Oh what a morning...

Went to a Zazen meditation session this morning at a nearby temple. With me was my culture sensei and 4 other people from my class.

We woke up at 5:30 a.m. and rode our bikes in the rain down to Kitaoji station. From there the temple was only a few minutes away. We were greeted by two monks and an Englishman who is training there.
Leaving our shoes outside, we were invited into one of the halls where we each sat on a small mat with two pillows and listened to the instructions of the head monk.
He told us how to sit, breathe, keep our hands and eyes and finally - to clear our minds. One resounding clang of a bell and two claps of wooden stick later we did our best, keeping our backs straight, eyes half open, breathing slowly and counting to ten on each breath out.

25 minutes later the sharp sound of the two sticks being banged together brought me back into reality as we had a short break to adjust our legs (for me, to actually get the blood running again at all) and stretch. The next 25 minutes the monk said he would be walking around with the big wooden stick they use to hit the monks who they feel aren't focused enough and by all means we should ask him to hit us on the shoulders if we wanted. We had seen a video of this in class and of course we had to try. I bowed as he walked past me and after bowing back he lightly put the stick on my right shoulder and whack! whack! smacked the focus right back into me. After hitting my left shoulder as well we both bowed again and I continued by meditation - this time having a better time at focusing on my body.

Usually when I meditate I try to forget my body and completely closing my eyes I soon drift far away, this was the first time I have tried keeping grounded and centered with my eyes open and focusing on breathing and counting rather than retreating into my mind.
I will definitely start alternating between these two methods from now on.

After the meditation we were invited to drink tea with the monks which of course we accepted and sat for a while chatting about our countries, Buddhism, Christianity etc.

Now I'm back home with another mug full of steaming hot green tea, some nice jazz music I got yesterday, ready to work on the mountain of homework, essays and presentations that await me.