Die Standing

I’m writing this in a Starbucks as I wait to take a train to Narita airport and then fly home to San Francisco for the holidays. I just spent three weeks at Nisodo, figuring out my housing situation, packing my belongings, and then doing the necessary farewell ceremonies that involve bowing to everybody in the Zendo.
For about a year now I’ve been trying and failing to sufficiently write about the experience of practicing as a Zen nun in Japan. It’s difficult to convey the most unique and important aspects of women’s monastic training to a Western reader in a way that doesn’t make it seem either boring, unfair, or unnecessarily painful (which it can be… but there’s more to it than that! Hence the difficulty in writing about it).
After my most recent stay, though, the piece I feel is most important to share about women’s monastic practice in Japan is that, in my experience at least, there is no such thing as women’s practice or women’s Zen. What I mean is that while the exterior form of…
For about a year now I’ve been trying and failing to sufficiently write about the experience of practicing as a Zen nun in Japan. It’s difficult to convey the most unique and important aspects of women’s monastic training to a Western reader in a way that doesn’t make it seem either boring, unfair, or unnecessarily painful (which it can be… but there’s more to it than that! Hence the difficulty in writing about it).
After my most recent stay, though, the piece I feel is most important to share about women’s monastic practice in Japan is that, in my experience at least, there is no such thing as women’s practice or women’s Zen. What I mean is that while the exterior form of…