Chabana: A Personal Meditation

We had an excellent turnout for the Ikebana program at Engaku-ji in Kita-Kamakura last week. Engaku-ji is one of the temples I visited during hydrangea season this past June so I managed to shepherd my charges from the Navy base to the meeting site without inflicting one of my usual route digressions on them. The fact that the temple entrance is about 30 yards from the train platform helped.

The topic was Chabana, a special flower arrangement used for Japanese tea ceremonies. Many Japanese women these days take classes to learn the traditional procedures for making and serving tea, much as they study kimono dressing and flower arranging. More than 80 of our instructor's students accompanied her to Engaku-ji so we were packed in like sardines. Half of the Americans managed to nab a coveted stool but the others had to settle for one of the thin cushions in the front of the room. I know what it feels like to sit on one of those cushions for 90 minutes so I stood in the back.

The Engaku-ji priest welcomed us. He's a warm, sprightly man who embraced Zen Buddhism late in life. He said we can try the temple's meditation programs whenever we like without converting to Buddhism. This is semi-intriguing. First, I need to find out whether those cushions are part of the deal.

That lotus flower arrangement on the altar behind the priest was pleasing to my eyes. An arrangement using white lotus on the opposite end of the altar mirrored this one. "Absolutely lovely" was my conclusion just as the Chabana instructor began telling the audience everything that was wrong with those arrangements. That's when I tuned her out and engaged in my own personal form of meditation.

My technique has been honed over the course of nearly sixty years of sitting through first sermons and then, after Vatican II, homilies delivered by Catholic priests with a wide range of oratorical skills. You are welcome to try this even if you are not Catholic and are not the least bit interested in converting.

The ability to improvise is crucial. Zen temples lack chandeliers so counting light bulbs, which serves me well in the Navy base chapel, will not occupy your mind for long here. Fortunately I was standing in the back of the room near an open sliding door and was able to admire the view, count a few drops of rain falling, and then make google-eyes at several dozen school children across the hedge until someone felt chilly and slid all the doors closed. So then I was forced to count all the American women who immediately lifted their programs and started fanning themselves. Several seconds were spent assessing the possibility that Asian body temperatures really are two degrees cooler on average than Caucasian's. Or is that just a cultural myth?

When all else fails, try to estimate the diameter of someone's waist, or count the rows of knitting in someone's shawl, or make up stories about the animals prancing across ladies' backs.

Before I succeeded in imagining the silver leopards crawling stealthily across that green savannah to pounce on the little purple cats, the program ended and it was time for lunch. Lucky cats.

Needless to say, this was not the most interesting Ikebana program I've attended -- too much lecturing and too little demonstrating -- but it's the people and not the program that keep me coming back.