The View From Where I Sit

We’ll be in sesshin, gathering the heart, this weekend at Wild Fox Zen Transforming Through Play, beginning tonight with the Last Quarter Moon Precept Ceremony through Sunday at noon. 32 years of sesshin gazing at walls like this one and I still love it.

We follow a simple style of sesshin with thirteen 40-minute sittings, 30-minutes of cleaning, and services before each meal. We use oryoki and sit at the dining room table. I haven’t been giving talks lately but may utter something during zazen – if the spirit moves me.

Future sesshin dates are on the right sidebar – contact me if you are interested in attending. Those from out-of-town can always find a place to sleep somewhere in the house.

The focus for this sesshin will be the material that I’ve posted here during the last week.

Note to those of you in the practice period: the assignment for this week is the same as last week (Zen is an iterative process, afterall). Continue working with this passage from Genjokoan:

When buddhas are truly buddhas, they are not conscious that they are buddhas; yet, they are the verifying buddhas, ever continuing to verify buddhas.

And these Points for Practice Investigation and Comment (practice period participants, please comment below sometime this week):

– Specifically how does the practice of “thrust ourselves through everything as empty” impact your daily life?

– When free within the harness, how does the bit taste?

– When you practice the path of the bird, what traces are left?

– In the practice of the path of the bird, how can one relate with the bystander, witness consciousness?

Capping Phrase (how many times have you heard it?):

“If you lose the spirit of repetition, your practice will become quite difficult.”

– Suzuki Roshi