23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Year of Asceticism at Eiheji, March 15, 2009
This review is from: Eat Sleep Sit: My Year at Japan's Most Rigorous Zen Temple (Hardcover)
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This book offers a view of Zen Buddhist practice that will come as a surprise to many Americans with an interest in Buddhism. The book tells of the rigorous, harsh, and all-consuming training that young male recruits undergo at Eiheji. Located in the mountains in a remote area of Japan, Eiheji Monastery was founded by Dogen (1200 -1253) in 1244. A Buddhist monk, Dogen travelled to China and brought back to Japan what became known as the Soto school of Zen Buddhism. Eiheji remains the head temple of Soto Zen. It trains priests who serve in Zen temples throughout Japan.
In this memoir, Kaoru Nonomura describes the year he spent in training at Eiheji. As a young man of 30, Nonomura was a university graduate who had travelled throughout Asia and had a good job as a designer. He lived with his parents. Nonomura is vague about what led him to abandon his life for the rigors on training as a monk. He writes "I'd grown weary of my life, had come to feel the entanglements of society so burdensome and disagreable that I'd resolved to flee them by becoming a Zen Buddhist Monk --and yet now that society's hold on me was slipping. I felt increasingly sad and sentimental." (p.13) Nonomura bids a short farewell to his parents and his girlfriend and sets out for Eiheji.
Nonomura's book details the harsh, rigorous training to which he had subjected himself at Eiheji. Designed to strip the recruits of their egos and concepts of self, the training subjected Nonomura, who as a monk received the name of Rosan, to beatings, kicks, and abuse, to long days beginning at 1:30 a.m. and ending at 10:00 p.m., to extensive periods of sitting in the painful full lotus position, to endless chores and studies of Zen texts, and to rigorous procedures covering every aspect of the day from eating, walking, and sleeping, to folding one's clothes, washing one's face, and going to the toilet.
Rosan and his fellow trainees were understandably overwhelmed. In the book, we follow the training year from its beginning in January with the initial seven day orientation period through the end of the year and the beginning of a new cycle the following January. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, Rosan's attitude towards his training changes. Rosan moves from a focus on the training's brutality and hardship to a realization of the value of the course he had, without fully realizing it, chosen for himself. Nonomura writes:
"[W]hy, in order to remove the ego, is it necessary to sit with legs folded, facing the wall? Why this form and no other? I doubt whether anyone could put the answer into words. Only in sitting for oneself, and persisting in sitting to the very end, does the answer come welling up in one's blood and bones. .... Devoting oneself to sitting, getting used to sitting, and conquering the pain of sitting are all equally pointless. The only point of sitting is to accept unconditionally each moment as it occurs. This is the lesson of 'just sitting' that I had absorbed after one year." (pp. 291-92)
Besides focusing on the training, the recruits, and the heirarchy at Eiheji, Nonomura's book quotes liberally from the works of Dogen, particularly from the "Treasury of the True Dharma Eye." This is a collection of 95 essays Dogen wrote between 1231 and 1253 which detail his Zen practice. Dogen's teachings were followed closely at Eiheji. His book was studied extensively by the trainees in learning their practice. The book also quotes extensively from Buddhist sutras and other texts which illuminate Eiheji monastery and its ideals. Early in their training, a senior monk presses upon the new recruits the significance of the words written on the main gate to the monastery, composed in 1820 by the abbot at the time:
"The tradition here is strict: no one however wealthy, important or wise may enter through this gate who is not wholehearted in the pursuit of truth."
"The gate has no door or chain, but is always open, any person of true faith can walk through it at any time." (p. 33)
During his year of training, Rosan gains insight into the significance of these inscriptions.
The book ends with Rosan's decision to leave the monastery after the year and to return to his former life. In two postscripts to Japanese editions of this book, the author reflects further on the factors which led him to enter Eiheji and on the course of his life following his year in the monastery. (Nomura spent 1989-90 at Eiheji. His book first appeared in Japan in 1996, with the Japanese paperback edition appearing five years later. Nomura wrote the book largely while communiting to and from his work.)
The harshness and difficulty of training at Eiheji, with its almost militaristic trappings, differs markedly from the softer forms of Buddhism often portrayed and practiced in the United States. Although I have some background knowledge, I found myself not entirely prepared for the severity portrayed in this book. This is a compelling, thoughtful memoir. For all its rigor, this book helped me see Buddhist teachings in a way I hadn't seen them before.
Robin Friedman
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This is not your father's Zen, March 17, 2009
This review is from: Eat Sleep Sit: My Year at Japan's Most Rigorous Zen Temple (Hardcover)
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Kaoru Nonomura decided to throw away his normal life and for a time live in one of the most rigorous, harrowing Zen temples in Japan. Why did he do this? For the experience, we presume. His motivation was not altogether clear.
And what an experience it was. As he chronicles in Eat Sleep Sit, he endured brutal training, harsh discipline, and an altogether uncomfortable way of living on his way to reaching enlightenment.
But don't expect a philosophical book. This book does not wax philosophical, it chronicles what seems like the mundane -- doing chores, washing floors, maintaining a strict daily routine -- in outlining what Nonomura endured. Oh, and the physical punishment. A LOT of physical punishment. Getting slugged for not sitting properly is the norm here.
Yet Nonomura not only endured it, he found that the experience enriched his life and view of the world.
Western folks in love with the idea of Zen Buddhism too often romanticize it, not fully understanding what it means to devote your life to the practice. This dose of reality is eye-opening, fascinating, and absolutely necessary.
Sparsely and simply written (and translated from Japanese), Eat Sleep Sit is easy to absorb for even the most casual of readers, yet the simple presentation saps none of its power. Recommended.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Year Long Exercise in Austerity, June 6, 2009
This review is from: Eat Sleep Sit: My Year at Japan's Most Rigorous Zen Temple (Hardcover)
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This is not an easy read. The author, experiencing an early midlife crisis goes off to the toughest Zen monastery in Japan for a year. Like the subject, the writing is austere and deliberately lean. Pages, indeed whole chapters are devoted to the description of how a monk should brush his teeth or conduct himself during a meal. This is spiritual boot camp and I can tell you, I wouldn't last a week in such an environment. The author is subjected to emotional torment and even beating as he bumbles his way through the labyrinth of arcane rules and regulations, memorizing prayers and rituals that include the striking of various drums, bells and gongs in an exact order and timing throughout the day. Everything is regulated and deliberately uncomfortable. Rigorous does not begin to describe the life these men must endure. Everything from the way they wear their robes and wash their faces is proscribed down to the finest detail.
Does the author learn something in his year at Eiheiji? Its hard to say. On reflection, he says he thinks twice about killing an insect. He no longer eats more than necessary. He has become capable of tears. All good and useful things. He does seem to come away with an appreciation for the preciousness of each moment. This is golden wisdom. Still, I couldn't help but wonder what the Buddha himself would've thought of this extreme training designed to strip a person of his ego but in such a brutal way. Would the Awakened One see this as faithful to the Middle Way he espoused?
This book maddened me, frustrated me and several times I grew impatient with it. How could this calculated and systematic breaking down of a man actually lead to freedom? They say there are many paths to the top of the mountain. I suppose this is one, but if so it is for a very select few.
This book ,like monastic life, is not for everyone. In the end, a worthwhile read for some, though to tell the truth, in my impatience I skipped some of the detailed accounts of cleaning the bathrooms and washing one's face: clearly I would never have made it at Eiheiji!
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