37 years after our birth, Kanishka and I decided to celebrate our respective birthdays by going to Zendo meditation. We took the night train to Kodai on 8th and celebrated Kanishka's midnight birthday inside the train where we slept off, on side berths :) . Our return was slated on 13th dec evening and then we celebrated my birthday inside train, where again we slept on side-berths.
Bodhi Zendo
Located near the Kodai, at a small hillock, it has great views of surrounding scenery. The venue itself has well maintained gardens, open walking space and quietness that is generally missing.
Day 1 -
We arrived just before lunch. The sesshin on first day starts at 6 pm. After that, the expectation is to go to a quiet mode. There is an intro session where in you go and select your place to sit, grab many cushions to make it comfortable and learn some common practices. Library also opens up for an hr for you to checkout books for couple of days, however, it is recommended to not do any reading once the sesshin starts.
Also, everyone is expected to do an hr of chores every morning. Chores are allocated a night before. Chores include cutting vegetables, verandah cleaning, flower decoration, gardening and so on. Vegetables are mostly sourced from their own vegetable garden and food is home-made, made with a south Indian touch. No processed foods. Desserts are fruits or some sweet preparation.
Day 1 meditation was only for an hr. It was ok. Each meditation session has pre and post rituals. Most pre-rituals are bowing to the Buddha, three times. Post-meditation ritual is reading from the small booklet which contains short poem-like stanzas. Some contains Japanese mantras as well.
Day 2/Day3
Each day contains five hrs of meditation. Starting at 6am, first hr is meditation. Followed by breakfast and then daily chores. Both Kanishka and I were assigned verandah cleaning. It was good work. Next meditation is at 1030 am, followed by a talk by the zen master. After lunch, there are meditation sessions at 4 pm, 6pm and one after dinner at 8pm. There are enough breaks in between but overall, the day is packed with enough rest.
My meditation experience was overall ok. Zen meditation sessions are 20 mins each with some walking-meditation in between. Walks in between provides much needed blood circulation to legs. I did struggle to get to a blank state but it was manageable. My bigger challenges were to sit without backrest.
What did not go well was that Kodai is a cold-place and I did get catch slight fever/cold. This led to more stress and lack of enough concentration to focus on meditation. But, it was not that bad either.
Bigger challenge came with the ritual-istic part of Zendo. I have always ran away from forced reading of mantras. These reading materials were borderline gibberish to me. Some made sense, some not at all. Forced rituals like the night gong-ceremony gave it a cult-ish feel, like a scientology cult. Forced bowing down, that too thrice, made me question things even more.
Overall, my meditation sessions were okay-ish. While I do understand that expecting aha moment in three days is not practical, there was enough quite for me to calm my mind but enough traditions for me to not enjoy the good parts without getting worked up.
Food was good. Coffee was bad :) . One other good part is that you wash your own plates, that too on a natural made soap solution. There are four sinks - one to rinse the pate, one with soap solution to clean, one with warm water plain to clean plates, one cold water to clean again. This was good innovation.
Day 4
Day 4 was the last day with couple of hrs of meditation followed by public QnA with the founder of Bodhi Zendo. The QnA was revealing to me. It kind of confirmed what was being signalled over the previous three days - that Bodhi Zendo is actually a religion. A new-age religion, claiming to improve upon the existing ones, but it still has its worshipping-ish tendencies and it did not look like that there were any controls on it would not become cult-ish as it grows. It still expects blind faith from its devotees, has enough circuitous responses to keep things vague, draws on general good principles but then it hides the graver undertones underneath them.
There is a duality in Zendo - that ordinary way of life is the path to a happy life; live in the present, and be aware of the present, be mindful of what you do. But at the same time, the meditation, rituals, tend to signal something else. One story narrated in one of the talk-sessions shared that one Zen-master was actually a good-for-nothing person who came across another Zen master at his home and left his wife/children and became a Zen-disciple. I am not sure how they are able to rationalize/celebrate such masters.
I do respect folks who found this useful, found this to be their calling but as science says, it should not be beyond critique. And it is ok to let it be faith-driven and then be beyond questions but it should be called-so.
On Day 4, we also did a long walk down from Zendo to below market below to explore local cuisine there. While food was so-so, the walk was good and walking up and down a hill is always delightful.
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We got free from Zendo post lunch. Lunch was open for talking with each other. It was good to catch-up, many folks came from BLR. There were many non-Indians in the group who were staying for a longer duration, many of them came from Auroville, some said to escape the summer there.
Post lunch, our plan was to go to Kodai, another 45 mins away. We stayed at Kodai resort hotel which is a great place to stay, right next to Coakers walk which is a decent place to walk offering great views from Kodai hills. It is evident why Britishers were attracted to Kodai, to escape the Chennai heat.
In the afternoon, we did a long-ish walk - Coakers walk, botanical garden, shopping near Kodai lake. We went back to hotel to rest couple of hrs before heading for dinner which was okay-ish.
Kodai is like any touristy-hill-station now, crowded with more vehicles than space, commercialised, little less than others though.
Day 4 -
We booked a full day tour to something known as Village tour which includes a Pine tree forest break, visit to Mahalakshmi temple which is 1000 years old, visit to Sheep farm, boating at Mannavanur lake. Weather was good and some sceneries on the way was good. Mahalakshmi temple is located in a village which is painted by different colors and is a scenic delight. Sheep farms also had a rabbit farm - a typical govt facility which should be better maintained. Boating in the Mannavanur lake was good, more so, because it is surrounded by all forest nearby, no habitation.
We drove from this tour to the train station - Kodai road which is 2.5 hrs away from Kodai. Along the way, we stopped at the South Indian restaurant - Eden Garden where the food is yum! served on banana leaf.
Kanishka also packed few plants to get them back to BLR.
Before leaving Kodai, we also stopped at their bakery - Daily bread pastry corner, a chance coincidence since the bakery opens only between 3-5 pm. The cakes, breads, and everything was amazing! Highly recommended.
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Overall, a decent change, a new experience, a new hill station. A check box of Zendo done, birthday celebrations done.
Also, an Indian railways ride after a long long time. It is more nostalgia than actual fun now :)
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