Going Zen in the Middle of Nowhere

As penance for my anemic performance the last couple weeks, I decided to scour the list of things to do this weekend in Decorah. Admittedly, I was kind of hoping to counter the hectic pace of the past couple weeks by doing absolutely nothing. Maybe I’d play some video games or marathon a DVD set. If I was feeling really optimistic, I’d head to Decorah and catch “The Lorax” to indulge in the irony of a New Jersey resident playing the voice of the Lorax, who speaks for the trees. Still, I found something that promised to be interesting—a Winter Gala at the—get this—Ryomonji Zen Buddhist temple. I think only in Decorah would you see an Iowa Zen Buddhist temple. Maybe Des Moines, but saying  “The Zen Buddhist Temple in Des Moines,” feels like I’m disturbing the order of the universe on some fundamental level. Regardless, a Zen Buddhist temple would definitely be worth checking out. Thus it was that I got in my Aveo and putted off down the road in search of the Buddhist Temple.

The first thing to understand about the Ryumonji Zen Monastery is that it is an honest-to-goodness monastery, and it is registered in Japan at the Zen Headquarters as a formal temple. The second thing to understand about the Ryumonji Monastery is that it is not in Decorah, and I want to be very emphatic on this point. Dear Lord it is not in Decorah. Instead, it is located out in the wilderness, about as far away from everything as it could possibly be. There is a farm next to it, but other than that there is nothing but trees and fields. I drove down back roads I didn’t know existed, which isn’t that hard, and then the pavement ended and I was rattling down dirt roads, surrounded by hills, trees and the occasional cliff until I came to the road leading to the Monastery. Actually, “road” is somewhat misleading. It’s actually more of a narrow dirt driveway that gradually circles around the hill at an angle that is alarmingly close to forty-five degrees. As I drove up, I could hear my Aveo’s little engine struggling to get the rest of the car to the parking lot at the top. I downshifted until I was in first gear, and that was how I climbed the hill leading to the Ryumonji Monastery, at about five miles an hour my fingers gripping the steering wheel so hard they left indentations. I suppose the attendees of the Buddhist temple could use this time for contemplating mysteries of life and applying the Zen Buddhist teachings to this particular task. I, on the other hand, had a more rudimentary mantra that went something like, “Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap.” There was probably also a prayer in there to the Judeo-Christian God that if he would get me up this hill I would handle the getting down part myself. Finally, though, I arrived at the monastery.

When I got up there, I realized that every other car up there had a more powerful engine than mine. I also realized that I had been subconsciously underestimating the monastery. I was expecting something small. A pre-fab steel building, maybe, or a repurposed farm house. Instead, I was treated to a monastery that would look more at home in Tibet, which is not in Japan, but I have never seen a Japanese Zen monastery sitting on the mountains. The Ryumonji Zen Monastery was pretty immense, and I have no idea how they managed it. The building still looks new, except for the large metal bell in front, which has the greenish cast reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty. You could see this bell being rung constantly for decades, if not centuries. I felt like I should be wearing monk robes and sandals as I approached, not boots and a leather jacket. Then I opened the door, and found myself in a very Japanese-looking foyer. To my left were people browsing through a silent auction that included local craftsmen’s fares, some Buddhist items including a granite head of Buddha from China, and to my left…a duet playing what sounded like very slow polka music. Actually, I should say I don’t know for sure that it was polka music. The two musicians played the violin and the accordion, though, which is a surefire way to polkify any song. Still, if there was one type of music I wasn’t expecting to hear at a Buddhist temple, polka would be it.

Nevertheless, I took off my shoes and allowed a woman named Becky to lead me to a library that currently served as a small tea house, where I partook in a tea ceremony with a very nice woman who showed me how it was supposed to go. I ate a red bean paste bun to counter the bitterness of the macha tea, and I have to say that the sweetness and the texture take some getting used to. The best comparison I can draw is eating a raw pie crust sweetened with sugar. Then I drank the tea, which was delicious. If you’ve never had macha tea before, I would heartily recommend searching for it at your nearest Asian food store. All the while I tried to figure out how it was that the woman across from me, who looked as though she should be pulling bran muffins from an oven in a farm house came to be here, dressed in a kimono, giving me an abbreviated history of macha tea.

It’s not a question I felt comfortable asking, though. Actually, it’s not a question you can ask anyone—“Why aren’t you the stereotype I expected?” is rude at best. When a stereotype gets blown out of the water, the best thing to do is sit back and revel in the world’s ability not to conform to your view of reality. So I wandered through the monastery, taking it all in. Along the way I had a vegetarian dinner that, while delicious, left me somewhat unfulfilled, as though a cheeseburger could have tied the whole meal together.

Other points of note include what one might call the training center, a series of twelve wide cots that also serve as meditation chambers, all centered around a tall altar. Its purpose is to house Buddhist monks as they train for however long they need to train. That’s right, the Ryumonji Monastery is set up to be a pilgrimage destination. I almost had to laugh when I heard this, because for the life of me I couldn’t imagine Buddhists in, say, Osaka talking amongst themselves and saying, “You know where we really need to go to further our spiritual awakening? Iowa!” On reflection, though, given the unlikelihood of the monastery existing at all and the number of people who attended the ceremony, perhaps it wasn’t that unlikely. Also, given the nature of Zen, where better for a Zen Buddhist temple to exist than the middle of nowhere?

If nothing else, the meeting at the Buddhist temple filled me with optimism and a renewed sense of wonder for the Driftless region. I admired these Buddhists for their tenacity and perseverance, although I still indulged in a long, meaningful conversation with God about the existence of miracles and whether I might be entitled to a handful as I drove my car down their deathtrap of a driveway.