5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – Zen! - And a Happy New Year!

And there’s the sound of the gong again. Once, twice, three times, gradually reawakening us to each other and the world around us, AND to the New Year: 2008, year of the Rat.

Dave has told me that at the New Year’s ceremony, Shihan wears a funny hat, and does this: (he acts like he is holding an accordion in his hands and pulls it apart vertically, then brings it back together, while his tongue vibrates noisily against his palate). “Wow!” I say. “I want to see that!” (whatever it is!)
The next time, I am chatting to Shihan after training, with a small group of people who are talking to him about the New Year’s zazen gathering at the temple.
“I heard for the new year ceremony you’re wearing a funny hat." I tell him. "I can’t wait to see that! I’ve been looking forward to that ever since Dave told me about it!” Dave joins us. “Ah, the funny hat, hm?” Shihan looks at him and laughs.

Finally, the day of the funny hat has come, and I am tense with anticipation. Before we start our meditation, about half an hour before midnight, Tomoyuki Sensei, Shihan’s son and successor as head of the Zen temple and adjacent aikido dojo, gives us a short introduction on how we will conduct the zazenkai, the meditation gathering.

Before you sit down on your zabuton, a thick, round cushion the size of a Christmas cake, you put its edge on the tatami mat and turn it around, squeezing it lightly here and there, fixing its shape. On one side it has a white tag, which is there to carry the name of more frequent zazen practitioners. In our case it is white or carries somebody else’s name. When you finally put down the zabuton, this tag should be in the middle, facing away from you.
The first time you do this, everybody is sitting along the walls of the room facing the room and each other. Then, you stand up and turn right and left, both hands together in a praying gesture called gasshō, and bow to your neighbours. You sit down on your zabuton, and, already seated, take a 180 degree right turn until you are facing the wall.

This is how you sit: first put your right leg on your left, if you can, then, definitely, put your left leg on your right, so in the end your legs are crossed. The lotus seat. Then your hands: your fingertips are facing each other, until they meet and the left hand slides on top of the right, like paper sliding doors. Your thumbs meet and make a circle out of your hands that must not be broken throughout your meditation.
You close your mouth and try to imagine your palate where your eyes are. With your tongue you make a shape as if you were pronouncing an “l”. Then move your body left and right, until you have aligned your belly button and your nose in the middle. You do not close your eyes. Then, sit, and think of nothing.

A gong will be sounded to start the session, and then again to end it. In between, if you should start feeling sleepy or unfocused, you can ask for assistance by tilting your head left or right, and putting your hands together in gasshō again. Consequently, Tomoyuki-Sensei will come around with a long wooden stick the shape of a small oar, and whack you on whatever shoulder your tilted head leaves free. After this, you keep the gasshō for a little bow to thank him for beating you back into concentration.

We go through one round of meditation. My chance to get a free hit. I am slightly nervous when I put my hands together and tilt my head, and to intensify the pressure, I have to wait for a long time, before Tomoyuki-sensei discovers my request. First I feel the flat end of the stick lightly touching my shoulder and pushing my head further to the left, in order to avoid hitting it instead of the shoulder. I oblige, and get a rather gentle hit on the right shoulder.
Somehow I was hoping for something harder and more violent that would send a thrill of wakefulness through my body, but I take this surprising gentleness as a Zen message from Tomoyuki Sensei. In Zenshū, the school of Zen followed at Shōsenji, they believe in 経外別伝 kyōgebetsuden, 不立文字 furyūmonji, or 以心伝心isshindenshin, meaning that enlightenment cannot be achieved by relying on scriptures or oral explanations, but has to be transmitted from heart to heart, on a more direct, emotion based level.
After our session, Shihan demonstrates to us with a loud slap on the tatami floor how hard other people get hit sometimes and I catch myself looking for a red welt on the tatami mat when he is finished.

After a while of sitting and meditating, we are told to stand up and turn left. This time, our left hand should clasp its own thumb, then the right hand is wrapped around the left, both hands held about a fist’s breadth away from the point where the ribs start curving down and back, forming the lung’s protective cage. Your elbows are pointing left and right, away from you.
Now, you slide one foot halfway past the other foot, and then proceed sliding the other foot forward. In this fashion, forming a large circle along the walls of the room, we walk forward, covering half a foot’s length at a time. In front of me walks an elegant old lady, her grey hair fixed into an old-fashioned hairstyle suited to her black kimono. She is wearing a black and white hairclip, and white tabi socks with cleft fronts to separate the big toe from the other toes. A ghost? I watch a grey curl on her white neck and try to keep my balance and not shift it too much from left to right as I walk.
“This,” says Shihan, “is exactly the same thing as zazen, except that now you are walking, not sitting down. You should be doing this with exactly the same objective in mind.”

Then, we are told to proceed at normal walking speed until we arrive back where we started to thank our neighbours and sit down for another round of zazen.

We are facing the wall, our eyes open, trying to think of nothing. Then Shihan’s voice comes in, friendly and bright, and provides a welcome object to focus our thoughts on. Concentrating on something is infinitely easier than concentrating on nothing.

“You have now spent almost 30 minutes in zazen meditation. Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu. Happy New Year.
Starting the New Year with zazen has the objective of resetting yourself. It is done in an effort to go back to your true, original, unsullied self. When we are born, all of us, every human being, is as pure and complete as the Buddha himself. We call this state of being 自性 jishō, written with the kanji for “self,” and then the kanji that consists of “heart” and “life, birth”. At this stage you are still completely void of any outside influences. Then you begin to interact with the world, and in this respect, on one level, you grow. We all grow from the time we come into being. On a different level, however, you start moving away from your original Buddha self. You accept the world of objects as reality, the world that shapes your everyday life. You become part of it, and it now costs effort to return to your origin, to the peace you were born in. This is what we are trying to do in zazen.

In zazen, there are five levels. Just like the grading system at school. One is not so good. Two is only slightly better than one. Three is average. Four is good. And five is very good.

The first stage, level one, is called 外道禅 gedōzen. This means that you are simply moving about, living your life. You are taking a bath, training aikido, or having your dinner, you do not have a set perspective in life yet. You are taking in the world, and forming a part of it outside the Way.
Then the second stage, level two, is called 凡夫 bonpu. Bonpu means that you have entered the way. You have understood that the world is ungraspable. We have this sensation at night, when it is dark, and we don’t know what is what. Bonpu means you have understood emptiness.
The third stage, level three, is called 小乗禅 shōjōzen. The kanji for this are “a little”, then “to ride, or to board”, then “Zen”. This means that you have grasped the logic of life. It means you have understood that whenever you do something good, something just as good will come back to you. That whatever energy you send out, it will return to you. At that stage, you are doing whatever you are doing for yourself. You are doing it to improve your own personality, to perfect your spirit of humaneness, and act accordingly.
The fourth stage, level four, is called 大乗禅 daijōzen. This time, the kanji are “big”, “to ride, or to board”, and “Zen”. When you reach this stage, you are extending your efforts to create a harmonious exchange of energy, to other people. You make yourself part of a communal effort to achieve harmony. You work with others towards the same objective. Reaching this stage is already quite something. There is only one more stage that can be achieved after this.
The fifth stage, level five, is called 最大乗禅 saidaijōzen. Written with the kanji “highest or most”, “big”, “to ride, or to board”, and “Zen”. This means that you manage to return to your original self, your Buddha nature. We call it 新起源shinkigen, which can mean a new era, but here, written with these kanji, it means new beginning, and this is achieved as you return to 自性 jishō, and your heart becomes like the surface of a completely still lake.
If the lake is completely still, whatever moon is in the sky is reflected in complete, unrippled likeness. If there is a half moon, the water reflects a perfect half moon. If there is a three day sickle moon, the water reflects a perfect three day sickle moon. We call this 水の心 mizu no kokoro, heart of water. This is the final level of zazen, our ultimate objective. But I would like to remind everybody that your objective is always to do the best that YOU can, without comparing yourself to other people. If you want to compare yourself, compare yourself with yourself. For zazen, this individual devotion is called 只管打坐 shikantaza.”

Translating each single kanji, this means “only this matters, hitting, sitting”. So we sit, our best possible selves, focusing on nothing, the place we have come from. Shihan continues.
“You have now spent a total of about 50 minutes in zazen meditation.” Shortly after, the gong is sounded again. We are told to move our legs and let them recover, then stand up and turn left and right, hands together, to bow to our neighbours again. In the end, everybody bows to Shihan, who is standing in front of the room, dressed in a ceremonial golden robe with excerpts of scripture sewn onto it in white rectangles.

People start walking around, wishing each other a happy new year. There are four other gaijin at the ceremony. Itamar and his friend Yair, Roberto, a performing artist and yoga instructor, who happens to be Itamar’s neighbour and an old acquaintance of Dave’s, and finally Thomas, engineer and ballroom dancer from Hannover, and my mum’s old classmate.
We catch up with Thomas and Itamar, tell them how we started the night watching the K1 fights at Osaka Dome, with 30,000 other people. People, people, people, flash and light, flames getting spat into the air as the fighters enter through a giant gate to booming songs, a group of dancers introducing them with large arm movements like opening flowers. I feel like I have entered the arena for a modern gladiator fight.
We get to watch some great fighters in the ring. The Korean giant gets beaten by knockout! His downfall is Pettas from Denmark, a tough guy with a German footballer’s face, half his height, who fights like a little terrier. Akah, beautiful, muscly, black, his hair in breids, puts up a great fight against Japanese legend Musashi, who looks slightly flabby, seems slow, tired and pale, as if he has drunk too much at all the year end parties. Akah seems to be pushing for a clear win, but then in the third round, Musashi knocks him out with a smashing right hook, followed by a high kick without actual effect, but great for additional entertainment value. Masato offers a nice spectacle against a skinny Korean and secures a clear win. We get to see Yamato the kid, another muscle packed little terrier, his body completely Y-shaped, packed with upper body strength. The kid wins, too. In the last fight, the main event, we see two big Japanese fighters. One of them has the look of a cool fighter, sure to win. The other one looks like an unpopular kid, eyes too close together in a wide, moon face, a cauliflower ear. His intro movie on the giant screen shows him returning to Japan especially for this fight, and fighting an anime dinosaur, which, in some parts, is shown with his head on his reptile body, jumping around with boxing gloves on his claws, ready to fight. True to his cauliflower ear, the dinosaur wrestles down the cool kid and twists his arm round the elbow axis until cool kid has to tap out. Wonderful. A wrestling win at the end of the spectacle. Just what I wanted.
“Pure violence!” snarls Itamar. “No,” I defend my love of fighting. “It’s a skill. You are watching skill at play. The art of fighting.” He shakes his head. Thomas, who has misunderstood us and thinks we have been watching TV, asks us if we saw the ballroom dancing, too. We explain to him that we went live. “Aaa! Now I understand the excitement!” he laughs. Then we are interrupted.

“Teatime!” says Shihan in English and laughs. There is a low table in the front right corner of the room, and Mama-san, his wife, kneels down in front of it. The other women gather around her, and prepare to serve green tea and yōkan, a sweet made of red beans and sugar, crushed into a paste and shaped into a roll that is cut into slices and eaten with a flat, wooden stick.

“Anna-chan,” Mama-san calls me. “Will you help us serve?” It is the women’s job to serve the tea and sweets. Normally my European sense of gender equality would probably result in feelings of resentment at this request, but as I feel part of a big Pagan ritual, and her call to me seems more like a sign that I am accepted as part of the family than like an admonition, I am happy to help and kneel down next to her with the other women. I discover the old woman wearing the black kimono next to me. "What was the fifth stage of zen meditation called again?" I ask her to find out whether she is in fact a ghost or not. Her eyes turn to a helpful spot on the ceiling, and she slowly but conscientiously recounts all the five stages Shihan has told us about. "Yes, and the last one was saidaijozen, wasn't it?" I'm still not sure whether she is a ghost or not, but now Mama-san calls my name, and I have to pay attention.
There are several serving trays, a dark, lacquered red brown, round with a long stand like wine glasses, elevating the serving platform. The ones for tea have a hollow cylinder attached to the middle, to balance the rounded tea bowls. The trays for sweets are flat. Mama-san places a white napkin on a tray, a slice of yōkan, and a wooden eating stick.
“Now you hold it like this.” She balances the tray in her left hand, and holds her right hand parallel to the stand, fingers pointing skywards, so that both hands are perpendicular to each other. “Then you get up. Get up beautifully, without bending your back, and walk to the person you are serving. You kneel down, turn the tray so the wooden spoon is lying on their side. You bow and wait until they take the napkin with the sweet off the tray. Then you bow again and carry back the tray to serve the next person.”
I get up and try my best to obey her orders. On the way, Shihan sees me and corrects my hand gesture. As he shapes his hands in the air, I suddenly feel reminded of the hands of Buddha statues, which eternally bless the world with this same gesture.
Shihan opens the sliding door to leave and turns to his wife. “They,” he nods in our direction, “came to see the funny hat!” He erupts into a bright little round of giggles and leaves the room.

We see him again downstairs. In front of the room, there is a large altar full of gold and flowers, and wood, and a whole host of things that make the place look like a holy site, a shining place of worship for a divine entity that has the power to put our world in order or disorder.
To prevent disorder, the ceremony has to be in order. Shihan is wearing his funny hat. Golden, it stands high on his head and is part of a cape that falls down over his shoulders. We line up in front of the slightly elevated altar part of the room. One by one, we walk up to the left column and bow. Then on to the middle, where smoke is emanating from a tray. We cleanse our hands in the smoke and put them together, facing the altar, making a short wish for the new year, or conversing with its supernatural denizens in whatever manner we like. We proceed to meet Tomoyuki Sensei’s wife who is standing near Shihan with a friendly smile, waiting to hand out white, flat packages to everyone. Omamori, lucky charms, bearing the temple’s name.
Finally, we get to face Shihan with his funny hat.
It is my turn. In his hands Shihan is holding a long book containing the sutras. Moving it like an accordion, he fans the content of all the holy scriptures into my face. Afterwards, he closes it and touches my forehead, then my left and my right shoulder. I want to comment on his hat, but the seriousness of this strange pagan ritual sucks me in, and I can’t step outside of it and joke about it while I’m right in the middle.
We all get our blessings. Most people leave, but we kneel down to witness the rest of the ceremony. Tomoyuki Sensei is sitting in a hidden away corner of the room, chanting sutras with a nasal voice, breaking and fluctuating across the holy words, the chanting monotonous, with only slight variations, accompanied by an eerie combination of percussion instruments, gongs, drums, and other objects he is operating from his hidden corner, producing sounds as he hits them with his gentle teachings. Shihan is standing in front of the central altar, sometimes chanting, other times engaging all kinds of other mysterious actions. He is holding a kind of broom with long horse hair that he throws towards the altar, then behind his back. The whole ceremony is a complete mystery to me, yet it is utterly compelling, and I can’t stop watching. Not just because of the funny hat.
Mama-san comes into the room. Shihan interrupts his sutra singing and addresses his wife: “All right, love? Is the tea stuff cleared away? Would you like to come for your blessing now?” And like all of us before, she walks up to the column and bows, then cleanses her hands in smoke, and receives her blessing. Then she sits down joining us, Tomoyuki Sensei’s wife, the old lady ghost, Dave, and me, to witness the ceremony until the end. It is long. I try to make out what words they are chanting but I can’t. I try to discern how father and son interact, where they join their chants, where the percussion comes in, try to find some meaning in the horse hair and the golden hat. But I can’t. A mysterious pagan ritual. The last part involves Shihan putting down his hat on the giant zabuton in front of the altar. With the ceremony finished, Shihan turns around and sees us.
So immediately he goes and puts his hat back on. “There! The funny hat!” He smiles and poses, two fingers for victory. A Kodak moment missed. I get out my camera and beg him to do it again. “That hat looks so good on you!” I say, and Mama-san and Tomoyuki Sensei’s wife giggle. I manage to catch a nice awe-imposing posture of Shihan, and a picture of Dave and Shihan together, the men of the night dressed in their separate professions, perfectly harmonising in this bizarre environment where rituals are performed, and all actions aimed at directing life onto the Way. Impossible to express with words, it encompasses all and nothing, an expanse unimaginable to the human mind. Thus the Way remains forever mysterious until we rediscover nothing, and thus ourselves. We start the New Year looking for nothing. Nothing can go wrong. We shall not be disappointed.

In the spirit of fighting, Zen, and the funny hat, I wish everybody a successful, harmonious, and happy New Year.