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Unsui: A Diary of Zen Monastic Life

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This book is an illustrated description of daily life at a Japanese Zen Buddist monastery. The book is based on a series of watercolors illustrating the daily life in a monastery that were painted by a dying monk in the 1940s. Nishimura has organized these paintings so that they tell the coherent story of new recruit, who decides to join a monastery, and his first year living as a monk. They take us through the two-day ordeal of the applicant, as he demonstrates his determination and submission at the gate of the monastery, the daily chores of the monks, the meditation schedule, the begging rounds through the city, and the yearly holidays. The pictures are very expressive, and they constitute the character of the book. The accompanying text is quite informative, and opens a window into the mysterious customs of a traditional Japanese monastery.

I was given this book as reading for a course in Japanese religion taught by a former zen monk who had become a professor of Japanese religion after marrying the daughter of the abbott of the monastary he trained at. (Japanese monks are not required to be celibate.) He thought it was the best description of actual life in a monastary he had seen. Don't expect this book to give you deep flashes in insight into the nature of things- instead it is a light-hearted look at how traditional monks actually lived the monastic life, and should balance out any of the heavier reading one might encounter while exploring zen.