This is an unusual document: a Japanese Soto Zen master teaching zazen inside a Christian monastery, with the abbey's own liturgy framing the encounter at both ends. The recording opens in plainchant, with psalms and the Gloria Patri, and closes the same way, with the Alleluia and a prayer to the Father through the Son. Between the two, the monks' guest sets down a cushion and sits.
A French-speaking host introduces him and translates throughout, explaining that Deshimaru has been glad to spend these days among the community and thought it might interest them to see what Zen monks actually do. Since the monks cannot all travel to a Japanese monastery, he says, the monastery has come to them.
What follows is a complete, unhurried demonstration of the posture. The bows that begin the practice. The knees, which must touch the floor. The cushion, which is not optional. The left hand laid on the right, in the manner of the Soto branch. The back straight and very slightly arched, with the whole effort gathered into a kind of rooting in the belly. The eyes neither shut nor lifted, the gaze falling about a metre ahead. Breathing calm and silent. Shoulders released, the abdominal muscles soft enough that the intestines feel heavy and low, while the crown of the head pushes upward and the knees push down.
Then the thumbs, the detail Deshimaru keeps returning to. Their tips meet, and it is by watching them that a master sees what is happening inside a disciple: a tension, a contraction, a slackening, something not quite right. The instruction that follows is the heart of the teaching. Stopping thoughts is not possible. Concentrating completely on the posture is, and then thoughts can be allowed to pass without being caught. The mind, as he puts it, comes into harmony with the universe.
He shows how a master corrects a faulty posture, and then the kyosaku, presented here as something a practitioner asks for, when attention begins to slip, when drowsiness comes or the mind will not settle. He explains that in Japanese monasteries zazen runs for hours every day and sometimes through the night, which is why it is broken by walking meditation. Kinhin is then demonstrated in detail: the hands held differently, attention still in the thumbs, one half-step per breath, starting from the right foot, eyes on the ground three metres ahead, the same breathing as in sitting, the exhalation pressing down into the belly.
The session ends with Deshimaru chanting the Hannya Shingyo, the Heart Sutra, introduced to the monks as the central Mahayana teaching on emptiness and offered deliberately as a point of comparison with their own Gregorian chant. One rises from the head, the other from the belly he has spent the whole demonstration talking about.
For anyone interested in the early meeting between Zen and Christian monasticism in Europe, this recording is hard to match. It shows Deshimaru doing what he did best, which was not explaining Zen but simply sitting down and letting people watch.