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Eat Sleep Sit: My Year at Japan's Most Rigorous Zen Temple

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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

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.

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!

I did not know what to expect from this book, and was very happily surprised. It is a lovingly told story about the author's year in an austere zen monastery, that he entered in part to find meaning in life.

He recounts with great detail the feelings and the rituals of existence in the monastery, often strict, often seemingly cruel, but he provides a beautiful context around it, and shows how these rituals lead to a peaceful introspection.

The book doesn't preach. It doesn't provide spin. Instead, it provides a detailed recounting of the experience, in a way that makes you appreciate and respect the traditions and what the author went through.

Although I know it is not an experience I could go through or want to go through, it brought me great respect for those who do, and a much better feeling for what it is like.

In a world filled with lightweight Zen babble, it is a refreshing book that is quite the opposite.

Very interesting and a lovely read.

Eiheiji is one of Japan's largest and most famous (and infamous) zen training temples. While I did enjoy this book, for my taste it had far too many pages devoted to the mind numbing detail of the procedure to [clean a toilet, eat a meal, sweep a step, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.], and it contains too many quotes from medieval Japanese scripture that were "informative" but not "enlightening." All of this is a roundabout way of saying that I found about a third of the book to be quite dull.

As other reviewers have pointed out, we never really find out why the author decided to go to Eiheiji, nor is it really clear why he left, but perhaps this vagueness in an autobiographical book is more acceptable to a Japanese reader than to a western one, or maybe the author just doesn't know. Having personally been through a very small amount of the kind of bullying in Japan that he describes, the description of what takes place at Eiheiji seems very realistic and frankly awful to me. As far as I can tell Japan as a whole is trying to stamp out bullying, however that kind of out and out brutality has been quite culturally acceptable in Japan in the recent past. The author does not reflect at all on whether this brutality is necessary or productive - the other training temples in Japan don't seem to feel that this level of brutality is necessary. I have heard that they are not the only temple with a the deliberately inadequate diet, but I was taken aback at reading about the cases of Beri-Beri the author personally observed, and I was shocked about the descriptions of the depths of behavior to which the hunger drove the trainees. Fortunately I've never been that hungry for more than a couple of days.

I wish the author had talked more about himself, the little he did was of far greater interest to me than reading three or four pages of Dogen's instructions on how to wrap oneself in a futon to sleep. He says almost nothing of his experience of actual zen practice - other then mentioning once or twice how painful the sitting is - yet by the end of the book he says it is one of his favorite things about being there. But it is not one of the things he mentions about his life after leaving Eiheiji.

I would contrast this book with "Nine Headed Dragon River" by Peter Matthiessen, which I read years ago and personally found to be much more interesting.

"My Year in Japan's Most Rigorous Zen Temple," the subtitle explains. At 30, weary of the world, Nonomura tells of his year at Eiheiji, founded by Dogen in 1244. It reminded me often of Nancy Klein Maguire's "An Infinity of Little Hours," about five men who entered the Catholic equivalent, perhaps, the Carthusians. Whether Soto Zen or Charterhouse, a monastic life as its most ascetic, like marathon runners or Marines, attracts a few men young enough and driven enough to test their physical and emotional limits under extreme pressure.

Juliet Winters Carpenter translates this handsome 2008 edition of the 1996 bestseller in Japan. Nanomura in an afterword noted how he wrote it, standing or sitting, on the notoriously jammed commuter trains after his year; I admired the discipline he showed and the detail he evoked. Carpenter captures in English the quality I have found frequently pervading Zen practitioners in their prose: the poetic, resonant, evanescent, and tough-minded combinations that enable such as the monks at Eiheiji to endure considerable torment, mentally and spiritually, as they seek to detach themselves from cares by a brutal regimen meant to strip away their egos so as by habit, discipline, and sacrifice to find the purified, beautiful core.

Many natural descriptions capture beauty and harshness there. Snow falls "as if the sky itself had broken into a million pieces and was tumbling down on our heads." (287) "The monastery complex deep in the heart of the mountains was full of beautiful pools and shallows of darkness unknown to a city at night." (241) Zen seeks harmony, not conquest or overcoming nature, Nonomura reminds us; while no doctrinal discussions unfold within these sparely told pages, you do find insight by the setting into the extremes, not only of nature but of human endurance.

In subtlety, essence rests. The means is the end; denial and desire keep pursuing within us when instead, the monks strive to forget about self-satisfaction. They try to stop their longings, to listen to what remains afterwards. Difficult concepts to put into words. The year teaches him to "just sit." The moments follow each other, and it's useless to try to get used to sitting "zazen" or to get over the pain of it. The freedom in Zen, he finds, means "liberation from self-interest, from the insistent voice that says 'I, me, my.'" (292) In this, he learns the Buddha's lesson.

The nature of Eiheiji freedom, he sums up, depends on the beholder of it there. Shelter or holy place, the site sits there, century after century; "There is no compulsion to take up one view or the other." (281) Yet, when he sees himself bowed to in the eyes of first-year arrivals, or the gaze of elderly women whose sons or husbands died in WWII that come there to pray or sew washrags for the monks, who are charged with constantly cleaning their premises, Nonomura finds compassion, and humility.

However, he must sternly inculcate the ancient lessons of how to eat, sleep, pray, work, and defecate to the newest trainees. Those just above the entrants must force newcomers into shape quickly. The instructions for each task are exacting, and the boot-camp drill is told in fearsome and harrowing scenes. Nanomura came to the Zen temple expecting silence and meditation. What he finds during his first months: beatings, shouts, and punishments for the slightest infraction. But this is no masochistic regime, as the violence turns a "means of conveying living truth from body to body and mind to mind, a form of spiritual training and cultivation." (149) Out of such reversals, you as the reader gradually learn to follow Nanomura as he adapts to the long day's routine, and to the necessary willpower, fortitude, and understanding he adopts as he figures out that the hundreds of "hows" perhaps lead to one simple "why": "Ascetic discipline at Eiheiji suppressed our desires to the point that the divide between body and spirit stood out inescapably forcing us to face this dilemma head on." (174) The mind-body problem, at the temple, reduces itself to this rationale for its willing trainees.

A few comments for the version we read; there's comparatively little on the "substance" of Zen-- I get the feeling that for the Japanese audience, Nanomura probably assumed more familiarity with its integration into the lives of some of those with whom he trained, who were preparing (details seemed vague about how long or how exactly) to return to take over their family's temple appointments on the outside. I also could not figure out how many monks lived there permanently as opposed to trainees, and how many, like the author, who came their by choice and not as a career choose to stay at the monastery for life. Finally, a few more endnotes were needed by the translator, who herself may have assumed a greater understanding of Japanese life than many of the English-language readers, like myself, may have. A good companion to this, about running a Zen temple more along the lines of ancestral rituals than prolonged "zazen," is the account of the early career of Shunryu Suzuki in David Chadwick's autobiography, "Crooked Cucumber," (reviewed by me on Amazon 7-6-09).

P.S. (For Dr. Maguire's book about the Carthusian novices at St. Hugh's Parkminster in England 1960-65, see my review "Swimming in Solitude's Cold Lake," May 4, 2006, Amazon US.)

There are no glorious tales of enlightenment or miracles and there are no koans about beatings from the master. This is a pleasant memoir of a young man's experience at Dogen's Eiheiji monastery. I particularly enjoyed the way he weaved teachings from Zen masters like Dogen into his narration.

This book reminded me a bit of "The Empty Mirror" by Janwillem van de Wetering with out the cynicism. I think this is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in Zen or the Zen experience at a famous monastery.

Eat Sleep Sit is a factual account of what life is like inside the Eiheiji Monastery. Americans have romanticized vision of Zen and Monks. We see happy fat smiling guys in long black robes. From the life protrayed here, there's no way a monk could be heavy.

Despite the abuse and depravation that he faces, the author finds his experience there enlightens him. Mostly this book chronicles the author's experience. Many of the monastic rituals are spelled out for the reader. There is a lot of rich history, but the book does not enlighten the reader as to why things are as they are nor is much time spent on the authors feelings about what he is experiencing.

This is a great book if you would like to more about a monks live.

Nonomura, a man who at 30 has undefined life issues and discontent, decides to go to the Eiheji Monastery--the most famous, and strictest, monastery in Japan.

The experience of daily life is elegantly described--in spite of it being far from elegant in content. Daily life requires meticulous adherence to rituals that Nonomura is told are important to master--how to sit for long periods of time in the excruciating lotus position, how to eat sparingly, not enjoy it, and have your stomach always empty (even though leftovers are thrown away every day).

The proper way to dress and bathe; even every aspect of going to the bathroom properly is drilled and mastered.

They study the writings of Dogen, a Zen Buddhist monk from the 13th century. These are quoted liberally but imparted little philosophical content to the book for me. I did not sense the spirituality we Westerners associate with Buddhism--its deep reverence for all living things, for example--in the gratuitous slapping, kicking and beatings dispensed to trainees by the monks for even the slightest infraction.

I believe the description of life at the monastery--somewhat resembling prison or the army but without the productivity of either. In addition, the beauty of the prose is somewhat marred by a feeling there are pieces of the story that are missing--and a lack of emotional impact due to the author describing events in great detail, but not people, personalities, and emotions (his or others).

I enjoyed the book. I recommend it. But it will go on my "Shelf of Disillusionment" alongside "The God That Failed".

This is a very unique book in that it gives a glimpse inside the Eiheji Zen Temple in Japan which is a training temple for monks. Kaoru Nonomura describes in detail his experiences from the first day waiting, freezing at the main gate, to his finally leaving after a little over a year and completing his basic training. I had no idea the conditions were so harsh and the soft spoken monks that you sometimes see on the street could be so loud and punishing to the new recruits. Limited food, long hours without sleep and sitting for hours and hours on end, just staring at the wall were some of his experiences. Each monk has to learn to do a long list of jobs from meticulous cleaning to ringing gongs at precise times.

Kaoru Nonomura's insight and feelings through all of this are described in detail. I found myself Googling Eiheji and watching some excellent video tours and looking through many pictures after I was finished. The buildings and corridors were just as he described them. I highly recommend doing this as you are reading the book. It gives an even richer experience and appreciation of the life of the monks in training. I will never look at a monk in the same way again.