Jean asked me to join her on a yoga and meditation retreat with classmates from her yoga studio. I thought about it for a moment and replied deviously “Yes, of course, as long as you sponsor me.” I was looking for an angle, trying to use her frugality against her. “Ok, no problem, it’s next month in the Catskills” she said, smiling. This failure to wiggle out is where my story begins. Fast forward six weeks and we’re on a three hour drive to a Japanese monastery in a remote area of the Catskills near Roscoe, NY. You read that right, a Japanese monastery – in the Catskills. Dai Bosatsu Zendo, as it’s formally known, was founded in 1976 on 150 acres of forest by a Japanese zen master.
We headed up the Hudson and when we stopped for gas, Jean loaded up on snacks – nuts, mini-Snickers, fig newtons and potato chips. A few hours later we turned off route 17 and followed a two-lane paved road that slowly turned to one lane of gravel. Three miles after a “dead end” sign, it became narrower still, the forest closing in until the sky disappeared. By the time we reached the entrance gate to the monastery we’d not seen a single man-made object – not a car, house, barn or even a road sign for 15 minutes. We turned in through the ornate wooden gate and drove up the steep rocky driveway – I imagined monks toiling in the rain to carve it from the mountain by hand. It was rutted, muddy, uneven - my brain was rattling as loudly as the nuts and bolts of our Smart car. After a few miles we reached an opening in the forest and the sky came into view again. There were a handful of cars parked in a makeshift lot and a wooden shelter covering thousands of pieces of neatly stacked kindling. We followed the road along the edge of a sprawling lake.
I rolled down my window – it was noticeably cooler, down from the 80’s to 65 and quiet. Not inside-your-house quiet, more like an out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere, wind-rustling-in-the-trees, hope-there’s-no-bears-lurking-nearby type of quiet. We kept driving until the monastery came into view. It sat gracefully in a clearing at the bottom of a hill and looked just like the ones you see in Kung Fu movies. A meticulous two-story structure made of wood. It was U-shaped with a small sculpture surrounded by flowers at its center.
A tall man, dressed in brown robes, was standing at the door. He was Asian, around 30, with short cropped black hair and large, sharp cheekbones. His skin was flawless - he looked like a younger version of the Hong Kong actor Chow Yun Fat. His hands were folded one under the other, palms up, as if he were cradling a small bird. He didn’t smile or make any expression to signify he’d registered our presence. Rule one: Buddha doesn’t like facial expressions. Jean got out to talk to him and signaled me. I joined her at the door. I stuck out my hand to Chow for a hand shake and he responded by pressing his palms together in front of his chest as if in prayer. Rule two: Buddha doesn’t like handshakes.
Chow was to be our go-to monk for all things administrative. He showed us the shoe room, where we were to store our shoes, gave us our room number and told us to join him in the robe room once we’d settled in. We unloaded our luggage and drove our car to the lot, a quarter mile down the road. It was completely fenced in, we later learned, to keep the porcupines from eating your tires.
Jean paid extra for us to share a room. If Motel 6 is rated one star then our room was Motel 3. Two single beds, really just wooden platforms, covered with thin pads and a wardrobe with a lamp. We had our own bathroom, which was decent enough. The room was cold, somehow colder than the forest outside our window. Rules three and four: Buddha neither likes comfort nor warmth.
At the robe room, Chow explained that we had to wear a robe any time we went in the zendo, the mediation room. The robes, all varying shades of brown, were organized by size. There were two styles – bathrobe style and pullover style. The latter was for rookies – no worrying whether you’ve tied it properly. We both picked out tan pullovers and tried them on. It’s a loose fitting garment with roomy sleeves which hangs down below your knees. Jean’s fit perfectly, of course. She morphed into a sexy magician. I looked like a fat brown Christmas angel. Lesson five: Buddha is no fashionista.
The weekend was to be a combination of mediation and yoga. We’d arrived too late to join Jean’s yoga classmates for the first yoga session but we met up with them after class. The yoga teacher sat in the front of the room on her yoga mat, the rest of us arrayed nearby. She was slim, tan, mid-50s, short brown hair. She was gentle and sweet, she spoke calmly, smiled a lot - she was Mother Earth. She asked everyone what they were looking for from the weekend and which yoga pose was the most challenging for them. One by one, each gave an answer. They were speaking English but I wasn’t sure what they were saying.
“I am here to deepen my practice, to become one with my breath” said the tall red head with a shadow of a mustache on her upper lip. Mother Earth nodded knowingly, eyes closing then opening again. To my right was a guy sitting with his legs folded like a pretzel. He was wearing his own personal meditation robe and pajama pants. When it was his turn to speak, Mr. Perfect Pose said his most challenging yoga move was the “astavakrasana.” Everyone looked at each other for a clue but found none. Mother Earth nodded in agreement with Perfect Pose “yes, that one can be a challenge.”
When it was my turn I made up something about looking forward to the quiet of the countryside. Some of the students agreed by saying “yes, me too” though my answer seemed out of rhythm with the group. Sitting at the back of the room was the yoga studio’s meditation teacher, a sour faced woman who reminded me of Nurse Ratchet from One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. She was the polar opposite of Mother Earth in every way. Ratchet explained she’d been coming to the monastery for years and wanted to be sure we behaved respectfully. She laid down the law. No loud talking, walk quietly, show respect, be thankful, be mindful, yadda, yadda, yadda. She was like the sober person at the party, killing the mood.
At 6:30pm we donned our robes and shuffled in our sock feet to the zendo for meditation training. Chow was standing at the entrance in a different set of robes - more elegant, with wooden fasteners. Without eye contact, he motioned for us to enter with a wave of his hand. The zendo is a long room with a small altar at the far end. The wooden floor is bare down the middle and off to the sides are sitting mats, raised a few inches on platforms. It looked like a bowling lane, Buddha statues for pins. It’s dark and quiet and serious. There were already some people sitting on their mats with their eyes closed.
Each of us had an assigned mat with our name posted above it. I found mine and sat down, or tried to sit down, with my legs crossed. Unlike everyone else, my knees were pointed towards the ceiling at odd angles. After ten minutes everyone was seated and quiet. I didn’t know what to do so I stared at the center of the bowling lane in front of me. I peeked at Jean from time to time who was no help, seated like a statue with her eyes closed. Ratchet was across from me, mouth clenched in a zigzag, eyes closed. Then with a rustle, a man seated near the altar stood and walked to the middle of the room. White guy, tanned, early 30’s, shaved head, big jaw, bulging forearms, built like a linebacker. He looked like Bruce Cutler, John Gotti’s lawyer. He introduced himself and began to explain meditation. He made it seem so simple – sit, remain completely still, focus on your breath.
“If you want to count your breaths, you can count to one, then start over and count to one.” He entertained some questions and stopped by to talk to me on the way back to his seat. He smiled widely. “I think you need to change your seating, you won’t make it that way”, he said, kneeling down in front of me. He instructed me to sit on my haunches. I rearranged myself, knees fully bent, shins on the mat, feet splayed, soles up, next to my behind. He showed me how to wedge a cushion under my butt to take some of the pressure off my knees. Cutler smiled some more, gave me a thumbs up and went back near the altar, sat down the way he’d instructed me to and the lights dimmed. We were off and meditating, I guess. There was no signal.
I stared at the bowling lane, thinking to myself “just keep staring at the bowling lane.” Thoughts came and went. I guessed at the minutes as they passed. I wasn’t sure how long we were going to sit there. Then, distraction arrived in the form of my right ankle. It felt like someone had inserted a screwdriver in the socket and was leaning into it with all their weight, rotating it slowly back and forth. It came on so quickly that it surprised me. I took a peek around to see who else was having issues. Ratchet was not visibly frowning any more than before. Jean was in the exact same position, looking relaxed, like a sleeping statue. Moustache-lip was next to Jean, sitting erect, eyes wide open. She glanced into my eyes and I felt like I got caught cheating - I quickly looked back into the bowling lane in front of me.
Luckily I caught a break. My other ankle began to scream in pain, taking my mind of the first ankle. I sat still, thinking back on Cutler’s words “if you want to scratch an itch, just acknowledge the itch and move on, it will go away.” He was right – just when I thought I couldn’t take it any longer, the pain shifted to both knees, stayed there for an eternity then jumped to my lower back. After a while my hips began to seize up. The more I focused on the pain, the worse it got. When I acknowledged it, it lessened a bit, receding to the background.
Outside the zendo someone began to clack two pieces of wood together creating a high-pitched rhythm. I heard a rustle and glanced over at the altar to see a large, round woman with a shaved head struggle to her feet. She was older, mid-60's and wore cat eye glasses. She stepped into the middle of the bowling alley, bowed to the altar then turned and shuffled towards the door. She was the leader, the Queen Bee. Cutler followed obediently and one by one, each person stood and followed. I struggled to my feet. I couldn't stand up straight, my hips felt like they'd welded in place. My feet were almost fully asleep. I limped into the moving line and tried to keep up. We filed out the door, took a left and headed into a long hallway. Like that, the first meditation was over. An hour that felt like three.
I got into bed, huddled under three blankets trying to warm up. Jean was looking at me like I was a wounded animal. "Are you ok, Dopey?" Yes, yes, I'm fine. This is wonderful! We read for a while - there is no television, radio, or internet in a monastery. Rule five - Buddha doesn't like distraction.
By 8:30 I was drifting off, day one in Zens-ville came to a close.
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