9:30 am in Shinagawa. I avoided the rush hour. Even funnier than watching the monkeys at the zoo is observing these humans on the loose (Kodo Sawaki) Today I visited an Austrian Shinto priest in Shibuya, Florian Wiltschko: They finished harvesting rice in Shibuya as well. Could make out Antaiji from the plane on the … Read more
To make the best use of the nice weather we have these days, we got up and started with the harvest first thing this morning at 5am, before sun rise.. The plan is to finish the first field by tonight, allowing us to do a one day sesshin tomorrow. The other two fields still need … Read more
Cleaning is done every morning, right after breakfast: Four of us went to help with the rice harvest at a different temple in Tottori prefecture today. Therefore, Antaiji’s harvest will have to wait for another day. Yesterday we harvested only about 20% of the southern rice field. The rest is planned foo tomorrow. Shoko from … Read more
Another typhoon has passed, and we have good weather again. The rice in the southern field has fallen over again, wo we decided to start harvesting today. The soil in the field is still swampy, therefore we tie the rice on a plastic sheet outside the field. from there it will be transported to the … Read more
The tenzo (cook) changes every five days, after each sesshin. Tsukan from Oregon will be tenzo for the next five days, and today he is preparing an Italian style lunch. Steffi from Germany helps cutting bell peppers.
The view: The weather:
On the days before one day sesshins (the 9th, 14th, 19th and 24th, starting at 6pm), the practioners take terms lecturing on “Shobogenzo Zuimonki“. Today, Yudai is lecturing on chapter 3-3. Usually, a dharma talks takes about 90 to 120 minutes maximum, but tonight a lot of the foreign practioners took place in the discussion, … Read more
It is not yet decided when we will start to harvest the rice, one of the main jobs this autumn. Today we started to cut bamboo to build the “haza”,a construction on which the cut rice will be dried before threshing. Altogether we have about 4 acres of ricefields, which will be harvested and threshed … Read more
With 15 residents, it is possible to do many different jobs at the same time. Today’s samu was divided into 6 groups: Yudai’s hatake (vegetable field), Eko’s tanbo (rice field), Steffi’s herb garden, Jisui’s Zen garden, Tsukan who did shissui (carpenter) work, and a group that builds a new stone wall for a new rice … Read more
Bringing the kids to the school in the morning and picking them up again in the afternoon is also part of my job.