Monastic experience in Japan

 

 

The second and real and true stay of six days in a monastery was at Manjuji, another monastery of the Rinzai Zen school, located in the city of ?ita on the Ky?sh?, Japan’s southernmost island. Br Matteo and br Irénée, a Benedictine of the Chevetogne monastery in Belgium, were happy to be the first Christian monks to stay in this monastery, living the daily life of the d?j?, “the place where is practiced the Way” of Zen. Among other things, they shared the practice of takuhatsu, the “begging” that the monks do several times a month. Fitted out with a bag for the purpose and a large straw hat, the monks walk for two hours in the neighborhood of the monastery collecting offerings.

Here too the conversation with the abbot of the monastery, Sasaki D?itsu, was rich and fruitful, especially when it came to talking about the deepest goal of the monastic life, “to become one” for both traditions, but with very different meanings. For Zen it is to become one with the entire reality of phenomena, which is only the projection of our sense perceptions, to dissolve in it in order to realize that there is no individual I. For us it means to become one in ourselves and with God. The dialogue continued with other stimulating comparisons on food, solitude and community, happiness in the monastic life…

Br Matteo summed up his reflections on his experience, which he shared with the community.

"Side by side, in the poverty of necessarily limited communication, looks were exchanged and a fragment of earth was shared… I was able to sit for a little and only a few but intense and unforgettable days on the same human terrain, I was received for a certain time in the spiritual home of others, I shared the same tatami, the mat on the floor of Japanese rooms, of monastic fraternity… As a parting gift the abbot of the Manjuji monastery gave me a calligraphy written by himself. The word there is kizuna, which means 'tie, bond, connection'. This fraternal spiritual tie is truly what I lived during those days of life shared with our friends, practitioners of Zen. They and we together are seeking a way of liberation from the enslaving ties of an egocentric life and are filled with the same desire for a more profound, reciprocal 'liberating tie', the name of which is fraternity”.