September 2023. Sesshin, day four.

A fish swims in the ocean, and no matter how far it swims there is no end to the water - Eihei Dogen

It’s the fourth day of Sesshin—a seven-day zen retreat. Dawn light is poured into the Buddha Hall in vented shafts, the blue smoke of incense watery across the angled bars, the face of a waterfall catching light. Roshi is at the Daishiki, having offered incense at the altar, and 32 of us are following him in bows and following the Ino in chanting the Heart Sutra. Then the dedication, then the Identity of Relative and Absolute, followed by another dedication, two more waves of sutras, bows, and dedications.

The light catches, lustrous, in the darker blue of Roshi’s Kesa, the shifting paler blue of his Koromo dissolving with his bows into shadows, and around the liquid folds and layers of fabric.

From outside, the pointillist murmur of the creek and the scattered shrieks of jays.

Morning service at Yokoji lasts about twenty minutes and, by day four, is a smooth choreography of bodies chanting and bowing, the sharp strike of the Inkin and its twin chiming and answering as Roshi leaves the room, bowing at the threshold to the Buddha Hall, and then twice in the Gaitan, bows returned by the Jisha, and the assembly. Woody incense smoke hanging in the clear air. Hushed footsteps softened on the carpet.

One of the most urgent things about Sesshin is the commitment we make to the schedule: up at 5, on the cushion by 5:30, three rounds of 30 minutes of zazen alternating with 10 minutes of kinhin in four blocks every day. Service, meals on time and together, everyone gathered for work practice at 9:30, and on and on. Most every minute of waking time accounted for.

It can be a relief and is also—always, for me—a challenge, to surrender to the schedule and the choreography of Sesshin: 32 people bumping up against that unfamiliarity, and up against each other, in silence. It forces a very specific kind of attention, a deep dive. The first few days require that I consciously extend awareness to everyone around me, and to the details of the schedule while we all settle into it, at varied pace and with varying resistance. Working on the brush clearing crew, or working housekeeping, or in the kitchen, demands that deeper dive as I settle into the dance with the rest of the participants. As we settle together into the container of practice.

The word Sesshin is made up of two characters: setsu, to gather, collect, or draw together; and shin, which—poetically—translates as ‘heart,’ and/or ‘mind.’ Sesshin, then, translates as ‘unifying the heart/mind.’ The hard line drawn in English between heart and mind doesn’t exist in Japanese—the fused body of shin a unified field theory of an idea; more a fluid valence than a thing.

The silvery body of a trout turning in a river, light sweeping and vanishing across pulsing scales as the fish bends into a vanishing s. Exposed one second and hidden the next—still moving, fleetingly visible between rocks.

After the first few days of resistance, it gets easier to slip into the complexity of sesshin—the ‘trick’ is in the ruthless schedule: there simply isn’t time to think about the next thing; it’s on you before you realize it, and then the next thing, and the next.

Holding onto any moment is trying to hold onto water.

One vanishes into the schedule: all the staff and participants executing an elegant, nearly silent dance in tension with stillness and movement. Zazen, kinhin, work. Roughly 16 hours waking time, all focused on this moment, this moment, this moment. Everyone doing exactly what the schedule—this moment—demands from each of us: that we enter that silent dance, slipping around each other, subsumed in space and silence. Immersed in that liquid practice the way fish are immersed in water. Finding and surrendering to the currents and rhythms of each moment and each other, flowing invisibly, unstoppably, into the next. Suspended, and released into streaming time.

Four of us are carrying lunch trays back to the kitchen for clean up, stepping out of the dining hall and into the bright, warming sunshine of the courtyard. I detour to the bridge over the creek that cuts through Yokoji. Late summer rains have refreshed the flow. Light is falling through the branches of the oak trees and reflecting smoothly on the stream. The surface polished by light and movement, through to the clear bottom of sand and planate rocks.

A pale, metallic s vanishes into the creek bed, there and gone before I consciously register the glassine curve. Light breaking into points dissolving on the creek’s surface.

I make my way up the concrete steps, back to the kitchen. The murmur of the stream dripping off me as I slip through slanted shade and inside. A single stick of incense is burning on the kitchen altar, smoke rising in a twined, sinuous line, lit blue and watery by a shaft of sunlight through the clerestory window.

The lunch pots and pans need to be washed. A clatter of knives on the steel countertop are waiting to be cleaned and sharpened.

Your comments are always welcomed and encouraged. We’d love to hear from you.

One more thing.

As a zen priest I’m a student of Tenshin Fletcher Roshi at Yokoji Zen Mountain Center. For more info on Yokoji, please visit www.zmc.org.

I’m also the caretaker of Warwick Zendo, a small in-person and online sangha based in the lower Hudson Valley of New York. if you’d like to check out our practice community, we’re at www.warwickzen.org.

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