Eat Sleep Sit: My Year at Japan's Most Rigorous Zen Temple by Kaoru Nonomura

Author:Kaoru Nonomura [Nonomura, Kaoru]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9784770030757
Publisher: Kodansha USA
Published: 2010-08-05T04:00:00+00:00

Hunger

Far away, someone was groaning. I leaped out of bed, only to realize it was a dream. Dismayed at the discovery that someone’s stupid dream had interrupted my precious, all-too-short time for sleep, I tried to drowse off again, to no avail. Finally it hit me that the groaning was real. Beside me, Doryu lay curled in anguish, his forehead beaded with sweat. “What’s wrong?” I asked, but in answer all he could do was moan, his face screwed in pain. Choshu woke up too, and together we undid his covers. As we suspected, his knees were badly swollen. Since we’d come to the common quarters, he was the third one to come down with this illness.

One morning, I finished shaving my head and set about trimming my nails only to discover with a start that despite the elapsing of many days, they hadn’t grown at all. That was when I first began to notice that little by little, our bodies were ceasing to function properly. The rate and degree of this physical breakdown depended on the individual, but the symptoms were all alike.

First, the body would swell. Those who were badly afflicted would find their arms and legs swollen to bursting; the skin lost its elasticity and when pressed with the fingers would not rebound right away, but retained the imprint. Urination increased abnormally in frequency. However often a sufferer went to relieve himself, he would soon feel the urge to go again; some people, unable to make it through long services and ceremonies, wet themselves. Wounds sustained to the knees or the soles of the feet during sitting took forever to heal. The wound would remain gaping, often picking up germs so that the pain and swelling worsened. Some people ended up being rushed to the hospital with a high fever. Doryu, too, was quickly hospitalized.

These symptoms are the result of beriberi, a disease caused by excessive carbohydrate intake and vitamin B1 deficiency. Among trainee monks at Eiheiji, the cause was clear: eating too much rice. Our seniors had warned us about the risk. Gorging on rice would only make us sick, we knew—and yet we couldn’t help ourselves. That’s how desperate we were.

At this stage in our training our hunger was at its peak. While sitting or while huddled under the covers at night, we thought of nothing but food, and even suffered from hallucinations. The hunger was indescribable, like nothing I had ever experienced before. Until coming to Eiheiji all of us had lived ordinary lives where any time we were hungry we could eat our fill. But now, from the time we woke up at 1:30 a.m. until we went to bed at 10:00 p.m., apart from the three daily meals we could eat nothing. Moreover, the amount of food served was very small; the vegetable side dishes contained a mere mouthful or two.

The only foods we were allowed second helpings of were miso soup and rice. The soup bowl was small and the soup was mostly liquid anyway, so it did little to assuage our hunger.

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