Welcome to Litsy!

Chadwick, a Texas-raised wanderer, college dropout, bumbling social activist, and hobbyhorse musician, flew to Japan to begin a four-year period of voluntary exile and Zen education. He recounts his experiences both inside and beyond the monastery walls and offers insightful portraits of the characters he knew in that world as they worked inexorably toward initiating him into the mysterious ways of Japan. #thankunext #amonthofsongs

I am not sure what I expected from this book. Maybe a travelogue, maybe an exploration of Zen Buddhism. It was a deeply personal series of vignettes that highlighted the author‘s four years in Japan, part of that time in a Zen monastery. The author‘s simple, neutral tone took me quite a while to sink into. It helped when I remembered that a key precept of Buddhism is to observe without judgement - exactly what he was doing in written form.