23/P10: Sitzen, Sitzen, Sitzen

At 03:45, a monk walks through the corridors and rings the bell. 15 minutes later, I'm sitting with eight young monks in the meditation hall, hidden deep in the mountains on the west coast of Japan. It's still dark outside and I'm cold. I stare silently at the wall in front of me. I am supposed to sit for two hours. After just 20 minutes, I can hardly stand it. I've never done this before and I'm sceptical. But Eko, the only woman and abbess of the monastery, a trained midwife, convinced me to give it a try with her down-to-earth manner: No big introduction, no breathing techniques, no rules for posture, simply put: "Sit and hold your cheeks, everything else will come naturally."

At the beginning of May, I spent a week at the Antaiji Zen monastery. Here they teach according to the Japanese Sōtō Zen school: "The 24 hours of today are our practice. We practise zazen, cultivate the fields and cut down trees. In this way, the monastic community provides itself with food and wood for the kitchen and the stove in winter. What do we gain from this? The answer is simple: nothing! Zen practice is nothing more than an expression of natural life, without a goal, not even enlightenment."

In 2016, documentary filmmaker Werner Penzel made a film about the monastery. In ZEN FOR NOTHING, he accompanies a young woman from Switzerland during her six-month stay in Antaiji.