06 Talking Zen with Gesshin Claire Greenwood

Episode six of the Japan Station podcast is here and this time we're talking about Zen. Gesshin Claire Greenwood is a Zen priest and the author of the book Bow First, Ask Questions Later: Ordination, Love, and Monastic Zen in Japan. Funny, intense, and thought-provoking, the book chronicles the more than five years Gesshin spent in Japan training in Zen and living in monasteries. During her time in Japan she trained at both a temple monastery in Okayama Prefecture called Toshō-ji and an extremely strict monastery for Zen nuns in Aichi Prefecture called Niso-do. In this episode we talk about whether Zen is a religion, what led Gesshin to go to Japan, whether not knowing Japanese when she began training in Japan was an advantage, the difficulties of monastic life, a hilarious story involving a bullet train ride and faxed instructions on how to put on her kesagōri (a type of monastic pack for carrying one's belongings), a famous Koan about a monk killing a cat, and much much more. You won't achieve enlightened after listening to this episode, but it certainly won't hurt!