Approaching The Mountain

I realise that I run the risk of boring the many of you who might not be so engrossed in the intricacies of setting up for the Mountain Seat Ceremony, but it is the big story round these parts this week. And yesterday was a good day. The rehearsals happened in more or less the right time frame with almost all of the right people present and paying attention; in fact I had more than half an hour to spare before evening zazen this time. Even better, having figured out an elegant solution to an audio problem that I hadn't realised we needed to deal with, which had been causing me headaches on Wednesday, and finding that it actually worked, I went off to sit feeling pretty relaxed. As a result of that, I had a flash of inspiration as to how to write out the script for all the instruments relatively painlessly, so I was motivated to go and do that after dinner when I had fewer distractions in the ino's office - though there were still a number of visitors - and then, having despaired for a couple of weeks at the state of the office, and being embarrassed that our arriving dignitaries might see it in that state, I gave it a serious clean as well, which felt good. I was thinking of cutting and pasting the finished script here, but I thought people's eyes would really start to glaze over. Happily, this kind of thing is meat and drink to me.
During the Ryoban rehearsal in the afternoon, I was reminded that while I have been quite immersed in the details of the ceremony, fourteen of Zen Center's finest were either coming to this completely fresh, or doing it for the first time in five years. There are a lot of sequences and movements, and I can't imagine people will retain all the information. We will put all the elements together this afternoon, and see how it looks, and then it might be 'all systems go' for the weekend.
The building is certainly filling up, with Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi, his wife, Chitose, his jisha and translator, and a younger monk arriving yesterday, an interesting counterpoint to Christina's four sisters from Switzerland who have been here for a couple of days. We are doing our best to make them all feel welcome, even as we negotiate our way around some of the transformations in the building, not least the mountain seat itself which has been installed in the Buddha Hall, and causes a few adjustments in our service manoeuvres. It's a good time for flexible mind.

The Ryoban wait on the stairs during the rehearsal