ON THE SPIRITUAL IN FOOD

text by Marianne Comfort and Judith Hausman, photos by Helenna Bratman

Issue 15 (March-May 02)

[Copyright © 2002, The Valley Table]

INTRODUCTION

by Jerry Novesky

History in the Hudson Valley can be measured by the sanctuary the valley and its flanking mountains have offered to waves of immigrants who brought their religious convictions with them. For whatever reason--freedom from persecution, freedom of expression or just because it offered familiar terrain--diverse and disparate groups, from Sephardic Jews to French Huguenots to Shakers, Protestants, Roman Catholics and, more recently, Tibetan Buddhists and Hindu Sikhs, have made the valley home. We've chosen to profile four religious communities in the valley that maintain a profound approach to food--a simple thing that, we found, nourishes both the physical and spiritual life of the practitioners.

ABODE OF THE MESSAGE

by Marianne Comfort

Fourteen men and women, interrupting their work and leisure for a weekday communal lunch, join hands in a circle in the rustic dining room at the heart of The Abode of The Message.

"O Thou, the Sustainer of our bodies, hearts and souls, bless all that we receive in thankfulness," they recite together. They continue the Sufi mealtime prayer in song, with a few voices veering off into lines of harmony, then process a buffet of soup, stir-fried vegetables and potato salads prepared with ingredients harvested that morning from the community's organic farm.

Prayer, music and food fit together naturally at this 26-year-old community in New Lebanon, on former Shaker land in the Taconic hills where New York meets Massachusetts.

This particular branch of Sufism, a religion rooted in early Islamic mysticism, originated with the Chistis, renowned in their native India for singing and dancing. Hazrat Inayat Khan introduced the order to Europe and the United States early in the twentieth century. Though teaching Muslim practices, Khan didn't require that followers change their religious affiliation. He instead created a "universal worship service" that honors six of the world's major religions--Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

At The Abode of The Message, only two of the 40 current residents consider themselves Muslims and follow Islamic dietary rules, according to Hadi Reinhertz, the community's administrator. These rules forbid the consumption of pork and require that other meats conform to a slaughtering process known as halal (though that's not much of a problem since the communal kitchen serves mostly vegetarian fare with only some poultry and fish).

The community was founded in 1975 by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, Hazarat Inayat Khan's son, among a cluster of nineteenth-century Shaker buildings on 435 acres. Members renamed many of the structures for the 99 names of God in Islam. Vakil, "Guardian Angel," houses the Abode office and an organization that coordinates spiritual retreats and seminars on the property; Rezak, "Abundance," houses the community kitchen and dining hall; Fatah, "Opener of the Way," contains a private school and men's and women's dorms; a former Shaker chair factory, Alim, "Insight," houses privately owned apartments. Members and visitors gather in the meditation hall for daily prayers, weekly classes in Sufism and Sunday morning universal worship services.

Sufism is more of an individualized path based on experience and the assistance of spiritual guides than a religion with time-honored rules for all to follow, members say. The focus is on unity, bringing humanity closer together in a deeper understanding of life, and on awakening the divinity within each person. Practices include meditation, celebration of the unity of all religious ideals, monthly "Dances of Universal Peace" and instruction in the dancing of the renowned Whirling Dervishes of Turkey.

Sarah Westwind, the community's farmer, says that she has neglected many of the formal Sufi practices in the more recent of her 20 years at The Abode of The Message. But the influence lingers in her work on the three-acre plot that supplies the produce that makes its way immediately to the communal kitchen or into a root cellar for winter storage.

"Farming is a teacher of mindfulness," she says. "It has helped me a lot. Say I'm vacuuming at home--I don't like to vacuum but I like the result, so I do it with a calmness. It's not doing something to get to the end of it, but to do it."

The Sufi practice of paying attention to divine qualities in everyday life infuses even ordinary kitchen tasks, Reinhertz says. "People prepare and cook food with mindfulness--it's not just thrown together and hastily prepared. There's a lot of thought given to that. Something of the consciousness of the person who is doing the cooking enters the food."

Reinhertz notes that medieval Sufi poets, such as the thirteenth-century mystic Rumi, often used cooking metaphors for describing life's journey. "One wants to avoid being burned by being cooked too rapidly, and a pot of rice needs to be carefully watched," he explains. "A cook could be seen as a spiritual guide or as God, the divine presence."

At The Abode of the Message, though, the spiritual side of meal preparation blends with the practical details of community life. All adults are required to spend three hours a week in the communal kitchen, either cleaning or cooking, or to pay others to take over their tasks. Everyone also contributes financially to the community food budget.

Residents are on their own for breakfasts, either in the individually owned homes on the property or the main residence hall kitchen. Communal lunches, including a public meal following the Sunday morning service, are served six days a week; dinners are served four days a week. The community serves a large public Indian banquet each February to mark the date of death of the order's founder, Hazrat Inayat Khan. The funds raised are donated to a local food bank.

Mirabai, who prefers to go by her Sufi name only (it means "intoxicated with the dance of God" in Arabic), does more than her share of the cooking. She has cooked professionally for 27 years, including meals for retreatants at the community. She considers the kitchen her spiritual classroom and deliberately creates a spiritual atmosphere there when she's in charge. When heading a team of cooks for a large-scale meal, she gathers the workers together for an invocation, concluding with, "We begin in the name of God," in Arabic, before they all take up their duties.

Even during the rush of preparations, Mirabai lights a candle in the kitchen to focus attention on the strongest Sufi practice--the remembrance that "there's no reality other than God." She asks that the cooks refrain from chatter and instead remain mindful of the tasks at hand. "We don't talk about our personal problems. We don't do business in the kitchen," she says.

If the work atmosphere becomes particularly hectic and rushed, Mirabai calls everyone together again to center themselves with a repetition of the invocation.

The focus on the food preparation is rewarding, she says: "The greatest compliment I ever get is that they feel the love in the food."

The Abode of The Message, 5 Abode Road, New Lebanon

(518) www.theabode.net

Free and open to all are Sunday worships, Sunday brunch (donation suggested) and instruction, weekly classes in meditation, healing circles, Dervish whirling training and Dances of Universal Peace (held on the first Friday of each month at 7:30). Costs vary from $25 to $60 per day (including meals) for Abode 'n' Breakfast, individual guided retreats, work exchange and work study programs. For reservations contact programs@theabode.net.</i>

OUR LADY OF THE RESURRECTION MONASTERY

by Marianne Comfort

There's a clear rhythm to life at Our Lady of the Resurrection Monastery in LaGrangeville. The daily schedule, which follows the sixth-century rule of Saint Benedict, flows from morning prayer, through meals, stretches of work, and set times for more prayer. Foods served at the common table reflect the seasons and, during the harvest months, what's available in the garden. As each year unfolds, periods of fasting are balanced by celebratory religious feasts.

It's a way of life as old as the French monasteries in which Brother Victor--Antoine d'Avila Latourrette was schooled. And he is bent on preserving as much of that Old World-style Roman Catholic tradition as he can for the couple of hundred guests who visit each year for silence, prayer and religious discussions.

"You receive guests as if they were Christ, so you have to offer them the very best," says the monk, who shares the Benedictine approach to hospitality. "From that comes the sacred preparation of food. It has to be done with great care, great finesse."

Some of the other monasteries common in the Hudson Valley landscape have turned to the convenience of commercial food services and cafeteria-style meals. Brother Victor, however, is bent on growing many of his own vegetables and herbs, raising chickens and sheep, preserving jams and vinegars, and preparing lunches and dinners by hand to retreatants.

Brother Victor considers these practices necessary ingredients to following in full spirit the order of life spelled out hundreds of years ago by Saint Benedict, who founded the religious order now known as the Benedictines. The directions for monastic life, called the Rule of Saint Benedict, include building each day around morning, noon, afternoon and evening prayers, and continuing to incorporate prayer throughout the rest of life as well, whether working in the kitchen or in the fields.

In his writings, Saint Benedict also suggested monasteries serve two meals a day from Easter through September, and only one meal a day during Advent and Lent, the solemn seasons leading up to Christmas and Easter, respectively. The main meal was to feature two cooked dishes plus bread and fruits and vegetables, if available. Fish and poultry were acceptable, but not meat. Wine, diluted with water, was commonly served. These practices were to be shared in community with others committed to the monastic life.

Brother Victor, who wears the traditional blue-and-black monastic habit, has made some accommodations to the realities of the early twenty-first century.

In European monasteries, the main meal was traditionally served at noon, followed by rest or prayer. Here, Brother Victor has adopted the American habit of returning to work soon after lunch--so he keeps that meal light to fend off sleepiness and instead serves a main meal in the evening.

When other monks shared the monastery with him, they followed the tradition of eating in silence (with music in the background) or of taking turns reading aloud from spiritual works. Now, with a dwindling number of men in the religious order, Brother Victor is the only permanent resident at the Dutchess County monastery. His guests prefer to talk during meals and share their concerns around the plain wooden tables set up in the dining room and, when there's a crowd, in the adjoining library. While traditionally only men would gather together around the monastery table, Brother Victor welcomes women in the Benedictine spirit of hospitality.

Brother Victor enjoys reading trendy cookbooks and newspaper articles about new tastes and ways of preparing foods. But in his own kitchen (part of the cloistered section of the monastery reserved for monks only), he keeps to the simple, mostly vegetarian recipes he has shared with thousands of home cooks in his cookbooks.

With frugality and simplicity--other tenets of the monastic way of life--Brother Victor limits his recipes to just a few ingredients and a few easy preparation steps. He says he spends very little money on food, relying on the bounty of his garden and pasture and donated supermarket discards of bread and other produce.

Trained as an apprentice cook in a French monastery, where soups were served twice a day, Brother Victor still builds many meals around that warming dish. A typical winter lunch features soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, or a simple omelet using eggs from the chickens he raises. Dinner may feature a souffle, pasta or risotto with vegetables from his organic garden, followed by an apple compote or tart for dessert.

Breakfast, which guests take on their own, typically is simply slices of bread with fruit juice, coffee or tea and maybe some fruit.

These meals are part of a schedule of work and prayer that dates to Saint Benedict's earliest communities. Monks and their guests rise for early morning prayer, then have breakfast and work until noon, when they pray again before lunch. Following an afternoon of more work, they gather for the early evening prayer called vespers and then enjoy a communal dinner. They complete the day with an night prayer.

Brother Victor's work revolves around the kitchen. To make the monastery as self-sufficient as possible, he grows herbs and vegetables in a plot of land dug out of rocky soil and now guarded over by a statue of Saint Fiacre, the patron saint of gardeners, and raises chickens and sheep in a nearby pasture. He puts up jars of jams, mustards, pickles and vinegars to sell in the monastery gift shop and through a catalog that features goods from other monasteries around the country.

"I see the garden as the place where we connect with God," which makes all food that is harvested from there sacred, Brother Victor says. The sacredness of food is especially celebrated at certain feast days, such as the Feast of the Transfiguration, in August, which commemorates the biblical revelation of Christ as the son of God. Brother Victor takes the food to be used for the main meal to the chapel, where it is blessed, before he returns to the kitchen to create a special supper and carry it to the dinner table.

Those times of feasting--and at other times of fasting--are important elements in the rhythm of monastic life. "The liturgy shapes our lives here," Brother Victor says. "A day of fasting is very different from the great joy of a feast. You need a sense of difference--you need those days low in expectations and you need those days of joyful celebration."

A feast includes festive touches such as an appetizer of fresh aoili with garden vegetables, or perhaps a special cheese, bread or wine, and a special dessert.

Fasting, meanwhile, doesn't necessarily mean a drastic reduction in the amount of food prepared and eaten, but rather is reflected in the simplicity of the ingredients. Traditionally, monasteries would serve only one full meal and a light snack daily during Lent, the solemn six weeks leading to Easter. Brother Victor modifies the season-long practice, however, to meet the needs of guests who might be visiting during that time, and he is careful to make sure that he eats enough to maintain the energy needed to run the monastery. "You have to know how to do penance in a way that doesn't give you an excuse not to do work," he says.

This means he may take his morning bread without jam or butter during Lent; on Good Friday, the day near the end of Lent that marks the death of Christ upon the cross, he refrains from all dairy products. Lent also is observed at the table in other ways: with a daily prayer that recalls people who don't have enough food throughout the year and by giving to charity any money he has saved through extra frugal measures during the season.

"In monastic life I have a certain distance from temporal things to appreciate other spiritual realities," Brother Victor says. "You become appreciative of very simple things" such as the gift of rain during a dry summer. "Gratitude is part of the monastic life. It's part of the spirituality of wholeness."

Our Lady of the Resurrection Monastery is a private retreat and is not open to the public. Masses are held on Christmas, Easter and on the Feast of Saint Benedict (July 12), though Brother Victor emphasizes the monastery's chapel holds only 30 and the masses are "very well attended." The Monastery Greetings catalogue, which includes products from monasteries around the country, is available by writing to 3287 Hyde Park Ave., Cleveland, OH 44118-2131, or at www.MonasteryGreetings.com. Brother Victor has published a number of cookbooks that reflect his life at the monastery, including:

Simplicity from a Monastery Kitchen (Random House/Broadway Books, 2001), $25 hardcover

In Celebration of the Seasons (Liguori/Triumph Books, 2000), $24.95 hardcover

From a Monastery Kitchen (Liguori/Triumph Books, 2000), $24 hardcover

Fresh from a Monastery Garden (Random House/Doubleday, 1998)), $25 hardcover

Twelve Months of Monastery Soups (Random House/Broadway Books, 1998) $16 paperback

A Monastic Year (Taylor Publishers, 1996) $14.95 hardcover

JEWISH FOODWAYS

by Judith Hausman

On this Friday afternoon the light is already cooling outside as Rabbitzin Mindy Jeremias, wife of Orthodox Rabbi Gedalyah Jeremias of the Mt. Kisco Hebrew Congregation, moves quickly around her spotless kitchen. This is the busiest day of the week for her and the early winter sunsets make her even more pressed for time.

Chicken, potato and noodle kugels and desserts for dinner must be two-thirds cooked before the Sabbath begins at sunset. She lifts a wide sheet of metal, called a blech, into position over the low flames of her stove and covers everything to keep it warm. She checks the pot of cholent, a substantial pot-au-feu combining slow-cooked meat, potatoes or barley, onions and beans--Saturday's shabbos lunch will be ready, warm and sustaining for that day of rest and prayer.

Onto the table, set with her best china and silver candelabra, Mindy places two loaves of shiny, braided challah--two loaves because the Jews received manna in the desert twice. Soon, she will light and bless the Sabbath candles (always the woman's duty), and her husband will return from services to bless the wine, welcoming the Sabbath like a bride. "The kiddush sanctifies the day with the sanctification of the wine," Mindy adds.

Mindy prepares a feast like this nearly every Friday. "The Sabbath cannot be celebrated without women's preparation," she comments, "and it's the happiest day of the week."

The elaborate dietary laws of kashrut, better known as kosher, are dictated by the Torah. These laws include taboos such as pork (to be kosher, animals must chew cud, have split hooves and be properly butchered), shellfish (fish must have scales and fins) and animals of prey. The consumption of meat and milk must be separated by at least six hours and the kitchenware used to serve and prepare these two categories must have no contact with one another. "The Torah says we cannot cook the child in its mother's milk," Mindy explains, "even in our bellies."

Most holidays are rich with symbolism, if not Talmudic interpretation. "Chicken soup and stuffed cabbage are traditionally served at Sukkoth [the harvest festival or Feast of the Tabernacles], but they are not symbolic foods," Mindy explains.

The combination of food and Jewish spirituality is perhaps most striking at Passover, an early spring holiday celebrated at the table. "Welcoming guests is always a mitzvah [a good deed]," Mindy explains, "but especially at Pesach [Passover]." Every element of the seder, or Passover meal, seems inseparable from spiritual life: The arrangement of parsley, horseradish, salt water, egg, a lamb shank and an apple-nut mixture called haroset on a special plate tells the story of the flight from Egypt and the wanderings in the desert. "After the liberation from Egypt the Jews were no longer slaves; we recline or lean on cushions during the seder to take the ease of kings." A divrei Torah, "words of the Torah" (a one-minute sermon or commentary), "elevates the meal," she adds.

Matzoh, the unleavened cracker eaten at Passover that recalls the hasty flight from Egypt, is manufactured under the strictest kosher regulation: A blessing before manufacturing begins focuses the kavanah, or spiritual intent, in the process; there is no discussion or talk, and once the flour and water are mixed no more than 18 minutes must elapse from beginning to end to insure no rising takes place (otherwise the batch cannot be eaten). All Passover foods, in fact, are specially supervised and proscribed. There must be no contact with hametz, or non-kosher foods.

Other Jewish holidays, though not as strictly focused on the table as Passover, are nonetheless closely linked with food. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, celebrated in March or April, is greeted with honey and new fruits, eaten for the first time that year with the new harvest. Potato pancakes and jelly doughnuts underscore the social nature and celebration of the Festival of Lights, Hanukkah, in December. Jews gather around the Hanukkah candles to keep winter away and to eat foods fried in oil (to symbolize the miracle of the oil lamp that burned seven days instead of one, providing light to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem). Purim, in February or March, commemorates Queen Esther's prevention of the annihilation of the Persian Jews; hamentaschen, the rich prune, apricot or even chocolate-filled cookie eaten on the holiday, is named after the three-sided hat of the villain of the story, Hamen.

There also are days of fasting to balance the feasts, when "we will be nourished by prayer," explains Mindy. "Especially on Yom Kippur, the Day of Repentance, we are concerned with spirituality, not physicality. We don't eat, drink, have sexual relations or even bathe." The fast day, which follows the ten days of penitence that begins on Rosh Hashanah, is devoted to reflection and sacrifice.

Judaism takes the role of the home cook and her meals seriously. Mindy quotes an ancient song called "Women of Valor": A good wife, who can find? She is like the trading ships, bringing food from afar. She gets up while it is still night to provide food for her household,and a fair share for her staff.

Mt. Kisco Hebrew Congregation, 15 Stewart Place, Mt. Kisco

ZEN MOUNTAIN MONASTERY

by Marianne Comfort

There's much more than first greets the eyes in the small bundles of bowls and utensils laid out on the long breakfast tables each morning at the Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Tremper. The ritual of unwrapping the layers of cloth, filling bowls from serving dishes of hot cereal, fruit and homemade sweet breads, paying attention to each bite of food, and then cleaning the individual eating ware carries the weight of centuries of Buddhist teachings.

As they chant in unison through each stage of the meal, more than three dozen long-term residents and retreatants gathered in the large dining hall practice the Zen model of harmony while reflecting on their responsibility for all life. For them, turning a simple breakfast into a liturgy illustrates the unity of the sacred and mundane; focusing on each detail of the ritual becomes yet another form of the meditation incorporated in activities throughout the day.

"Meditation in Zen is not just when you're sitting on a cushion," explains Gregory Shugen Arnold, the monastery's director of training. "There's walking Zen, there's eating Zen, speaking Zen, listening Zen."

On this particular morning, much of the meditation in all of its forms focuses on the tragic events of the day before, when terrorists hijacked four airplanes and steered three of them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing thousands of people. On September 11, the monastery had interrupted its scheduled activities to conduct a memorial service, sponsor an open forum for residents and retreatants to ask questions and express concerns, and provide time for teachers to meet one-on-one with students.

"Is there something that needs to be done? The answer in Buddhism is always 'yes,'" as practitioners contemplate, even in the chants of the ritual meal, how they personally can replace evil with goodness, Arnold says.

Zen, which literally means "meditation" in the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit, centers around a form of meditation known as zazen. The spiritual tradition guides practitioners through a journey deep within themselves to uncover their inherent wisdom and compassion. This school of Buddhism was introduced in China in the sixth century and then spread to Japan in the twelfth century. In 1980 it found a home in the Catskills, near Woodstock, amid a complex of buildings established during the Depression for religious training of young Roman Catholic men.

Thirty to 40 people now call the monastery their home, living in private rooms in the community buildings or in cabins or A-frames scattered about the wooded property. Retreatants arriving for a few days or up to a year of Zen training stay in dorms.

Mealtimes are a major focus in the community. During intensive training retreats, called sesshins, a schedule of seven to ten hours of meditation includes formal, silent breakfasts and lunches in the large meditation hall. During other times, the formal meals, called oryoki, are served only for breakfast and in the dining hall; lunches and dinners are then served more informally and allow for conversation among participants.

"It is one of the most elaborate liturgies we do," Arnold says of the ritual meals. "It raises it to this place of sacredness. It's a very important thing but a very simple thing: We're just eating breakfast."

After three hours of formal meditation--a service and yoga practice already behind them--the residents gather in the dining room for the 8am meal. Each carries in a bundle of bowls and eating utensils wrapped in cloths that double as napkins and cleaning rags.

A senior student taking a turn as the ino, or liturgist, signals the beginning of each stage of the ritual with a rap of wooden sticks. She leads the group in chants that interrupt the silence as participants bow their heads in concentration on each moment and each detail of the ritual.

"May we be relieved from self-clinging," the participants intone together as they unwrap a set of three or four bowls, a spoon, chopsticks and a wooden spatula. They recite the names of the Buddha as they pass the serving dishes and take just what they can eat at this sitting. They recall the labors of those who prepared the food and the means by which it was produced.

Just before eating, they bow to the table, raise a bowl above eye level and chant: "We eat to stop all evil, to practice good, to save all sentient beings, and to accomplish our Buddha way."

When all have finished, participants clean the eating utensils with their tongues and then pass jugs of hot water down the two long tables. Each participant pours a bit of the water into one bowl, then systematically begins scraping the inside with the wooden spatula, moving from one bowl to another until all are clean. Another earthenware jug moves down each table, into which some of the liquid from the last bowls is emptied; participants in unison then lift to their lips the rest of the liquid in their individual bowls and drink.

All meals aim to avoid waste, Arnold explains. Even during informal meals, when participants aren't prompted by a ritual to literally lick their dishes clean, diners are asked to take only what they will finish. The cooks, likewise, estimate quantities to reduce wasted food as much as possible and incorporate any leftovers into later meals.

The imperative not to waste food is spelled out in stories retold from long-dead teachers and in a set of instructions for the tenzo, or monastery cook, handed down from a thirteenth-century Japanese master. While the cook at the Zen Mountain Monastery doesn't retain the role of spiritual guide as in earlier times, the position still requires weekly menu planning, the blending of textures, colors and uncooked and cooked foods at each meal, and the compassion proscribed in the old text.

"The food is a real place to nurture the community," says Arnold, who worked in the kitchen soon after his arrival at the monastery in 1986. "If the cook is angry all morning, that's what he's serving in the food."

A typical noontime meal features grains, fresh vegetables (some of them harvested from the community's garden or purchased from local farms) and beans or soy products. A light evening meal usually consists of a simple soup and salad.

In this communal setting, residents and visitors are challenged to relinquish their food desires, which Arnold notes are some of the most intense forms of clinging and attachment that Zen practice seeks to ease. "We ask everyone to bend themselves a little to the meal, instead of the meal having to bend to the person," he says. "You receive what you are given."

Buddha taught "the middle way," or avoiding both the extreme of over-indulgence and the extreme of asceticism, Arnold says. The result is to be conscious of the consequences of actions and respond in a grounded, practical way, such as by purchasing foods from local producers and avoiding genetically modified foods. "Do not kill" is the first Buddhist precept, for instance, yet practitioners realize that they have to destroy living things--animals or plants--to sustain themselves. "If we're going to take life, we have to take the responsibility for that," Arnold explains.

In the oryoki chant, participants are asked to consider whether their "virtue and practice" deserve the food and the labors that brought it to them. "Every time we eat it's reminding people of the profound responsibility we're taking on...to use the life we're now gaining to benefit the world," he says.

Arnold emphasizes that Zen practice is not shunning the world; rather, the process of turning inward through meditation is used to find enlightenment on Earth. The monastery practices this through an active prison ministry, an annual holiday meal served to needy neighbors, and environmental education programs.

After the tragic events of September, the discussions of personal responsibility turned to arguing against a military response that could harm thousands more civilians, asking how to care for those suffering after the attacks and considering how to bring people together to improve understanding.

These thoughts are all tied to the meal and the recognition of the forms of life that contributed to that essential nourishment. After eating, "You have to do something that matters, that benefits someone else," Arnold says.

MRO (Mountain & Rivers Order), Zen Mountain Monastery, PO Box 197, Mt. Tremper, NY 12457

(845) 688-2228; www.mro.org zmmtrain@mro.org

Sunday services at the monastery are held from 8:45 to noon and include zazen and dharma discourse followed by a community lunch (donation suggested). On Wednesday evenings beginning instruction in zazen is offered at no charge. Weekend retreats (Friday evening through Sunday lunch) are $195, including meals. Weekly, monthly or yearly intensive retreats are available, as well as body practice retreats in Kyudo, Qigong, Yoga and Zen. Call for catalogue.