The Hours*

I've blogged before about my years living at Shim Gwang Sa, Mind Light Temple, located on the outskirts of Boston. It was wonderful community living and a privilege to train zen martial arts under the tutelage of a modern Zen Master. After several seasons I became attuned to temple life and the concomitant seasonal changes in nature, due in part to the tempo of care and maintenance of the temple building itself, its gardens, and grounds.

With the setting back of clocks this weekend, I'm reminded that we revere monastics (and poets) for their moment-to-moment awareness: awareness of subtle shifts in nature, awareness of time.(1) Thinking further about time found me reflecting on the monastic understanding of the word "hour", which goes back to the Greek word, hora.

The Greek notion means "time" or "season", and is more expansive than our notion of a day evenly divided into twenty-four-hour segments. Modern folk come closer to an appreciation of the original understanding when considering the seasons of the year: in which a season is a mood and an experience, not an exact period that starts, say, on December twenty-first and ends on March twenty-first. We sense a difference in the quality of light, the length of daylight, the feel of the air on our skin and are aware that something is changing in nature.

This time of year feels natural to slow down and begin a daily practice of contemplation and meditation. All of this thinking about monastic life has drawn forth memories of extended family who had taken Holy Orders -- and of my first encounters with the canonical hours. A canonical hour is more a presence than a measurement. Benedictine Brother David refers to this sense of time as "a soul measure". He says, even in our busy modern schedules we notice that pre-dawn, early morning, and high noon each have qualities all their own. Mid-afternoon, "the time shadows lengthen", has a different character from the time when it gets dark and we turn on the lights. Each monastic hour issues a distinctive challenge and calls for a unique response; just reading about them invites a sense of calm and purpose:

• Vigils - The Night Watch: before the day's noises begin; when it is still perfectly quiet

• Lauds - The Coming of the Light: around breakfast time; nourish your soul for the coming day

• Prime - Deliberate Beginning: when you get to your workplace and just before you begin

• Terce - Blessing: a mid-morning prayer break

• Sext - Fervor and Commitment: a meditation during lunch hour

• None - Shadows Grow Longer: the needed boost for the last hours of the work day

• Vespers - Lighting the Lamps: an evening celebration

• Compline - Completing the Circle: at night just before going to bed

Of course, there are many ways to pray (and not all chose to). It was said of Abba Arsenius, a desert monk from 4th or 5th century Egypt, that on Saturday evenings, preparing for the "the glory of Sunday", he would turn his back on the sun and stretch out his hands in prayer towards the heavens, till once again the sun shone on his face. Then he would sit down.
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* Bonus hour this weekend with the end of Daylight Saving Time; clocks back Saturday night.

(1). 

Monks and Ripples

Back in my twenties, after attaining a First Degree Black Belt in Shim Gum Do Korean Zen Martial Arts, I moved into the monastery located on the outskirts of Boston. I lived with other residents and the Founding Master, Zen Master Chang Sik Kim, a Korean Zen Buddhist monk who taught us and other students at Shim Gwang Sa, the Mind Light Temple.

Shim Gwang Sa is a renovated 100+ year-old building, a former church. Students in the Residency Program have professional jobs or attend college classes during the day and maintain a daily morning and evening meditation and martial arts practice and weekly temple work schedule. During the nearly four years I lived there, the number of residents varied between nine and sixteen, and ages ranged from adults in their twenties and thirties, primarily, with a few folks in their forties.

None of us at Shim Gwang Sa aspired to monkshood. We took no vows of celibacy or poverty; we were training for good health and successful living. In ideal terms though, there was a lot we could learn from the monk: a monk always knows what he's supposed to do at any given time of the day and temple-life strove for this ideal.

In college, I had been introduced to the poems and writings of American Trappist monk Thomas Merton and German-language poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Merton's work, The Seven Storey Mountain, written during his first years in the monastery at Gethsemani, redefined contemplative life for many. Rilke had no desire to become a monk, but he was so moved by the monastic life he found when he traveled in Russia - and was particularly inspired by the archetype of the monk - that he wrote a series of poems called The Book of Hours, the title coming from the book from which monks chant the canonical hours.

I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it. 

I circle around God, around the primordial tower. I've been circling for thousands of years and I still don't know: am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song? 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours (translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows)

To the monk, a canonical hour is more a presence in the day rather than our common understanding of a sixty-minute segment of it. We come closer to appreciating the monastic idea when reflecting on the seasons of the year: each season is defined less by exact start and end dates and more on qualitative aspects of time expressed in nature.

Before the calendar marked the beginning of Autumn last week, we already knew something was underway. One sensed a subtle shift in mood: the angle and quality of light and diminishing daylight betrayed the warm summer temperatures. I noted that some of the trees had given way to this shift with changing leaves, in evidence since August. It's the time of year when personal reflection comes more easily and naturally for me, too; I reflect on personal goals, hopes, dreams. It feels easier now that children are back in school than during our active summer.

Even in our busy schedules, we notice that different times of the day have unique qualities, as well. In monastic life, each hour issues a distinct challenge and calls for a response.

Living healthy lives means building in moments of daily vision, then letting our action flow from it. A Japanese proverb warns: 

Vision without action is a daydream.
Action without vision is a nightmare.

The over-arching clarity of our vision and action ultimately builds our days, our weeks, our lives. To the monk, life is about bringing together clarity of vision and action in each moment by moment. Vision alone, meditation alone, is incomplete contemplation. Completing the circle requires a melding of vision and action; all of us (not just monks!) are called to contemplation in this sense.