“We’ve been doing nothing, and boy are we bad at it,” Serge said. I had to agree. We had just finished a three-day ZenA school of Mahayana Buddhism emphasizing the value of meditation and intuition. meditation retreat, called a sesshin. Doing nothing, it turned out, was one of the hardest things I’d ever tried.

ZenA school of Mahayana Buddhism emphasizing the value of meditation and intuition. meditation involves sitting absolutely still on a cushion and mentally counting one’s breaths, from one to ten, over and over, for about an hour at a time. Five minutes before the opening of sesshin, it hardly seemed like an insurmountable task. I lined up with everyone else and we knelt in front of our cushions. Genjo, the Zen priest, walked up the aisle between the two rows of cushions and began the ritual that would open each ‘sit’. He lit a tall candle and a stick of incense, then bowed to the altar at the front of the zendo. Following along with my neighbors, I bowed to the altar, then stood up and turned to bow to the person across from me. I sat down on my cushion, crossed my legs, and arranged my hands in the approved fashion, left thumb tucked inside the right hand. Genjo smacked two wooden blocks together (we called them the clackers) and then rang the bell to start the sit.

I closed my eyes and started counting my breath. I had reached ten perhaps twice, when I realized something was not quite right about how I was sitting. My right foot was tucked slightly under my left leg, and my toes were starting to fall asleep. It was a small irritation that wouldn’t have bothered me if I had been able to shift my weight off the leg or move the foot away, but we were not permitted to move: I was stuck for a full hour in this exact position. Instantly, every other little discomfort began making itself known. My nose was itching. My left foot was digging into my right shin. My shoulders were cramping up. My hands were starting to go numb in my lap. A veritable chorus of complaints came pouring in from all directions, and I squeezed my eyes shut tighter and soldiered on with counting.

Finally, the bell rang to signify the end of the sit. I bowed to the front of the zendo along with everyone else, then gratefully scrambled to my feet. I wiggled my numb toes and waited for instructions on what to do next. We continued to stand. And stand. I realized with sinking heart that this was all the break we were going to get: five minutes of standing in silence, directly in front of our respective cushions. There was barely enough time for my foot to revive before everyone began arranging themselves on their cushions again. I sighed and sank back down.

Forty minutes later, the bell rang again. We got up in an orderly line and started trotting around the rows of cushions for kinhin, or “walking meditation.” Genjo started at a reasonably brisk walk but then suddenly slowed to a snail crawl. For the next several minutes I concentrated on my feet: in order to avoid overtaking the person in front of me, each step had to be imperceptible—a millimeter at most. It was hardly better than sitting. No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than Genjo took off at a flat-out sprint, the trailing sleeves of his monk’s robes flying behind him. Everyone dashed around the cushions again and again, wheezing and stepping on one another’s heels, and narrowly avoided a cartoon-style pile up all along the line when Genjo abruptly slowed once more.

After one more sit, we were finally given a break—a real break where we could stumble off the mat and stampede downstairs to stretch our legs and exchange sheepish grins. Though we were theoretically free to talk now, the people I passed in conversation were whispering, their faces close together. After hours on end of unbroken silence, the habit was hard to break. I had no interest in talking to anyone; I was dazed. I felt like I was moving through thick molasses. I wanted to run around the parking lot, or perhaps take a nap. When we filed back upstairs for the next round of sits, I was almost relieved to have a purpose again.

By evening, I had memorized the view out the opposite window. My angle gave me only the slightest glimpse of pure sky, so I missed the sunset, but I saw twilight come and go as the blood pooled in my legs and hands and the burning spread down my left arm. The confused tangle of trunks and branches finally vanished into the darkness and I was instantly restless. Surely it had to be nine o’clock now—time for kinhin? Time to stand up for a few minutes? It had to be time for something, anything, to disturb the silence that had settled down like a thick blanket.

Dokusan, when my turn finally came, was a glorious break—an opportunity for one person at a time to leave the building and walk (actually walk!) a comparatively long way across the yard to the cottage on the property in order to have a private audience with Genjo. Perhaps you would also receive a koanRiddle in zen, or Zen riddle, which would help focus your sitting and open your mind. Allegedly. I had never pondered a koan, and was not particularly expecting one while I waited on the porch. I was entirely focused on worldly matters, specifically the wind, which came howling around the corner of the cottage and chided me for not wearing enough layers. Phil, in front of me in line, turned and whispered, “I forgot my koan.”

The bell rang inside the cottage, signaling my turn. When I opened the door for Phil to back out, a blast of warm air hit me in the face. I closed the door behind me, dropped to my knees and touched my forehead to the floor. Two more steps forward (right foot first) then kneel and bow again. I was so focused on remembering the ritual I hadn’t even registered Genjo’s appearance, but as I sat up, he came into focus. Kneeling in his flowing robes, he was the very picture of a stern Buddhist monk, despite a huge pair of glasses that reminded me of my grandfather. The glow from a tall paper lantern in the corner reflected on his bald head. As I stared at him, wondering what was supposed to happen next, Genjo looked back with wide eyes and quirked one long, bristling eyebrow. Somehow, that changed the atmosphere in an instant: it was like a quick, comforting prod in the right direction, bypassing all ritual and tradition. Stumbling a little over the words, I introduced myself.

We spoke for a while, and Genjo asked about my aikidoThe word "Aikido" is made up of three japanese characters: ai - harmony, ki - spirit, mind, or universal energy, do - the way. Thus Aikido is "the way of harmony with universal energy." practice—he studied himself, and considered aikido to be closely intertwined with Zen. I told him I had been training for almost nine years.

“My goodness,” said Genjo. “Well, for all those nine years, can you tell me this: what is the essence of aikido?”

I have spent my entire life explaining aikido to the people I meet. Without thinking, I opened my mouth to give a pat and rehearsed answer. He clarified before any sound escaped.

“I don’t mean an answer in words. I’m talking about a simple gesture. What is the essence of aikido, in a simple gesture? This isn’t something you figure out. The answer should present itself after you have meditated while holding it in your consciousness.”

Oh. It was a koan.

I was confounded. Never before had I been explicitly instructed not to figure out a problem. Figuring things out comes naturally to me, and I enjoy it. When I studied calculus and physics, I loved working my way through equations, and was quick to see new options emerge as I finished a particular step. But I had no idea how to override that impulse to “figure it out”… to let a question sit and age until the answer revealed itself.

Genjo saw my confusion, smiled, and rang the bell signaling the end of the interview. I walked up the hill and back to my cushion.

Hours later, I was still wrestling my subconscious into submission. There were cramps in my shoulders and numbness washing up over my entire lower body, but worst of all, I kept catching myself picking away at the koan. It was difficult to “hold it in my consciousness,” as Genjo had instructed, without turning it over and over and trying to figure it out. How could a single gesture be the essence of aikido? What did essence mean, anyway—did a recurring movement count? I knew that the semantics of any koan are vitally important, so I had to assume Genjo meant exactly what he said.

At eleven, the final sit of the evening concluded. I rolled out my sleeping bag on the mat. It was a joy to move as I pleased, to straighten my aching knees and roll my head around on my stiff neck. It was a joy to leave my koan alone for the moment and fall asleep.

A loud, arrhythmic clapping startled me awake. The noise rattled around the inside of my head and was a far more effective alarm than the quiet radio I woke up to at home. The source turned out to be another pair of clackers, snapping at us from under the stairs. All around me, people were sitting up bleary-eyed and tousle-haired. It was four a.m. and pitch black outside. By the light of the paper lanterns I rolled up my sleeping bag and stowed it away. After ten minutes of hurried stretching, it was time to sit and meditate again until breakfast.

Sitting still was harder in the morning chill. During each break, people went downstairs to retrieve more layers of chunky sweaters and scarves, their silhouettes getting increasingly rounder. The cold seeped into my bones. My posture, which had improved the day before, suffered as I hunched over and conserved warmth. Through the condensation on the window across from me, I watched the sky turn gray and wondered what on earth I was doing. What kind of a person would voluntarily subject themselves to this?

Yet despite all my doubts, I was getting better at it. Each time the bell rang, I was surprised at how short the sit had been. I no longer had to fight as hard not to fidget. Settling into the position took less time and fewer readjustments. The trauma of the day before had paid off: I had learned how to be still. I began to feel an inkling of pride over my accomplishment, and then the koan dropped like a stone into my consciousness.

Teaching my body to do nothing was easy compared to teaching my mind to do nothing. I couldn’t resist the urge to think. I tried to push the koan out of my mind entirely, but how could I return to Genjo not knowing the answer? There had to be a solution, a simple solution, and I didn’t know how to find it without looking.

On my second visit to the porch, I didn’t notice the wind. I was racking my brains for an answer—any answer—to give to Genjo, despite my suspicion that a last-ditch attempt was almost certainly the wrong way to go about it. “I forgot my koan again,” Phil whispered.

“So?” said Genjo, looking at me kindly. “How’s it going?”

“Not so good,” I said, and to my relief, he didn’t look disappointed.

“That’s normal. Ordinarily it takes about three days of sesshin before you can really settle in and not be distracted—I’d be surprised if you solved it already.”

Oh. In the silence that followed, I realized that Genjo had never expected me to come back with an answer. He just saw that I needed to learn to think without thinking. He wanted me to go forth with a question—any question—and just live with it, without busying my brain. The essence of aikido was not the point. The point was the essence of thinking.

Several months have passed. I’m now living at the dojoPlace of the way; a place for strengthening and refinement body, mind and spirit; training hall where I train in aikido, and three days a week I get up at five-thirty and meditate for an hour. The koan is still with me. I can’t say I’m any better at clearing my mind, but at least I understand that it’s not just about finding answers, which had always been so easy for me. What’s difficult is living with a question… and doing nothing.