„Where is Zen?"
Images of Zen retreat at Antaiji, Japan (安泰寺). Antaiji is a Zen monastery of the Sodo lineage, focusing on the practice of "just sitting". The retreat includes mainly the daily sitting of 4 hours and the farm work. They live a self-sustainable life in the mountain, where they grow their own crops, and chop the woods for fire. It is difficult to imagine keeping such a traditional way of practice nowadays in Japan, in Kyoto many temples put focus on tourists for the sake of commercial value, fame, and profit-making.
Muho was the Zen Master of Antaiji, with an academic background in physics and philosophy. He decided to become a monk and stayed in Japan for more than 20 years ago. Thanks to his fluency in Japanese, German and English, visitors and participants are able to understand bit by bit the theory of Zen. Despite the fact that the Dharma should have been communicated via "without the word" (the teaching without saying), Muho is well aware of that, and such a "as it is" Zen philosophy could be grasped through the day-to-day practice of sitting, eating, cleaning, and farming.
Where is Zen? If your mind is Zen, anything is Zen.
