Ancient

I entered the zendo, my left foot lifting over the door-sill. I bowed to the altar, and walked to the back for my seat assignment. I had entered Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, tucked in a valley of the Ventana Wilderness just inland from Monterey, California, where my mother is a resident. My arrival coincided with the full moon and its ceremony replaced the usual evening sitting.

I stood at the edge of my zabuton, a three-foot square cushion of padded, black cotton and watched as the officiating priest entered, offered incense and the chanting began.

This, my mother had told me, was the oldest ceremony still practiced. It has been practiced since the time of the Buddha, twenty-five hundred years ago. The ceremony itself is a restating of vows: I will not kill; I will not take what is not given; I will not misuse sexuality; I will not lie; I will not intoxicate body and mind of self or other; I will not slander: I will not praise self at the expense of others; I will not be avaricious; I will not harbor ill will; and I will not abuse the three treasures: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.

A resonant monotone of chanting, filled the zendo, our voices muffled briefly as we bowed our heads to the zabuton in a full body bow. Through the ceremony, the repeated offering of incense, the call and response chanting, bells and gongs gave instruction, kept time, and signaled a movement. Their function added simplicity.

I had spent the morning in an ancient presence as well. After leaving the Sheep Creek Campground and driving out of King’s Canyon, I stopped for breakfast at the Grant Grove and walked among the sequoia. There is a picture of a US cavalry detachment standing ready to defend the General Sherman tree. Ten of them, mounted on horseback, stand abreast and still the trunk is visible on either side. So it is with the Grant tree, forty feet across at is base. But as the early Buddhists practiced the full moon ceremony, the seed of this tree sat sealed in a cone awaiting the fire that would release the cone, allow its scales to open, and its seeds to fall to the ground. Twenty-two hundred years ago, that fire came and the Grant tree seed germinated.

My mother and I left the zendo in the silence that would last through the next day’s breakfast. We climbed the hill to my cabin and sat on the porch, the full moon anchoring us. As we sat, the crickets resumed their songs. These too, I thought, these too are ancient chants.