Before Zen crossed the shores into Japan, the students of the Tendai school would study meditation, as part of their daily practice. Four of them, close friends all, promised one another to observe seven days of silence.
On the first day, no words were spoken, and the students took pleasure in their auspicious beginning. When night came however, the oil lamps grew dim, and the room slowly darkened.
One student, named Hoshin, called out to a servant: "Servant! Attend to the lamps, so that I might better observe our accomplishment!"
The second student was surprised to hear Hoshin speak. "We are supposed to keep quiet," he chided.
"But you also spoke!" declared the third. "You are an idiot!"
"I am the only one who has not talked," concluded the fourth, as he settled into seiza.
Next Saturday, September 11, we will be adding a beginner’s class to our training lineup. The class will run from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., and will replace open mat.
We’ve had some good success with open mat lately, so if you’d like to see more open training times at the dojo, please let Sensei know.
This entry was posted on Saturday, September 4th, 2010 at 12:39 pm and is filed under Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.