In 1958, Gary Snyder gave American readers an account of a week of intensive Zen training at the great temple in Kyoto.
Students went through extended hours of meditation and sleep deprivation. They were given koans, which they would meditate upon. Occasionally, the student would give an account of his koan to a Zen Master in a practice called sanzen — “a fierce face-to-face moment where you spit forth truth or perish.”
The week-long sessions, called sesshin, were led by a senior monk who wacked the plodders and sleepyheads with a stick.
When I first discovered the wonders of a university library, I was fascinated by monks, Zen and Christian, and the idea that one’s character could be worked on, adjusted, even improved.
I had grown up among believers who went to church three times a week without fail, and the idea that something as individual as a self or soul or person could be improved through a group practice seemed improbable to me. Yet parts of our character are improved in groups. Players get better at baseball practice. Children learn at school. Recruits get stronger and more disciplined at boot camp. Some traits can be cultivated in groups.
But it seems to me that the most problematic characteristics we have — the most difficult to change — are deeply personal, that is, deeply imbedded in our individual personalities. I don’t see how you can get to those traits by working in a group. It seems to me that a person must do some work alone.
I have an easier time with the stories about the hermits on the mountain. The stories about the monks in the temple or monastery are harder.
• Source: Gary Snyder’s essay “Spring Sesshin at Shokoku-ji” is in Gary Snyder: Essential Prose; New York: Library of American, 2025, pp. 35-43. It’s available through Library of America’s Story of the Week:
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