Naked in the Zendo: Stories of Uptight Zen, Wild-Ass Zen, and Enlightenment Wherever You Are

by Grace Schireson

But how we aim spiritual practice is essential to this process. How do we use practice effort to amplify awareness without making a specific demand? For example, in a sport, we do not demand that our feet run faster. Instead, we strengthen the muscles and technique that are used to run. To amplify awareness, we throw ourselves into the process of prayer or meditation without a demand for improvement. We develop discipline in our practice itself, not in the demand for a good outcome.

Tofukuji, like the Western Zen monastery Tassajara, allows women practitioners, but not men, to bathe during sesshin. This custom was also begun at Tassajara monastery in California during the ’60s when Eiheiji monastery teacher Tatsugami Roshi visited. He proclaimed, “Women smell like fish when they don’t shower for a few days.”

Don’t let ideas of “looking good” veto your own good sense about what your body needs. “Don’t bow” means don’t pretend, don’t think ritual is more important than you are, don’t enslave yourself to an ideal, don’t repress your own pain and especially, for God’s sake, don’t bow after knee surgery.