Back from Anchorage

I’m back at it here in White Bear after a long weekend trip to Anchorage. 

I found Anchorage to be a quietly and dramatically beautiful place, very different in feeling tone than the Lower 48 – white mountains close up to the west and Sleeping Lady off to the east, the Cook Inlet with it’s rough looking ice and silt, and especially the somber, soft tone of light and long darkness each night. I loved it. My hosts, Ann and John, epitomized graciousness so another “thank you” to them.

Koun Franz has been the resident priest there for the last four years and now that he’s moving back to Japan they’re going through a transition, outcome uncertain, like everything else. There’s been a small group in Anchorage for the last 30 years (Katagiri Roshi was their first itinerant teacher) that’s grown quite a lot under Koun’s guidance. 

My sense is that they’re in a bit of a tight spot that lots of centers go through (and many more are likely to go through as the baby-boomer generation of Zen teachers reach retirement) – dropping back is unpalatable and it’s hard to see how to move forward.

And (to borrow a phrase from an interview with Kuenstler in The Sun that I read on the plane) the “psychology of the last investment” is a difficult thing to move through. However, they are a sincere group and I’m confident that if they pull together, they’ll find a way. Or to put it more specifically, to the extent that they take detailed responsibility for their individual and group practice, they have the opportunity to have an excellent result … or just limp along.

On Friday night and Saturday I worked through the first portion of Zazenshin (aka, The Healing Point of Zazen). I’ve been working with this material for about 25 years and this is about the fifth time I’ve taught it. I keep refining what’s important and how to present it. A side-benefit is how this process is very useful for my writing practice and I hope it contributed in some way to their zazen-study-living. 

I’ll offer a similar workshop in Worcester, MA (Hey, MA, Senator Who?!), in March and I’d be happy to find a time to come to your local zendo too, btw. 

On Sunday I spoke about the Wild Fox koan, similar to the chapter in Keep Me in Your Heart Awhile but with more emphasis on the fox’s shape shifting, the bivalent meaning of it all, the moral message of Zen and transmission. I messed up the recording so there’s no trace at all of what was said. Phew.

Sometime in the next few days I’ll be posting a detailed announcement about what we’ll be doing at the Introduction to Online Practice Community, Saturday, January 30, 10-11am. Several people have been playing with the possibilities of the practice partner relationship and I think there’s a great deal of potential for a new kind of home-based Zen with the old kind of transparency and follow-through.

Like I said, more about that soon and about the online practice starting Saturday, February 20 and the in-the-flesh training that will begin here at Transforming through Play and Thursday, February 25.

It was good to go and it’s good to be home.