As a monk dedicated to the path of material simplicity and sense-stilled peace I've lived in many monk's cells. They were never bigger than 10 feet by 10 feet square. Often, smaller. I know the hundred square feet of my rooms as if it is the perfect golden square, the perfect harmony of height, width and depth, a cube cookie-cutting the psychic universe into the subatomic physics of our universe. Always that space of a hundred square feet, wherever I encounter it, makes me feel at home and rooted. It could be a home's guest room, a small hotel room or a dirt-floor hovel on a Nepali pilgrimage route-I resonate to the hundred square feet.

Some of the cells I occupied for many years were river stone and smoothed concrete floors. Some were pinewood and planked floors, some simply unpainted concrete block with rough-hewn concrete floors and tropical louvered windows. One cell was a wood-paneled room with blue carpet and a small fireplace for the alpine zone winters, but nothing else. Some cells were shared with other brothers: small apartment rooms with odd Victorian angles, quiet grey carpet and windows on San Francisco Presidio area streets often enshrouded in grey fog.

And one was not a room in the traditional sense, but a space for meditation, study and sleep: 3 feet wide, 8 feet long and 4.5 feet high with a peaked ceiling. It looked like a small train caboose, or another design was as a miniature chalet, raised on stilts about 2.5 feet off the ground, with windows that were simply screened to keep the tropical bugs out. That was my favorite abode and I lived in this kind of cell for over 10 years. Some of these cells had electricity for light and a little space heater to ward off wintry chills or a fan for swampy heat. Most did not. I lived in cells for twenty years without electricity for light or cooling. I got very used to, and very ingenious, in dealing with sapping cold and dripping heat. None had furniture, save the concrete block cell that had a single dresser for robes and clothes. No bed. No bed stand. No table nor chairs. There was a slightly elevated wood platform for sleeping, with a pillow and futon.

The intent of a monk's cell, one would think, would be quiet. A space cut off from the traffic of the world and conversations of other people. But it is really not that. For monks' cells are not that quiet. They can be in noisy neighborhoods, or be in areas of a monastery that abound with the normal sounds of monks at work or speaking or relaxing with laughter. Then, there are the intrusive noises of nature around your cell, including an amazing array of loud insects, species of kawing or shrieking birds, rats gnawing on wood or scurrying around in the brush or fighting, the very creepy sound of long centipedes crawling nearby (a very distinct 100-leg sound), wild pigs, stray dogs and the most noisy creature on earth: the hen with a brood of chicks.

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