Sitting Zen in Kyoto | Japan-Guides Home

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“Sitting meditation is the euthanasia of the mind.”

This quote is attributed to the artist Tadanori Yokoo.

He wrote about it in an account of his sitting meditation experience of the same name:

Sitting zazen can be described in a way as a struggle against the constant stream of distracting thoughts. All sorts of irrelevant thoughts come one after another, not only those that are distressing at the moment, but even those from the past that have been kept at a distance by the walls of memory, which can be overcome and flood back into your mind. In other words, the thoughts accumulated in the subconscious mind come to the surface in the process of sitting meditation. Zazen does not negate the manifestation of the subconscious mind, but rather it is a way to release the “toxins” that have accumulated in the depths of the mind. By continually expelling these distracting thoughts, we may eventually be able to bring the opaque seeds of the mind to a peaceful end, achieving what is known as the “euthanasia of the mind”.

Yokoo also has this sentence in that book, “You cannot enter the world of Zen without karma, but everyone more or less encounters a similar opportunity once or twice.” About the same kind of fate, also in the year I turned 39, I began to experience sitting zazen. Compared to him, my motivation was simple and superficial, but it was only because I suddenly realized that the Zen temples in Kyoto, which were under pressure to make a profit, were offering Zen meditation as a new experience, and that it was especially popular among foreign tourists. I was curious about the experience.

The first place I visited was Daitokuji Temple's Daisaiin. The pagoda is usually closed to the public, but in recent years it has begun to hold zazen sessions in the early mornings and evenings, and the abbot, Toda, who is 57 years old, has kept up with the times by holding zazen sessions online as well, with an easy-to-understand slogan: “To relax your mind and body from the fatigue of everyday life.” So the zazen here is also very relaxed and casual, with no esoteric dharma talk. I participated in a “morning relaxation zazen,” which was held from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. I sat on the side of the rim of the garden facing the garden, and I sat for a short period of 10 minutes each in the first and second half of the session, and in the middle half hour, I practiced the self-created Toda gymnastics, which is a surprisingly easy way to relax. In the middle half hour, I did my own “Toda Gymnastics,” which involved lying on the tatami mats in the main hall and learning how to stretch my body and relax my muscles in positions that are difficult to use in daily life. I told Mr. Toda that my shoulders and arms were always sore from sitting in front of the computer and writing all day. “Shall I help you relax?” He asked, and then massaged my shoulders. In other temples, this might have been a bizarre sight, but this is the way Otsumiya does things, and I laughingly refer to it as “Zen therapy.”

Sitting Zen at Daciin, Japan

Some time after zazen, I sat on the rim with Abbot Toda and talked for a while. According to him, the purpose of zazen is to “think of nothing” and in this way “forget yourself” and find that “moment of forgetting yourself”. He says, “In Buddhism, the moment you forget yourself, you don't exist. There seems to be a contradiction here: since the 'I' no longer exists, who is thinking about the 'I have forgotten'? It is actually a new 'I'. The old one, 'I,' has ceased to exist, and in its place is the new 'I.'”

Experiencing sitting meditation for the first time, my mind was full of beginner's doubts, the “old me” and the “new me” were still far away from me, and there were more pressing issues that needed to be resolved right now. For a brief 20 minutes, my mind was filled with all sorts of distractions, and then with “How can I not think about anything?” of distractions. So I asked him, “How do I not think?” He answered: to feel. Some people find that moment quickly, some are slow to do so, both are common occurrences. "Have you ever had a moment where you were suddenly moved while watching a sunset? That's the kind of feeling. You weren't thinking about anything at that time. Modern people are always assigning all kinds of feelings, such as if the sun were just a little redder today, or if that cloud is a little bit in the way. With such subjective perceptions, one is not moved. The only way to get a moment of moving is to give no idea or evaluation whatsoever, and that is pure 'feeling'."

The conversation didn't get much deeper than that, and after 9:00, Abbot Toda urged me to go to breakfast. More famous for its operation of a famous restaurant of refined cuisine than for its zazen, Daciin has become an added bonus to the morning zazen experience: a breakfast there. It's a traditional Japanese style of cooking, including first-come-first-served, boiled, vinegared, steamed, and so on, as well as a pot of tofu in soup. The flavors were moderate.

Breakfast at Izumi Sen, a famous restaurant of Ojiin's refined cuisine

Sentence from the menu of Izumi Sen.

Daisenin is another more famous pagoda head of Daitokuji. It is also open for daily visits. In addition, “Weekend Zen Sessions” are held on the 24th of every month and in the evening after closing on Saturdays and Sundays, and parent-child Zen sessions are held during spring and summer vacations. Although Daisen-in is also advertised as “easy for beginners,” it is obviously more difficult than Daisen-in: a 30-minute session of zazen, followed by a one- or two-minute break, and then a 30-minute session of zazen, which takes a total of about one hour. At Daisen-in, the abbot would hover in front of the congregation with a stick. It is called a “warning stick” and was originally used to maintain order in the zendo by knocking out monks who dozed off or were not paying attention. However, in Japanese Zen temples, a new practice has evolved: instead of the abbot waking up the congregation, the zazen practitioner takes the initiative to apply for the baton. This is done as follows: the person who wants to be tapped, when the abbot approaches, quietly clasps his palms together to express his will. When the abbot comes to the front of the room, both parties clap their palms together and bow their heads in greeting, then bow their heads again in preparation for receiving the tapping. First the left shoulder, then the right. At the end, both parties again put their palms together, bowed their heads in greeting, sat up straight, and continued to sit in zazen. It is true that there is some pain in this way of giving warning, and that it can lift one's spirit, but somehow the practice of raising one's hand and asking to be tapped always seems to carry a performative quality. I raised my hand twice, not because I was sleepy, but because I felt that it was just the right amount of force, and that it was a good way to ease my chronic back pain, and that it was also a kind of “cautionary therapy”. The zazen at Daisenwon is very popular, and it is said that when there are as many as 80 people there, even the abbot is overwhelmed by the number of people taking turns to raise their hands: “It's the first time I've ever had so many people waiting to be hit by me.”

Daxianwon Sitting Zen

After the sitting meditation experience session, people are brought into a room the size of a four-and-a-half stack and take turns enjoying matcha tea and Japanese sweets made on site, and listening to the abbot share some dharma words. The abbot of Daisen-in is very good at speaking and has been to China many times and knows a lot about Chinese culture. On this day he said, “Sitting in meditation means practicing losing yourself.”

The best sitting meditation experience I have had in Kyoto is at Enko-ji Temple in Rohoku. Since the Meiji era, Enko-ji Temple has been the only dojo in Japan dedicated to nuns. The Zendo from that time is still preserved and Zazen sessions are held every Sunday morning. The zazen is called “Dawn Day Zazen” and it starts very early, between 6 and 8 am. When I called ahead to make a reservation, the staff member who answered the phone sounded serious: “Are you sure you want to come? There's no public transportation that early." After I repeatedly said, “No problem,” I was reminded, “Beginners need to gather 15 minutes early to learn the zazen posture and breathing method.” Luckily, the Enlightenment Temple is not too far away from my home, and I ended up riding my bike for 20 minutes. When I arrived at the entrance of the temple, I saw that most of the people came in private cars, and there was also a very valiant middle-aged woman who had just parked a heavy motorcycle in the parking lot, and once she took off her helmet, she went straight to the zendo.

In the Zendo of Enko-ji Temple, there are two 20-minute sessions of Sitting Zen, and similar to the practice at Daisen-in, one can raise one's hand and ask to be “warned” by being hit on the back with a wooden stick. Between the sittings, there is a walking practice called “Sutra”: the group releases the cross-legged position, walks out of the zendo in a single file, and walks around the zendo for three weeks in “silent and slow steps”. Sutra walking is also traditionally practiced as part of zazen to help relieve numbness in the feet and improve blood circulation. Most of the people who participate in sitting meditation at Enko-ji are long-time participants in this activity. Many of them come every week, wearing special clothes for sitting meditation, with their name tags hanging on the fixed seats and their postures straight and upright. It was only when I arrived at Enko-ji that I finally felt: the first few times were just a sightseeing experience, but this time it finally felt like real zazen.

sit in meditation at the Yuan Guang Temple

After the two sittings, the congregation performs the work of pulling weeds and cleaning up the temple grounds, which is called “work”. In the context of Zen temples, if sitting meditation is called “work in stillness”, such labor is called “work in motion”. According to Enko-ji, both sitting meditation and physical labor are considered equally important in Zen practice. The labor lasted about an hour, and I was given a dustpan and a pair of scissors, and then assigned to “clear the weeds” in the garden. Stepping into the Japanese garden of a temple like this is a rare and precious experience, but unfortunately by the end of the day, I still couldn't figure out, “What kind of grass is a weed?” I always suspected that I had uprooted important plants in the garden.

After the labor, and the last of the sitting experience at Enko-ji: a traditional breakfast at the Zen Sangha. It is not as luxurious as the one at Daci Monastery, but consists only of white porridge, pickled radish and pickled dried plums. Before eating, one has to recite a phrase from the “Five Observations on Eating”: “Count the amount of merit, and measure where he came from”. It means, “Reflect on how much merit you have made and how much you have done; also think about how hard it was to get this food.” Translated into the bowl of congee in front of me, it means “to reflect on whether you are worthy of this food with a grateful heart, and to keep quiet and concentrate on eating without making any noise throughout the whole process.” This breakfast flew by, I'd just had half a bowl of porridge and a bucket of scraps was already being conveyed to the table, so it seemed everyone was used to this kind of Zen temple speed. After that came the abbot's dharma talk on the Heart Sutra, which I could vaguely understand some of, and which followed on from about the previous week's portion of the talk, while the only other first-timer of the day besides me, a European man in his mid-thirties, couldn't understand a word of the Japanese, and kept up an awkward smile all over the room at the mysterious culture of the Orient and couldn't get a handle on it.

After all this was over, there was still an hour before the monastery opened its doors. This hour is a chartered benefit enjoyed by zazen sitters, who are free to visit all parts of the grounds as they please. There was a man who came to sit zazen with his middle school son, and I saw the father and son sitting on the rim side, talking for a long time. It was also a wonderful sight. And then once again, I met the middle-aged woman who was going to go back on her motorcycle, and she said to me with a smile, “I made you pay 1,000 yen today because it's your first time here. Next time you come back, just throw 600 yen into the race money box yourself.”

Before the end of the summer, I also went to one of the famous Ginkaku-ji sitting meditation sessions. Ginkakuji's Sitting Zen is held only on the first Sunday morning of each month and reservations are accepted only by mail and postcard. The sitting experience here is the most professional and well attended. The room is packed, and each person receives a set of materials and a book. Before the sitting begins, the monks give a couple of dharma talks, which vary each time; on this day I heard two quotes from Zen master Rinzai. The next instruction on sitting zazen is not just about mindfulness, but starts with sitting posture and the physiology of the human body.

I listened to the Dharma talk at a Ginkaku-ji sitting meditation session once and thought it was very good, so I was going to approach the staff and buy those two books. One was called “The Words of Zen” and the other was called “The Words of the Buddha”, and the internal commentary was easy to understand and quite suitable for a beginner like me. It turned out that these two books were written by the very same monk who instructed the sitting meditation. He was happy to sign them for me, and while writing down the word “Zangtang,” he extended an invitation to me: “I am holding a three-day, two-night continuous meditation experience at my monastery, would you like to come and join us?”

As it turned out, he was not affiliated with either of them, although he served as a sitting instructor once a month at Ginkaku-ji Temple in Kyoto and Enkaku-ji Temple in Kamakura. There is a small Zen temple across the street from the famous Shitennoji Temple in Osaka, where he was assigned as abbot more than ten years ago, after eight years of practicing life at Sagakuji Temple in Kyoto. Since last year, once a month, he has been holding real, continuous sitting meditation sessions there that are completely different from the tourist experience.

This is how I became acquainted with Zangtang. Driven by curiosity, I agreed to his invitation on the spot and visited Tenshoji for the first time one weekend in the fall. Little did I know at the time that I was about to get a real sitting experience, sitting zazen 24 times in 48 hours straight. It was going to be a very long and hard two days, with no so-called “emptiness” or “nothingness,” but only an infinitely enlarged amount of boring time and a body that was completely out of control.

I realized a little later that this is roughly how one begins to sit in zazen.

A friend of mine who was visiting Kyoto once told me about his experience of sitting zazen at Kenshinji Temple. The experience, which began at 5:00 a.m. on a cold winter morning, was by no means pleasant: “I was sleepy, hungry, cold, and beaten with a stick, so I went out and bought a bun at a convenience store, and ate it as I walked along the cold Kamogawa River, thinking to myself: I will never have such an experience again.”

Tenshoji's “continuous meditation” program

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Sometimes sitting meditation gives exactly that. It is not pleasant in the beginning and makes you want to escape. And later, it will be like the friends I met at Tenshoji, from Kyoto Osaka Shizuoka Gifu Tokyo Kanagawa, many of whom come to stay three days a week, sitting during the day and talking late at night. For them: sitting zazen is recharging the batteries in their bodies. When their spiritual energy runs out, their feet naturally go to the temple, and through sitting Zen, they dissolve their inner dissatisfaction, complaints, and uneasiness, and thus realize what is really inside them.NHK once conducted an awareness survey among young people, and the results showed that 56% of them were interested in Zen. Contemporary young people are trying to seek a spiritual support in their heart by means of Zen. From this point of view, perhaps it is not Tadanori Yokoo who says that “Zen is the euthanasia of the heart”, but rather Zen is the psychiatrist of the modern Japanese.

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