What is Zen?

I am very tempted to say that it is sitting way to long in a painful position while doing nothing else then looking at a wall.

I got the opportunity to go on a Sesshin right after i resigned my job and i figured it would be a nice way to separate the working period i left behind, from the travelling period coming ahead. So before i had the time to think twice about this, there i was at the monastery sitting on my square meter spot in a dusty crypt.

For those of you wondering if this isn't a bit boring? Yes! Yes yes yes and yes!
I mean, seriously, how could you even ask this question? The reason you never spend your weekend doing this is exactly because it is boring.
But there are things to do....in the beginning that is. You might find this silly but once you start looking at a wall there are many details on it that you can learn to ... enjoy?

Even then, after the first 2 sets of meditation, i was out of ideas to keep my brain busy. Because the mind had nothing else to do it started focusing all its attention on my left leg that felt asleep. Thus noticing with the exaggeration only boredom can bring that it was painful. I learnt the hard way that it is something you don't want! The more your mind focuses on the painful parts of your body the more they start to become painful.
I tried to move my legs and my body a little bit. Although the goal was to relieve myself from the pain, it only resulted in worse. Every movement i made increased the suffering and other parts of the my body started to join the party.
Pain pain pain: i was disgusted! I wanted to hear the sound of the gong, informing us that the meditation session is over for now. Instead a voice started screaming in my head: i want the gong now! But of course, this didn't change much. The harder my thoughts screamed for the gong, the more i felt frustrated about not hearing it. I had no choice but to accept that the meditation session wouldn't be over just because i wanted it.

I believe meditation to be quite a psychological thing. When my mind had to face the unfortunate truth that screaming angry for the gong had no effect, it shifted into sadness and self pity. I had only one thought that came into my mind. Why on earth did i join this Sesshin? I am never going to go through with it. I am gonna die here.
(Yea, i know, my imagination was running a bit wild, i realise now i was no where close to die!)
Anyways. Since the gong refused to come and my mind wasn't going to make me forget my pain, i had no choice to start meditating for real. I was sitting in a very pitiful way, so I pulled my back straight and concentrated myself as good as i could on the zazen position. With every breathing-in i re-adjusted my position again to make sure it wouldn't get worse over time, and with every breathing out i waved away the silly thoughts of my mind.

You might expect a happy end, where the pain goes away and i manage to find the budistic truth of meditation along with the sound of the gong saving the day...
None of that. I was still very aware of all that suffering, but it was acceptable. It wasn't so hard suddenly nor was the pain so annoyingly present in my thoughts anymore.

We can chose to experience the same situation through different angles. It wont change a thing to what is happening, but it will change alot to how you percieve it and how it affects you.
I know this is nothing new. Certainly a lot of wise and/or crazy people have mentionned this before, and i understood what they ment. But now that i experienced it in such a clear way, it feels like i understood it for the first time all over again.
I am sure we more or less experience this often, but since we pay no attention to it, we have no clue that it happened. And although here it happened for the better, the same could also happen in the other direction!

That was way more philosophical and spiritual then i wanted to go.

For the rest of the Sesshin, since it was in a classical christian monastery, the food was terrible! (by terrible i mean the next best thing after poison). If you saw the food that was in my plate, and saw how the nuns of the monastery looked like, you would strongly consider not eating at all! I will spare you the details...

The location of the monastery was splendid! It was a huge park with a lot of nice plants (eatable plants! way better then the monastery kitchen!)
For some reason i have no pictures of the park, but i do have some of the crypts where we spend our days meditating.

In the end i had quite a good time during the Sesshin, but i don't think it is something for me. Although it is far from being a sect, it has some...similarities...like strange chanting (mata hannya haramita shinyooo-ooo) and some bizarre rituals that make me feel uneasy and that i find a bit ridiculous.

The start sign has been given...i am on my way to the world now!