Short monologue describing austere/harsh conditions in Zen monastery meditation practice: practitioners often sit facing a wall (sometimes with windows opened in winter), creating deliberately uncomfortable conditions. The speaker links this austerity to the idea that imposing suffering on oneself is used historically as a method to provoke a change in consciousness and become a spiritual practice.
You go to a Zen monastery, it's pretty austere and harsh. The conditions are harsh and austere. The meditation practice is done by facing a wall. In many places, you sit in front of a wall and you meditate. And in the winter, they might even open the windows. You get really. And so it's a dreadful situation to be in. I mean, you wouldn't normally choose that for yourself, but they. They choose it. The idea behind was probably first, when humans first came up with this idea that imposing suffering on yourself can bring about a change in consciousness. That is the idea behind it, that, that it becomes the spiritual practice.
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