Tekishinjuku

That first evening at Tekshinjuku was relatively calm as we were greeted at the entrance of the temple by Gemma, the resident monk, who is actually from Siberia and has been living there for the last 9 years. After putting our bags in the guest house which was a very old and very cold traditional Japanese house, we all gathered back at the temple to do zazen, eat dinner, and chant before bed. We did also did zazen at the main zendo with the head monk, Hozumi Gensho Roshi, which was a real privilege.

Most of our activities like having dinner and chanting was in the seiza position of sitting which was extremely difficult after long periods. That first night in the guest house was extremely chilly. Even though there was lots of bedding, the cold air would creep through spaces in the bedding which was extremely uncomfortable and made it difficult to get to sleep. We woke the next morning at 5 am, washed up and walked to the zendo to chant and sit before breakfast. Without going into too much detail, the entire day was spent sitting, doing work, with small breaks and meals in between. The zazen for some reason was gruelling! Our legs were so wasted after getting out of the zendo! During tea breaks we got to know the tow apprentices there a little better. The elder one was Gemma, from Siberia who was also linguist and very interested in shakuhachi! He even bought Yokoyama Sensei`s video to study Honshirabe. So he was very happy to meet our group. He`s been practicing shakuhachi a over the past couple years by himself but never took a lesson from a teacher, until meeting me this last weekend. The other resident apprentice was Bjorn, a fellow from Germany who`s been there for the last two years practicing zen. He also played shakuahchi. That evening I gave both of them a lesson on basic blowing and went through Honshirabe with them. They were very happy to be shown proper technique from me and I encouraged them to keep up their practice and to take lessons with a teacher whenever they could. One very uncanny thing that Gemma told us was that several years ago he wanted to study shakuachi, but ended up studying accupunture instead, and his teacher was a Mexican fellow with the family name Ramos! Interesting connection.

We were originally scheduled to travel up to Eiheiji in Fukui prefecture to spend one day there, but everyone was so tired that we decided to cancel. We did the same last year; canceling the day before going to Eiheiji. Shoganai.

The next morning, we all woke at 5 am and packed our things and chanted, did breathing excercises and zazen before taking the taxi to Kameoka station. During our last zazen, Roshi told Gemma to play shakuhachi while we sat for a few minutes which was very sweet and thoughtful of him. Before leaving Roshi gave me one of his books, Zen Heart, as a present and signed it. We also took some photos with everyone as well.

The taxi arrived at 6:30 on the dot and we got back to Kyoto around 8 am and headed back to Daiya Ryokan where we crashed hard into futon.


To be continued.....

Alcvin
www.bamboo-in.com
ramos@dccnet.com