Attend a sesshin: what a Zen retreat is and what to expect

Join a sesshin — a period of intensive group sitting, usually up to a week — prepared for its schedule, forms and silence.

Pourquoi ça marche

The Rinzai and Ōbaku council defines sesshin as meditation retreats, generally lasting one week. The day is built of periods of zazen, each traditionally the length of one stick of incense (isshu), broken by kinhin; the teacher’s Dharma talk (teishō), usually on a kōan, a Zen text or a sutra; meals; and work. In Rinzai sesshin the student meets the teacher in sanzen, and formal sanzen (sōsan) is held on the first, fourth and seventh evenings. The Sōtōshū’s manners page describes the forms that hold the day together: bowing on entering the hall and at one’s seat, bells that begin and end each period, kinhin in step with the group, and the kyosaku, a stick used to wake sitters who are drowsy or scattered, which the Sōtō manners page says a sitter may request with a gesture of joined palms. The structure removes daily choices so that attention can stay with sitting for days at a time.

Comment faire

1. Before your first sesshin, sit regularly with a group for a while and attend a one-day sitting if the centre offers one.
2. Read the centre’s schedule and guidelines in advance, and ask about meals, work, interviews and whether you may step out to rest.
3. Learn the basic forms — gassho, shashu, bowing, the bells — at a beginners’ session so you are not learning them all on the first morning.
4. Arrive with nothing to prove. Keep the schedule as well as you can, and when you fall asleep or ache, simply begin again.
5. Use the private meeting with the teacher, or the practice leader, to say plainly how it is going.
6. If anything becomes frightening or overwhelming, open your eyes, feel your feet, and tell the teacher or a staff member; stepping out to walk, eat or rest is part of looking after yourself, not a failure.

Données probantes

Definitions of sesshin, teishō, sanzen, sōsan and isshu (one incense stick, one period of zazen) are from the Rinzai and Ōbaku council’s terminology and sitting pages. The bells, kinhin, bowing and use of the kyosaku are from the Sōtōshū’s Manners in the Zendo. Lindahl and colleagues interviewed Western practitioners from Theravāda, Zen and Tibetan traditions and documented a wide range of meditation-related experiences, some of them distressing and some linked to intensive retreat practice. (observational)

Schedules and forms differ widely between centres, and Western sesshin are often shorter than a week. The Lindahl study is qualitative and does not estimate how often difficulties occur. See the meditation-related-challenges page; if thoughts of harming yourself ever arise during or after a retreat, contact a crisis line or emergency services.

Sources

• Joint Council for Rinzai and Ōbaku Zen. What is Zen? — Terminology. Rinnou.net.
• Joint Council for Rinzai and Ōbaku Zen. Zazen — Sitting (regulating body, breath and mind). Rinnou.net.
• Sōtōshū (Soto Zen Buddhism). Manners in the Zendo — entering, the bell, kinhin, the kyosaku, gassho, shashu and prostrations. SOTOZEN.COM.
• Lindahl, J. R., Fisher, N. E., Cooper, D. J., Rosen, R. K., & Britton, W. B. (2017). The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists. PLOS ONE, 12(5), e0176239.

Erreur fréquente

Treating a first sesshin as an endurance test — sitting through severe pain or exhaustion in silence rather than asking how to adjust. The forms are there to support the sitting, and teachers expect beginners to ask.