bathroom and I'd go do some stretches and yoga.
Speaker 1:Because now my body, my body, started to really hurt, my back started to really hurt, and then hindsight, like what I learned in the days after that was lots of people went back to their rooms and, like a lot of people who had done practice periods before I spend time in other Zen centers they know that it's not that strict Like ultimately you can do whatever you want to do. But I just thought that day, like I'm going to get kicked out if I don't follow the rules, you know. So I was really trying. So I would sit for two and a half hours and then I'd go there's a yoga, beautiful yoga studio right next to the meditation hall and I would go stretch for 20 minutes in the yoga studio and then I'd come back and sit and, guys, I can't believe how easy it actually was, like really, really easy, and you think that your mind is going to go crazy. But the truth is you can just think about whatever you want to think about.
Speaker 1:You know, and that was some of my best meditating ever, because I was so scared that I was going to, I don't know, die or go crazy or I don't know what I thought was going to happen that I was so present and just relied on my breath and surrender and I just did not allow myself to get ahead of myself or think about how many hours I had left. Like I was just like it's none of your fucking business to think about how much, how many hours, you have left, and that is the best lesson for how to live your life. You know, taking things one day at a time, like it's not your business to be thinking so far ahead and being and worrying about it. So, yeah, I was very proud of myself for getting through that first day and we meditated. It was a total of like 14 and a half hours, you guys, and I would say out of 15 and a half, and out of the 15 and a half or 14, I can't remember, I wrote it down somewhere Out of that, I would say I didn't meditate for three hours because I would go for breakfast, and then, you know, take a little break after breakfast, and then I went for lunch and would take a little break after lunch and then I'd go to dinner and take a little break after dinner.
Speaker 1:But you know, dinner and the break would be an hour. So that was fucking crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy and so beautiful because you're sitting in this meditation hall. I'm going to see if I can put photos. Just go watch my highlights on my story if you're interested to see what everything looks like. Because the meditation hall which is called a Zendo, by the way, in Zen, buddhism, the Zendo so beautiful and what's interesting in Zen is we all. You sit on the outer edges of the meditation hall and you face the wall, so everyone is sitting along the wall and you're facing the wall and in Zen, you actually meditate with your eyes open, you let your eyes look down 45 degrees and you sit in your meditation position and you hold a mudra as well with your hands. So there's a particular mudra that you hold in Zen.
Speaker 1:And yeah, I'll get into the everyday, but it was so beautiful that day because I was sitting next to I hadn't met anyone yet. You know, I'd just come the night before and we didn't have orientation or anything and I had this amazing woman sitting next to me, beth, and another person on my right and they actually left after two weeks, but anyway, after two weeks into the practice period, they had a family emergency. But that day I felt so held by these people next to me and Beth specifically. We ended up working on the organic farm together. She heard the night before or something Someone told her, I think, because they place you, everyone has a specific seat and your seat doesn't change your whole practice period, so you become, you have this insane connection to the people around you and like the energy of the Zen door and anyway, so Beth had heard.
Speaker 1:I think Sonia, who runs the whole thing, might have told her it was my first ever time, you know, and in hindsight, beth, you know, and I became like beautifully close and she, she's a bit older and she's had an amazing, you know, she's been practicing Zen for over 20 years and she's legit. And she told me she's like I just couldn't believe. She's like the way I knew it was your first time and I was holding space for you and, by the way, we'd never even spoken to each other. And I could feel this because at one point, I don't know, it was so crazy, like at one point she had gone somewhere else and so she wasn't there, and one of the lots of forms in Zen.
Speaker 1:So one of the forms are that when someone comes in the middle of a meditation because you can't just leave and go to the bathroom, right, like, ideally you don't want to in the middle of a. Well, in the normal day, if you're sitting for 40 minutes, you don't necessarily want to leave during the 40 minutes, rather go to the bathroom. But this day you're not sitting for 40 minutes, you're sitting for the whole 15 hours straight. So people go to the bathroom and when people come back, it's the form and the custom to bow, to get the person bows toward you and even though you're looking at the wall, you can see out of the corner of your eye that someone has come and stood at their seat and you bow to each other and then get back, you know, and then the person will get on their seat. So there's a lot of which I'll get into. There's a lot of forms, and so to Zen specifically. So, so to Zen. Hopefully I'm making sense. Guys, there's just so much, there's just so much fucking shit that I had to learn.
Speaker 1:And so this specific school of Zen Buddhism, because there's different, there's different schools of Buddhism. There's Tera Vahdin, there's Zen Buddhism and there's let me let me start that again there are three, like I kind of okay, this is Buddhism's complicated, you guys. So let me just try and explain this. There are three main schools of Buddhism Tera Vahdin, tera Vahdin, vajrayana and Mahayana. Then, within those three schools and they're called vehicles, right, because they're a form of teaching Buddhism to help the practitioner or the student get to enlightenment. So Tera Vahdin Buddhism is what they practice in Tibet. Vajrayana Buddhism is where a lot of the tantric practices come from, so tantra or that kind of stuff. And then Mahayana Buddhism is where Zen comes from. So within those schools they have I think I don't I'm not an expert, I need someone to come on here but I think each has many schools within those schools. So I know for sure that Mahayana Buddhism has different schools within it and one of those schools is Zen Buddhism.
Speaker 1:And then, even within Zen, you have these different lineages. So you have, you've got Soto Zen, which is the school of Zen that I went to and that the San Francisco Zen Zen Center practices, and then you have what's his name? Rizakai give me one second, okay. So then you have as well, you have the Rinzai School of Zen, and I think they're even more than that. And so, depending on what type of monastery you go to in America, they would be practicing Soto Zen or Rinzai Zen and what I know about Soto and there's so much more to know.
Speaker 1:You guys, I like for what Buddhism is, which is actually one of the most simple. It's not a religion, it's a way of life, it's a practice of spirituality. For how simple the practice of spirituality is, which is basically just to sit in meditation and observe yourself the actual. It's fucking crazy and complicated and so many things going on, and you can study Buddhism for years and you can study within a certain school for years, and, yeah, it's amazing. So Soto Zen, specifically, out of all the Buddhist practice, like schools, out of all the Zen schools, is the most form heavy, and what a form means is it's basically how you conduct yourself in the practice, and most specifically in the zendo.
Speaker 1:So the zendo, the meditation hall, how you, everything has a it's almost like a choreographed dance is the best way that I can describe it, because every bodily action that you do in that zendo has a form. So, for instance, when you walk into the zendo, you walk over the threshold of the door with a certain foot, depending on which side of the door you are walking through. So it's it's a double, it's like a double door to get in, and if the frame of the door is on your left, you step over the threshold with your left foot and then you take two steps and there's a you, you, there's a like a altar with the Buddha and everything, and you take two steps. Also, let me just say, is whenever you are in the zendo, you are holding your hands in a certain position. So if you are walking, your hands are, your hands are either in shasu, which is do you guys pictures of this? But it's kind of like you're holding, you take your fist, and then you take your left hand is in a fist, and then your right hand clasps over your fist and you hold it somewhere near your belly button and then so your hands are almost always in shasu and then when they're not in shasu, they're in gashou, which is like the prayer hands in front of you. So the second you can see a hummingbird from here, which is so perfect because I will tell you about the hummingbirds when I went to the Zen monastery, anyway.
Speaker 1:So we're in front of the door right now. Okay, your hands are in shasu, so very specific hand position at your belly button. Your shoulders are relaxed. You step over the threshold with a certain foot, you take two steps and then you bow to the Buddha first and the altar, and also you bowing to everyone else in the in the Zendo, and then you walk to your seat. When you get to your seat, you bow at your seat, you turn clockwise.
Speaker 1:Guys, when I tell you, everything is choreographed. You get to your seat, you bow at your seat. When you bow at your seat, by the way, you bow with prayer hands, which is called gashou. So up until your seat, you've been walking with your hands in shasu, in front of your belly button with a fist. You're making a fist with your left hand and your right hand is is clasping your left hand's fist.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then, when you get to the seat, your hands come up to gashou prayer position, your elbows are up and out, and then you bow to your seat, you turn clockwise and now your seat is behind you and you're facing the rest of the Zendo and you bow to the rest of the Zendo. If there is someone who's facing you on the other side of the Zendo and it's pretty big and they see you bow to them, they, they bow back. So you've also got to be mindful the whole time, because if someone in front of you bows to you, and because they're in the middle of their the form of getting to their seat, you must you always bow back. So, and throughout your anytime in the Zendo, if someone opposite you facing you bows, you always bow. So you bow. Then you put your bum on the seat. Also, the seat is on a raised platform right, there's a name for that as well. It's eluding me right now, but I actually don't even want to give you guys too many names, because it's just fucking crazy. And you put your bum on your seat and then you lift both your feet up to the right I'm not kidding guys, this is everything. And then you so you've got your bum in the seat you lift your feet up to the right. Also, you're very careful not to put your feet on the platform, because that's rude, and also we sometimes eat on the front section of the platform and so it's very distasteful to put your dirty ass, whatever, just any feet on that platform. So you're lifting them up and making sure that they go immediately onto your pillow. So you lift them up onto the pillow and then you swivel again clockwise to face the wall.
Speaker 1:Okay, and if you're sitting there, and again, if someone comes up to the seat next to you, you, you always, you're always bow to the person that comes next to you. I actually forgot how I even got you. This is such a crazy story. Give me one second. Yeah, back to Beth. So hadn't met her. She knows, because she's been told that the person sitting next to you is brand new and has never even done this before.
Speaker 1:And we're having I was saying it was so beautiful because, even though I hadn't spoken to her, she would come back from the bathroom and because of the form, which is that when someone comes back to the seat and bows toward their seat, you must bow as well. If the person next to you is bowing, you bow and respect to them. And also I'm I'm told the night before we were given like a very brief kind of rundown of some some of the forms. Right, there's so many forms in the Zendo they can't tell you all of them at once, so you're just kind of like watching, and luckily they're very chilled, like it seems very reverent and intense in there because there's so many forms and you're like, what are you doing? But no one is going to shout at you for doing the wrong thing. Like never, ever, ever. And that's what I really love about Zen is like people just leave you alone to do your thing, and I like that because I don't like to be told what to do.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I am Beth would come back from the bathroom and she'd bow and I would bow to her, back to her, and we've been told to do this but we haven't been told why. But suddenly within you you start to develop this like feeling of like respect and reverence and so she would come back Like if I came, I once came back to my seat from the bathroom and she wasn't there and I felt sad and I got onto the seat and then she came like five minutes later and the person on my other side, they also came back to their seat at one point and bowed to me and I my heart like I've been sitting there for fucking nine hours straight, and so my heart was like full of appreciation and love because I've like had this connection. I've been sitting for hours and hours in this insane situation in silence, with these people that I've never met, I've never spoken to. It was so beautiful and like in the weeks that came you know, beth and I worked on the organic farm and so we obviously had lots of time to chat about everything and, yeah, she was just like I was so impressed with you and and I was holding the space and I was like you have no idea, because I could feel your like she's got such beautiful, warm, she's so, she's so kind, she's so, so, so kind, and she was like holding the space for me. I told her I was like I could feel you holding the space for me and the person on the other side as well, like they were just holding me up and in this day that I was so terrified to be in yeah, so beautiful.
Speaker 1:I mean, beth and I sat next to each other the whole practice period and there was like one one day sit where I was just crying. It was so we'd been sitting there and all this stuff about my life and about how things are not worked out the way I wanted them to and not going to go too deep into it, but, like I just started, this was like a one day sit and I started crying. I mean, you hear people crying all the time in the Zendo and I just started crying and it was so beautiful that day, it was insane, because it was raining and so I could hear the rain on top of the roof and then I started crying and I could feel my tears dripping and onto my, my meditation mat, my Zabutan, it's what you call it. Like the square, there's a round pillow that goes on a square, a bigger square pillow so that your knees don't dig into, like the ground. So your ass is on the pillow and your knees go into the square pillow called a Zabutan. And my tears were just going onto the Zabutan as I was hearing the rain going onto the roof and it was like, and I was in pain and grieving, but then I was like it was like I was listening to the rain and it was like I was becoming the rain and I was anyway, that was like a whole day. And then Beth, who's sitting next to me, just quietly, very quietly, goes into her pocket and she pushed like not looking at me, like just her hand comes into, like my peripheral vision, and she's got a black handkerchief for me because like I'm sniffing and it was so beautiful that I just started crying even harder and, like you know, when you cry, like people come and check on you and yeah, there's just so much that I can say about the whole, so the whole experience. But yeah, that was tangaro and I survived and you know our daily. This is like a wild, long story but I'm glad I'm finally telling people because this is, you know, I highly recommend you going and having an experience like this.
Speaker 1:So we went to sleep that night, still hadn't met anyone, they hadn't done. And the next day we woke up and there was. We went to the Zendo at 5am, woke up at 4am and we. So the daily schedule as well. Which was another surprise was I thought we would meditate only twice a day for 40 minutes each time. Turns out the actual schedule is two 40 minute meditations in the morning, back to back from 5am to like 7am, and one another one at 5pm and then another one at fucking 7pm.
Speaker 1:So the woman I called her before I came to the practice period. I called the woman. I love her now. She's like it's such a like it's like family now everyone there, and like she's so cheeky. Anyway, she's like awesome.
Speaker 1:I called the woman. She's been there for like 20 years or something like that, and I called her before I even went to the monastery to say you know, I'm really nervous, I don't know if I'm going to cope with the amount of meditation. She's like you know sorry, it was coughing. I don't know if you could hear that at my house Just checking on someone, I was like, oh no, I've lost my train of thought. Oh, she said she's like you know, and I was like I'm worried about the amount of meditation, thinking there were only two sessions a day. And she's like you know, we might not even have that one, the second one, and then I get there and they actually fall. Okay, so that was another thing, but at least I got my tangaro out of the way and I felt a little bit more empowered and strong about what I could do.
Speaker 1:No-transcript. Also, up until this point, by the way, we haven't met anyone. So I arrived at about 4 or 5 pm the day before, learned about tangaro. Did we have? We must have had dinner. I don't even know if I went to dinner, but maybe I did, but I hadn't met anyone. And then we sat the whole the next day and into the night and I was feeling very lonely. I was feeling very like this place is very quiet and I was feeling very lonely.
Speaker 1:And so the day after tangaro, when we had our orientation, we got to start meeting people and there were about 40 people in the practice period and we were given, finally given orientation. I mean, I didn't even know where anything was up until that point. It's like a whole you know grounds and I didn't know anything about where I was, what I was doing, what was OK to do, what wasn't. And we were given orientation about how the practice period would commence and what our daily life would look like. And we were given our work teams so you could either be as part of being there is that you're giving back in terms of service to the monastery. So it's a huge part of any spiritual practice is like your service, right? Well, how are you giving back and doing selfless acts? So you could be in the kitchen, you could be on the housekeeping team there was a land and gardening team to keep like the most. It's the most beautiful place, by the way, guys in the world Like the grounds are so beautiful so you could be on land and gardening or the organic farm team and I swear to God, I manifested the organic farm team. I was really hoping for it and I'm so grateful that the universe gave me that, because it was going to be a tough two months and my saving grace. I don't like if I was standing still in the kitchen or if I was on housekeeping, changing linen and stuff. Like being outdoors every single day, like learning about farming was just so incredible and like harvesting vegetables and being very physical. It was tiring and was hard on my body, especially because my body was in meditation every day, but it was so beautiful, being outside in nature every day and learning about farming, which I absolutely love. And what's so beautiful is like I come.
Speaker 1:I'm Afrikaans, so for Americans, the Afrikaans are the Dutch that came that colonized South Africa. They came from actually they came from between Holland and not Finland, belgium, and so Afrikaans is most Afrikaans. The language is most close to Flemish, anyway, but it's like Dutch, dutch, belgian Dutch and they came down. They were called the Boers because they were the farmers in South Africa and for years and years they they had farms here. Obviously not obviously, but the Afrikaans were also Responsible for apartheid. So that was an Afrikaans government and typically they are viewed as kind of being a bit more conservative and religious and all of that.
Speaker 1:So totally separate conversation we can have about me not accepting my Afrikaansness for a lot of my life, but recently wanting to really actually honor that lineage and hold for multiple nuances and truths around that. And so working on this organic farm like the one day we had the housekeeping crew come down to help us because we had this big project to do and everyone, like three people, asked me if I work on a farm in South Africa, because I've never worked on a farm, like never, ever even come close to working on a farm or doing any farm, you know. And three people that day were like did you, do you work on a farm in South Africa? You just seem like this is. And I was like no, why they were asking you genuinely that you just seem like you really know what you're doing and like you like the way you're walking, and I did. I felt so it was a really beautiful way to honor, like my DNA of being farmers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so orientation we learn what work like, what team we're going to be on in terms of service. Also learn that there's like a study period. So our typical day would be you wake up at 4.30am, there's a bell, someone runs around the entire monastery with a bell the head of the students actually, which is usually a Zen priest that needs to head a practice period as the head student, and he lands up giving a Dharma talk at one point and every morning, for the 50 mornings or whatever it is, he runs around the entire monastery ringing the bell to wake everyone up and we're sitting by 5 to 5 in the morning. We're sitting in the meditation hall on our pillows, ready to go, because the doors are going to close to the Zendo and you know there's Zen masters that come in, there's incense that's lit Again. Soto, zen is actually very there's chanting, there's a drum, there's it's amazing, anyway. So we sit for 40 minutes. There's a 10 minute walking meditation we can hear him, remember, I told you that and then we go sit down back down for another 40 minutes and then we chant for 20 minutes.
Speaker 1:They hand out hymn books and we chant different heart sutras. Well, different, sorry, there's only one heart sutra. We do. We chant different Buddhist sutras, some of them we chant in English and some of them we chant which is the traditional Zen chanting of them. And the language is kind of interesting. It's like a mix between Sanskrit and Japanese and sometimes even Chinese, and I'm not saying Chinese and someone might be like it's Mandarin, but no, there's like an old archaic not old like archaic, but an ancient language, because someone told me this In China. That is not quite Mandarin, because Buddhism it's obviously started in India and then a sect of Buddhism was taken to China and it mixed with Taoism and then it was someone took it from there to Japan where Zen really took root and took space, and it actually mixed in Japan with the indigenous spiritual practice there called Shinto, and so Soto Zen is very similar to Shinto in a lot of ways. So actually, a lot of the chanting that we're doing, a lot of the drums, a lot of the forms and the offering of incense and all this stuff is very, it felt very shamanic. And there's this amazing book if you're a Zen practitioner I highly recommend you read it, called the Shamanic Bones of Zen, and I got to. Someone suggested this book while I was there and I got to read it and it just gave my practice like such a cool vibe.
Speaker 1:So so yeah, we sit to 40 minutes, then we chant, and then there's 20 minutes of what's called soji, which is like temple cleaning. So you clean bathrooms, toilets, showers, sweep. Every morning you're given a different like a duty and for the most part I was cleaning toilets and showers at seven o'clock in the morning after being up for two hours already, and that lasts for 20 minutes. There's a bell and then we all go to breakfast and then before breakfast we all line up and you chant. There's like a specific chant before every meal. We eat breakfast and silence. All of this is done in silence. By the way, you don't speak to anyone until after nine o'clock in the morning. So you have breakfast and silence and then we all meet at nine o'clock or eight thirty, I can't remember, for work circle. So the whole monastery, it's like 50, 60 people meet outside in a circle and there's announcements that happen for the, the temple or whatever that everyone needs to know about.
Speaker 1:It was still the second year of COVID, was it second, third, whatever. There were still a lot of COVID protocols. So you know, keeping us clued up on that. Obviously they took it very, very seriously because they're a lot of really old, like Zen masters in the 80s, that live there, so we had to be really, really careful about that. And so that's work circle. And then after work circle, everyone goes off to their various teams, and then we meet back up at 12 for lunch, and for the first 10 minutes of lunch you can't talk, and then a bell goes off and then you can talk, and then after lunch you go back for one more hour and we on the farm we called it power hour.
Speaker 1:We were back to the farm and do whatever for one hour, and then finally you have two hours to yourself, which you guys from two till four, because at 4pm we had study period and you had to go and meet in a certain place and you could read any Buddhist literature pretty much read anything, to be honest and that two hours between I mean you finish work, the practice on the farm or whatever too. So you're there for 15. You're there for 15 minutes. I mean takes you about 15 minutes to get back to your room. And then, if you want to have an app which you are so exhausted by this stage like this is why people are like how's your retreat? I'm like it is not a retreat. Okay, a retreat is like restful. This was not restful.
Speaker 1:You guys, I've been up since 4.30, like doing heavy labor on a farm as my practice, you know, paying these people to have me be there, like literally paying to be on this farm, was so worth it, so so worth it. But we were joking about it at one point. We're like, yeah, we paid to do this and you're so exhausted so I would always nap during this time, otherwise you're just not going to make it and try and get a snack or whatever. Also, the food was so good, it was all vegetarian, japanese vegetarian. There's a bakery there that made the most incredible bread, so, like every day I was just eating bread and butter, Anyway. So you have. I personally would have an app between two and four.
Speaker 1:Some people would be crazy and go for like runs and I don't know like. However, people wanted to use that time. I tried at one stage to run and exercise, but I was so tired, and then at four, you have an hour study period and then we have that five PM, 40 minute meditation and after that we go to dinner Dinner. You can pretty much talk the entire time very informal, and then after dinner, at seven 30, you go back to the Zendo for your last 40 minute meditation. We chant at the end of that really, really beautiful chant it's called the Three Refuges and then we it's immediately silence after that and we go to sleep at around eight 30.
Speaker 1:Now, if you're like me, I don't fall asleep immediately. If you do not fall asleep immediately, you will not get seven to seven and a half hours of sleep. So that was something really challenging for me, because I would often get only six hours of sleep or five or six hours of sleep and it like is kind of a contentious issue how little sleep we get and like we're all talking about it because we were like why do they do that? And I don't know there's many reasons for it. I mean, some people are like they want to keep you, like you kind of want to keep you on the edge, like your ego tight. You know they want to kind of hold you like tight, like a bow is what someone once said. So I don't know what's that? That really, when I think of going back, or sometimes I think could I spend six months there.
Speaker 1:The sleep was not fun for me because I'm like an eight hour person. A night Eight and a half would be amazing. I don't know how I'm going to have kids Really don't know how and mothers, I don't know how you do it, because I need like eight and a half hours to be functioning. So, so, yeah, so that was our typical day and I'm definitely going to do this in two parts, because I'll do the other nine lessons and in a different podcast episode because this is long. But you know it was beautiful, like. Also, the location is we're in a valley and there were incredible hikes all the way around. We were 10 minutes from a beach, so I would often walk to the beach and watch the most beautiful sunsets. Again, I actually really really recommend that you go watch my highlights on my Instagram, because it was just like you'll get an idea of how insanely beautiful this place was and the other people that were there.
Speaker 1:You know I wasn't expecting to make friends. I wasn't. You know that was like the last thing on my mind, but every it's like there are 40 people. At least half of them are between the ages of like 24 and 40 years old, so there were a lot of us young people and we had so much fun. We had like it was like summer camp, like spiritual summer camp we had on Halloween. We all dressed up and we like ordered Uber Eats like vegetarian pizza that day Because it was someone's birthday.
Speaker 1:There would often be pranks, like on Halloween and the Zendo that morning, to two guys dressed up in white cloth, kind of like ghosts, and they went through the Zendo and they were like BOODA, which is so fucking lame but it's so hilarious, if you know, if you're kind of in there and you're just like this is so stupid but so hilarious. Like we're all sitting here and like solemn meditation and two idiots have decided to dress up as ghosts going BOO, but actually BOODA. So there's like a lot of jokes and joy. Like honestly, I just experienced so much joy, so so, so, so much joy. Also so much grief, you know it was like the highest of highs and also the lowest of lows. It was really wild and I'll get into my lessons around all of it, but it was so much fun being around all these people.
Speaker 1:I did hear from someone kind of outside the practice period that who had witnessed many practice periods, that this particular group of us were, I want to say, special but more. Not special but more connected. And you know, someone had a guitar and we had sing like song circle two or three times during the practice period and we'll all get together and like sing. And on the last day, the best thing was, I told you about the guy that would ring the bell every single morning. And there's this tradition that not everyone knows about and I don't know if it's specific to this Zen Center, the San Francisco Zen Center. They do it at Tasahara, which is another one of their locations.
Speaker 1:And that guy what we did to prank him was it was his last morning that he had to go around and ring the spell. So he's been waking up at like four am Every single morning. His routine is to go straight to the Zendo and offer the incense to the Buddha, switch on the lights, the dim lights, offer incense to the Buddha on his own four am Before everyone walks, wakes up and then do five postrations, which is where you literally get down onto your knees and bow down on the floor and come back up. So basically, we're all the people who have been there for a long time and know that there's this cheeky tradition Prank.
Speaker 1:We were told to meet in the Zendo at like five to four in the morning with pots and pans and like spoons and wooden spoons and stuff like that, and we were all going to wait on our seats wherever our seat was in the Zendo, in the dark, the pitch dark, and wait for him to come in to do his postrations and then we all going to join him at the pot where he does his postrations and then we all start hitting our pots and pans and we were going to follow him as he does the whole round. I mean, he rings the bell for like 15 minutes. It takes him 10 to 15 minutes to walk around the whole entire monastery making sure that everyone the Zen masters, students, everyone wakes up, and we follow him with our pots and pans. So they were like this was like the most joyous thing ever and I'll see if I can also add it onto my highlights, because I don't know if I even posted the video. I got permission from everyone who was in it, like, would you mind if we posted it and everyone was fine with it, but it's long and it's landscape.
Speaker 1:So we all went there at five o'clock in the morning we took pots and pans from the kitchen and we sat on our seats and waited for him to come in and he let me just say about him, like he's so cool, he's probably 44, in his 40s I think early 40s and he's from Texas, houston, and he used to be a butcher, so he was a literal butcher found Zen 15 years before that and loved it, started practicing it and now, as you know, being ordained. He's been ordained as a priest and before you become, become the true priest, you have to be like study in priesthood for I don't know six or seven years or something like that. And, like I said in the beginning of the podcast, one of the requirements that you to be to get your final like priesthood or something I don't know all the terms is that you need to be the head student in a practice period like this, and part of being the head student is to wake everyone up, you know. So anyway, this guy was so cool Like he gave us talks and everything and he was just like this really cool Texas, houston ex butcher guy Like you wouldn't think that he. He was just like such a lovely person, but very cool. And so he comes in.
Speaker 1:We all do the prostrations with him and after the fact we asked him like what? And no one's talking as well, because you're not allowed to talk in the morning, so we're all just giggling. And then we start, you know, hitting our pots and pans and he starts running to do his rounds and we all following him like 15 to 20 of us and hitting our pots and pans. A friend of ours had a guitar and he's playing his guitar and we running around the whole monastery Like guys. That was one of the best memories of my entire life. We were laughing, we were giggling. It was just like what is my life? It's 4.30am, we're running through a monastery, hitting our pots and pans, like following this guy. He's got a massive smile on his face and he's just keeping it cool, like he wasn't even really like running. He was just doing his normal fast walk and going to all the points that he needed to go to to ring the bell, but we all just behind him like hitting these pots and pans and yeah, it was so amazing and so so cool, trying to think of like other things that I can tell you about, but I think those are, you know, the main things to describe what was actually happening on the day to day and some really good memories.
Speaker 1:There was a Japanese tea house there and I got really, really lucky. I made friends with someone and he invited me because he practices tea ceremony. And I'm not going to go into the whole thing, but Japanese tea ceremony is insane and you can be a student for years to learn how to I would love to actually and I got invited to be in this cute little Japanese tea house and be served tea. It was wild, wild, wild, wild Again, like there's a choreographed way to serve someone tea in silence. Everything, like the way that you pick up the napkin. All of that is done in a certain way. The other thing I'll say is during Sashin, we would eat our meals in the zendo and I don't know how to describe this, but I feel like I have to mention it's called oriogi and If you're interested, if all of this is fascinated you, I highly recommend going to look at. I'll post a little video in the show notes about ORIOKI. It's super cool, very, very, very cool and we basically eat out of these bowls with chopsticks and, again, it's all like the way you pick up your bowl, the way everything is done in such a certain way and I really loved ORIOKI.
Speaker 1:I learned I put a lot of effort into learning how to do every single move in ORIOKI. It's like you have three bowls in each other and they're wrapped in a cloth, but like the way you tie the cloth, the hand you use to untie the cloth, it's like you use your right hand, use your left hand to hold the bowls with two fingers right. This is how specific it is when you take your right hand and you pull the cloth open because it's been tied around these bowls. You pull the cloth open and the cloth flaps open. Then you use this hand to take out the bowls and you set the bowls out in a very certain way, and then this and then that, and it's like this whole perfectly choreographed thing and within that you learn so much about yourself, about how you practice ORIOKI and about how you forgive yourself when you do something wrong, like for me, just being such a beginner in this space.
Speaker 1:I told you all the forms for the Xendo, like walking in on the right foot and bowing at all these places and remembering to bow this way and that way, and even the way you hold your hymn books, what the chanting is done. In a certain way it's just insane. There's no way you're going to know everything in the beginning and they don't even tell you everything. I learned a lot by just watching other people and, yeah, that's like how are you with yourself when you're not getting things right? How quickly can you get over the fact that you forgot to bow back at someone? Are you going to stay in the moment and be like, oh my God, I'm such an idiot, or are you just going to forgive yourself and move on? And you get to just constantly watch yourself and when you eat ORIOKI, you get to have that experience as well, because you've been sitting in meditation for the whole day and then you have your meals in the hall and it's a whole nother experience. And sometimes ORIOKI is so beautiful, it's like you're just flowing and you've got all the right moves and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:And then sometimes you know it became like a really weird thing for me where I would watch other people and see how they were doing ORIOKI and then I'd compare myself and I'd judge people. I'd like look at certain people and be like you've been here longer than me and you're not even doing it properly. Like what a dickhead you know, like I got to just watch who I am through this practice. And yeah, all of those the lessons are going to come. This is definitely a two-part. I think you can understand why this is a two-part episode, and but at least this is the overview. So now when I give you the lessons, you'll have so much context. I just don't think if there's anything else that I forgot to mention.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just, people were amazing and you know all these Buddhist precepts, which kind of like the 10 commandments is what I can think of them, and it's just like vows that you take as a bodhisattva. Bodhisattva is like a Buddha yourself, like someone who's dedicated their lives to Buddhism and compassion, and which, again, I didn't know what the fuck there was until I went there and learned about this and the precepts as well. You know it's not to inflict violence. That's where a lot of them are. Why Buddha, like everyone's vegetarian, that comes from one of the precepts, you know, one of the precepts is not to slander, so no gossiping or slander, and so no one would gossip in the monastery.
Speaker 1:It was insane because we're like young and we're all hilarious and fun and cheeky and always making jokes, but then also really into our spiritual practice. But if we were talking about an issue that was going on and so it or like an involved, maybe someone who worked there or whatever we'd discuss. And then we'd always get to this point where it looks like this conversation is going to go in the direction of, you know, possibly like we're trading the line between this could be gossip and someone, and you could just feel the energy in the group start to slow down, and then someone would be like let's change the subject and like this is starting to get into, you know, a bit of like we're starting to teach, on the edge of gossip, and then everyone would just be like immediately drop it and just be and then just continue and speak about what. We'd probably all be there like silent and just have this beautiful moment of silence and then just start talking about something else. So that was something that I really, really loved and appreciated is, you know, everyone's there deeply, deeply practicing Buddhism and the many precepts of Buddhism and, yeah, so many, so many cool things, so many cool things.
Speaker 1:Guys, it was the most amazing experience of my life, very intense, very intense, because when I left it was hard for me to come back into real life. Having experienced all of that, I can't really go too much into it, but it was, through a lot of questions, up in the air for me and you know I made like a, managed to integrate everything, but it was 100% a big part of me that actually just wanted to become an und and dedicate my life to it. I was really like my life out of the monastery and, as amazing as it was, it is not my life path to sit in a dark zando in hours and hours of meditation and I think that's such a beautiful thing and I think, if that is what calls you 100%, go and do it. But I know for my life, I want to be out in the world experiencing all that this beautiful earth and these beautiful people and cultures have to offer me, and I'm here to have fun. Yes, I'm a very spiritual being, but I'm here to have fun and experience joy and experience other people and places and things, and I can't do that if I'm dedicating my life to just sitting in meditation for hours and hours and hours and hours every day. So, yeah, that was nice to kind of just get clear about and realize, yeah, guys, okay, I will. If I've forgotten anything, I'll add it into the next episode, but thank you so much for listening. I hope that wasn't too all over the place, because it's hard to describe what the fuck happened and what it was like in there. It was insane, it was really, really insane and I highly recommend it.
Speaker 1:I highly recommend this particular Zen monastery as well, and if you are having some kind of like insane reaction right now and you're like I need to go, do this, reach out to me and I will put you. I can educate you on all the different things that they offer. You don't have to go for two months. They have shorter times. You know, if you're American and you have the right visa and everything, you can actually go as a work apprentice and you don't even have to pay to be there. I think as a work apprentice, you I think it's $500 for the first two weeks and then beyond that you don't pay. In fact, they pay you like $30 a month or something like that, but you have to. This is for Americans, or you have to have the right visa in order to do that. So just caveat telling you that. But the other ways they're shorter. There's a three day session. You can just go for a seven day session. There's many ways that you can get involved there.
Speaker 1:So, please, if you are like this place is amazing, sounds incredible, I want to do this. I highly recommend it and reach out to me. I can give you the low down and then I can also put you in touch with the director, or, you know, the woman who's responsible for letting people come there, or whatever. I'll just put you, I'll point you in the right direction. Okay, if you're having feelings right now, reach out to me. It will be a life changing experience. Guys, we have this one life. Well, we don't have this one life, but, like in my mind, I'm like I just want to get the most out of this life, and this is really one of the most incredible things. And reach out to me. Even if you can't make it to America, reach out to me because now I have a great network of a lot of different places around the world.
Speaker 1:You know, there's Zen centers in South Africa, there's Zen centers in Europe and not even Zen. There's other Buddhist monasteries and temples that you can go live in, and it's a lot easier than you think, because these schools of Buddhism and these places. They want to be able. You know the cracks of Buddhism. I mean I could do a whole nother podcast episode on just Buddhism and what I've learned about Buddhism, but I'd love to get a Zen master on here to actually talk about that. The cracks of Buddhism is to free all beings. You take a vow and this is what I love and I didn't even know this until I went there and I started learning about Buddhism but the vow that you take as a Buddhist or a Bodhisattva is to free all beings. To free all beings how beautiful is that. That is like my fucking life's purpose. I've known that that is my life's purpose since I don't know.
Speaker 1:I was like 10 years old and dying because I just realized how much suffering there was in this world and in South Africa and I was just like so disturbed by it and I made a vow when I learned, when I started to realize you know, there's this like turning point in your life where you realize the world is not what you thought it was going to be. At least for me it was like that. I was very much in my own suffering and then I just started becoming aware of I was kind of well, I was. You know, I was a white South African and we had money, so I was sheltered to a large degree. And then at this one age where I just could start to see and understand, I was like whoa, like this is not okay, like what I'm witnessing here in this country with these people is like not, not, not okay. And I made a vow at that age that I would do something about it. Like I felt so powerless and so it's kind of like I took my own vow at that age to free all beings, and that is the crux of Buddhism.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, all that to say these Buddhist temples or retreats or retreat centers or practicing centers or temples, whatever you want to call them monasteries. It's a lot easier to go and spend time there than you'd think, because part of freeing all beings is to help people to see the way of the Buddha and to practice meditation and to teach people how to do that and to, you know, awaken compassion and love and peace and other people's hearts, because the more people that we have around the world that are awakened to like love and compassion and peace and acting from that space, the more chance we have to free all beings. So, as a vow to free all beings, they want to free you, so they'll let you come and then you can get freed, which you know it's like. Don't expect to become enlightened is my personal opinion, but maybe that's a limiting belief. Anyway, maybe you're capable of enlightenment. Go for it. But yeah, once you're free, or starting to become free, or learning what it means to become free and having these pockets of freedom, you can go out there and help other people do that, which you know. If you're listening to this, thank you because you're helping me to fulfill that vow and I hope that in some way this podcast has actually inspired you.
Speaker 1:Buddhism is incredible and, if you're of another faith, there are so many Buddhist practices. I'm reading a book by Tick Nutt Hahn. He's an amazing Buddhist teacher and he it's like living Buddha, living Christ is the book, and so it's like where Buddhism and Christianity overlap and their interaction. And in that book he says that he had, like a Catholic priest, stay in a Buddhist monastery and he said that his practice of Buddhism actually helps him to be closer to the Holy Spirit. Because, you know, meditation alone, mindfulness and meditation like you cannot have a connection to a higher power if you're not making space for that, like if your ego, which is the voice in your head, is just running all the time and you're always consuming and you're always doing like, where's your space to commune with God? Where's your space to commune with spirit? Where's your space to commune with a higher power? So, yeah, you can be from any faith and have any religion, and this and a Buddhist practice or practice of meditation and mindfulness and peace and compassion, I mean it's it will help any other faith and yeah, which is kind of maybe controversial in some ways, and otherwise it's just like Buddhism is not really a religion. Again, it's more of a practice. It's more of just a way of life, an aspirational way of life. If you look at the presets, they're an aspirational. You can't do them perfectly, but, yeah, it's a beautiful way to live. So, yeah, I could do a whole other thing on Buddhism, but that's that's where we're at for today.
Speaker 1:Shit, this is long, but yeah, I really hope that you found it fun and entertaining and interesting and found it as interesting as I found it, yeah, what happens in in the Zen monastery and when I went, and things you'd expect and things you wouldn't expect, like making like awesome friends who are like full of shit and people always playing pranks on each other and, yeah, just my wild time in a Zen monastery. There's so much I even left out, which is crazy. But yeah, stay posted for the next episode, part two, where I go over the 10 lessons that I learned. We're going to get a little bit more wise and spiritual and I'll get. I'll actually go into. What I learned today was just kind of painting the picture of the entire experience for me. So, yeah, thank you for listening. If you made it this far, I really hope that this episode somehow inspired you to do something like that, or even if it just entertained you and made your heart warm and open. I'm so happy if it at least did that. So, yeah, I'll see you soon. Stay golden.