Lamentations

Every spring and fall, enlightenment-seekers from all over come here to find out, converging for arduous weeklong retreats at the Bodhi Manda Zen Center in a red rock canyon among the thermal springs and Indian pueblos west of Santa Fe.
Dressed in black robes, they strive to live in the moment and awaken to the oneness of everything by rising at 3 a.m. for 18-hour sessions sitting lotus-style in the zenda, or meditation hall, eating communal vegan meals in silence, chanting and taking restorative dips in the hot pools.
But mostly they come to practice with an impish, smooth-faced Japanese monk, Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi, a 100-year-old Rinzai Zen master, one of the oldest in the world, who tells followers, “Excuse me for not dying.”
Forty-five years after arriving in the United States at 55 with no English but two dictionaries tucked into his robe sleeves, Roshi, or “venerable teacher,” the honorific by which he is widely known, is still going strong, traveling from his base in California to more than a dozen Zen centers he opened or inspired around the country, ordaining priests — more than 25 to date — and challenging students with Buddhist-style tough love