Virtual 100 Day Home Practice Period

Here’s an experiment that might help stabilize your practice. It is based on the 90 or 100- day practice periods during the rainy season that monks and nuns have done since the Buddha’s days. Katagiri-roshi might have been the first to start non-residential practice periods. The idea is the same – make a commitment and follow through.

Residential practice is easier in that the group helps carry all the members along (and more difficult because the group helps carry all the members along).

Doing training by oneself can be rather difficult so this kind of practice period is for people who would like to deepen their lives but have other commitments and cannot go to a monastery – yet.

The “Virtual” aspect of this practice period is that you can be anywhere on earth and still sit and study along together. Virtually.

The study focus for this session is Dogen’s Genjokoan (English, “This Issue at Hand”). Those who are in the non-Virtual Practice Period will have a study session on Thursday nights, except the Thursday night before the monthly sesshin. Following each session, I’ll write a blog post about our conversation as we work through Genjokoan bit by bit. Then those participating in the Virtual and non-Virtual modes will be encouraged to comment on the post and raise questions and respond to other’s thoughts too. We might get some lively interaction going.

Here are the parameters:

• Begin before September 22 and end 100 days later (by December 31) – the non-Virtual practice period starts here on September 11
• Commit to sit five of seven days (if you’ve been practicing for less than one year, I recommend a commitment of sitting for at least 30 minutes; if you’ve been practicing for more than one year, I recommend a commitment of sitting for at least 60 minutes)
• Study the short selection of Genjokoan and a commentary that I will email participants
• Comment on the three-times-a-month blog post on Genjokoan
• Meet with me via Skype (see August 8^th post for directions) for Virtual Dokusan at least twice – early on and then toward the end of the session
• Practice wholeheartedly

If you’d like to participate, send me an email at wildfoxzen@gmail.com.