Doyu (Tom) Oak's First Rohatsu Sesshin, Nov. 30 - Dec.8, 2013

Greetings Loved Ones!

On Sunday, December 8^th, 2013 I returned home after participating in my first full-on Rohatsu Sesshin. I feel that I would be remiss if I did not stop to write something about this experience while it is fresh; forestalling, for a few moments longer, taking up the tasks which have accumulated in my absence. I write this and make it available to you to read. Though should you choose to read this and, in doing so, find it palatable and, if so, digestible, I cannot say.

First off, let me explain what a “Rohatsu Sesshin” is. This is a Zen Buddhist silent ‘retreat’ spanning eight days in the first week of December. This corresponds to the week that the historical Buddha, in around 600 BC, after years of spiritual journeying around India, decided to stop and sit under a tree until the answer to his big question, ‘what is the cause of human suffering’ (unease, dissatisfaction) became apparent. On the morning of the eighth day, after a harrowing week in which all manner of demons tormented and tempted him, attempting to dislodge him from his post, Buddha experienced Awakening and finally cracked this great question. In short, the cause of human suffering, he realized, is our attachment to the illusory belief that we have a distinct ‘self’. Our ‘true self’, he discovered, lies below our superficial, egoistic, troubled, separate sense of ‘self’. This true self, he discovered, is seamlessly at one with the universe; all that is, was, and ever will be.

I don’t expect you to ‘get’ this, Buddhist’s practice hard for years to achieve a similar awakening and understanding. And Rohatsu is one of our key pushes in this regard.

Rohatsu Sesshin is a powerful tool of Zen practice whose form has been honed by a succession of Zen masters and communities in China and Japan over many centuries. It was clear that what I participated in this week, in all its rigor and multi-faceted torments and revelations (a sort of reenactment of Buddha’s original week under that tree) is an ancient, very carefully and deliberately crafted, awakening tool. One which I learned is very effective when wielded well and taken up with earnestness.

The setting was Camp Indianola in Washington state, situated on the edge of a woods looking south east over Puget Sound, Mont Ranier, and the lights and skyline of North Seattle.

Our teacher and Sesshin leader was Genjo, abbot of Seattle’s Chobo Ji Zen community. Genjo, 59, is a recognized and increasingly well respected and renowned Zen Master whose concerted Zen training and practice has extended over more than 30 years. Genjo also has a professional practice as a psychotherapist.

This marked the first time in my now seven years of Zen practice that I had practiced with Buddhists outside of my home Sangha (community), Zenwest (see zenwest.ca). And this is the first time that I have studied with a Zen Master. Genjo now tells me that I can consider myself his student. After working under his skilled and loving guidance this week, meeting with him for brief ‘interviews’ 3 times daily, I cannot adequately express my gratitude and joy about this relationship. Genjo, I discovered, is a man to whom I can (and did) bring my most pressing and intractable questions; even the unspeakable personal and private issues which I had come to feel the need of swallowing as my bitter lot. He was clear that the road to awakening can leave no stone unturned and that, miraculously, he is keen to be there with me as I apply my shoulder to even my most formidable obstacles.

What do we do in Sesshin? We live together with virtually no verbal communication. Certainly all idle conversation and casual greetings, even eye contact, are discouraged. And, of course, we sit still a lot! That’s the main thing. For multiple 25 minute or so periods, amounting to 6-7 hours per day, we sit. Mostly, to the extent that we can hold such a position, we sit cross legged. Sitting in a chair is also permitted, as is sitting up on one’s knees. There are also a few daily chanting periods in which we invoke the inspiration and experience of past masters for our efforts. There is a talk in the morning given by the teacher. There are three formalized meals. There were three 15 minute periods per day of meditative walking; in step, in line, around the property and along the beach. The day started with wake up bells at 4am and concluded anywhere from 10:30pm to midnight.

Three times a day one had the opportunity to go to a one on one interview with Genjo. For the most part this is optional but a couple of these are compulsory. (I concluded that I would be an idiot to pass up a single opportunity to meet with Genjo!); interviews typically last anywhere from less than a minute to up to as long as 5 minutes. In effect one is having a serial conversation with Genjo interspersed with multiple periods of sitting in which one is working on the material that came up in the previous interview; in preparation for the next.

Sesshin is not a ‘retreat’ in the sense of being a time and place one goes to rest and recuperate. Sesshin is a time when one is severely put to the test. The shortage of sleep and seemingly endless and often agonizingly painful hours of silent sitting are designed to pry open the iron grip of our limited, delusional, egoistic, and entirely constructed and artificial sense of self in order to allow space for an experience of our deeper, true self. The former self is comparable to the surface of the ocean, where our needs, wants, fears, and daily circumstances are waves that buffet us around continuously. In experiencing the latter self one sinks below this tumultuous surface to a place of limitless energy and calmness. There is, apparently, no limit to this depth. Being in this depth doesn’t mean the waves of life disappear, just that they do not buffet us. In this depth one doesn’t experience these waves as ‘me’. 

With Genjo’s skillful guidance and a lot of grueling sitting work, in a way that had been heretofore unprecedented, I gained some access to an experience of this depth. Let me tell you, it is a wonderful place. Being there is akin to best ever ‘trip’. But, unlike a drug induced trip, on this trip one is entirely present and more in control than one could ever be on our egoistic surface.

This was my first Rohatsu Sesshin, my first 8 day retreat. I have undertaken a few 5 day Sesshins with our Zenwest community, led by our own able teacher and Abbott Eshu Martin. This work was essential preparation for my premier Rohatsu.  Though I expect to return to Genjo’s Rohatsu yearly I will continue to rely on my teacher Eshu’s skillful training and care to keep my feet to the fire throughout the rest of the year.

I don’t recommend that you sign up for a Sesshin yourself. What I did this past week was (barely) possible for me because I have been practicing daily Zen sitting and participating in a range of more and less intense Zenwest community sits for a number of years. This background placed me, still, at a relative beginner’s level compared to the other 18 participants in this Rohatsu Sesshin.

This practice, admittedly, is not for the faint of heart. I do however, urge you to consider sampling Zen practice if you, like me, find yourself at odds with some big burning questions in your life. The benefits available through this practice are profound and life altering, dwarfing the costs involved in obtaining their achievement.

To conclude, I found that Genjo’s particular skill as a teacher was his skillful instruction on how to enter a state of ‘samadi’. This is the ‘trip’ I earlier referred to. Learning to enter a samadi state was, for me, comparable to learning to ride a bicycle; tremendously freeing and exhilarating! Samadi felt like a trance-like state where I might, with an amazing feeling of being in complete control, traverse anywhere and anytime in this universe and in my life (true self encompasses all of this!). Like a child just learning to ride I stayed on my street for the most part, I have a lot to learn about how this thing works! I used samadi in the hours of sitting time available to me on this Sesshin to make extensive visitations with Tommy; myself as a child. I visited him as he went through many of the most troubling episodes of his lonely, early life. I witnessed with him and often comforted him. I experienced the surreal sensation of, in many cases, easing the isolation, suffering and traumas he had gone through. Amazingly, miraculously, but still somehow matter-of-factly, I provided a measure of healing to many places of hurt that have existed in me for decades. There is less hurt in those deep places now. And today, as a result, Tom is a much happier man.

And truly, that is a HUGE payoff!

Doyu (Tom) Oak.