Japan: Silence Exquisite

Follow your heart' – From To-kyo to Kyo-to and back again

Japan is really something. Exquisite silence and lightening speed all at once. In 1979, after becoming a student of Sri Chinmoy, I stayed with some other students outside of Tokyo in Zushi, on a hill overlooking the Japan Sea with Mt. Fuji in the distance. Could it get any better than this? It could! Kyoto and Nara, Japan’s ancient and current cultural capitals exerted a powerful pull and next thing I knew I was living with a tiny elderly Japanese woman in the foothills of Kyoto’s southern mountains. In the evenings I would wander the hill paths and go to the temples: their winged eves curled up into the night, bathed in silver light, surrounded by white gravel gardens reflecting the moonlight and stone bridges gracefully arched over mossy pebbled streams. Gentle temple bells tinkling in the twilight, and not a person in sight in this sacred enclave far from the public eye. Simplicity and beauty in the extreme, so stirring to the soul.

Kyoto Sri Chinmoy Centre

Other students from Osaka, Kyoto and occasionally Tokyo would come to my wee rooms for Sunday meditations: we were the first Kyoto Centre. It was such a thrill to be able to provide space where we could meet and meditate. Afterwards we would head out for mountain walks and see Kyoto spread below us, with temple spires and pagodas dotting the distance into infinity. I was in a daze for months, as if in Shangri-La, or under some enchantment – in fact sound a bit dotty just now describing it!

By day I masqueraded as an English teacher. If you want to experience something really cute, and in a land that specializes in cute, there is no better place for you than to teach English to under-five-year-olds in Japan. These kids are beyond charming -- and know it! We had more fun demonstrating the meaning of ‘run’, ‘jump’, ‘skip’ and ‘laugh’ for hours on end. ‘GorILLAAAAA’ was a favourite repeated many times. I was quite blond then, and they all loved to get up-close and personal, and who could resist them? 

Serious Ceramics

In order to stay in Japan I had to get a cultural visa and went to the Shimpo pottery school. Now Japanese take their ceramics very seriously indeed; apprentices can not keep a pot until ten years after rigorous training! We are not talking your neighborhood pottery class so popular in the 1970’s in the States. Fortunately the Shimpo teachers looked kindly upon their inept Western students, tolerated our little barbarisms and even let us keep a pot or two. Secretly I am sure they either wept in horror by day, or howled with laughter by night.

And even more fortunately for the barbaric side of the hemisphere – of which I was living proof – there were some Westerners who also took their ceramics very seriously, and created kilns from scratch, dug their own clay, made their own natural glazes and lived the austere life of the true student in search of that most refined zen unconscious/conscious perfect pot of non-being. Their devotion to upholding the traditional Japanese ways was truly worthy. The same for Westerners learning the awesomely difficult Japanese flute, or shaguhachi. They spent their lives living as the ancient Japanese would. And these were their spiritual paths. Their focus and concentration was really something to behold and reinforced my own newly discovered commitment to the spiritual life and Sri Chinmoy's path. Although I've given most of pottery pieces away, it is a good thing as otherwise I'd have to truthfully post a picture of my own, rather than the typical professionally made zen style pot above.

Serene Vistas

I too led a simple life, eating out of a wooden bowl, meditating in a holy city for months on end, surrounded by serene vistas. It was most lucky to embark on my spiritual journey with Sri Chinmoy in this quiet and humble way. Even though he was living in New York, he had left a powerful meditative presence in my heart that never left. My mind cleared out and my sophisticated veneer (or at least I thought I was sophisticated) was gently replaced with light, and then more light.

The night I first met Sri Chinmoy I had been very careful not to take any of his books so that there would be enough for the Japanese students. He was standing quite near me, and I told him I was from New York, even as he was, but here I was meeting him in Japan....He picked up the last remaining book, Man's Satisfication in God's Perfection and turned slowly towards me, most profoundly handed it to me and said Follow your heart, not your mind. I took that book everywhere, and read it again and again and again, on the bus, in coffee shops, at every temple I visited and have it with me to this day.

Rythms of the Soul

As I slowly absorbed a fraction of the meditative wisdom contained within it, the facades donned in order survive adolescence and college gradually fell away and my heart at long last began beating the rhythms of the soul. It was time to return to America. I was most eager to study more directly with Sri Chinmoy and mix with disciples far more advanced than myself. And also ready to re-enter modern society and embrace that blend of meditative dynamism that is embodied in Sri Chinmoy's philosophy.