Guidelines for Studying the Way: Online Course Begins September 15th

Vine of Obstacles: Online Support for Zen Training is a new way of integrating zazen, dharma study and engaging the world through our practice.

For the first time, we are offering our introductory course (appropriate for students with a wide-range of dharma experience), Guidelines for Studying the Way, as an 11-week session, September 15-November 24, and invite you to join the cohort that will work through the course together.

The Vine began just a year-and-a-half ago and I’m delighted with how practitioners have bloomed in the dharma and how the on-line community has grown to become a committed, open, and supportive group. I’d venture to say that Vine online practitioners know each other in a more intimate way than I’ve seen in many in-person groups.

Designed for practitioners living at home who yearn to realize and actualize the great matter of birth and death, we acknowledge both the difficulty of following through with our practice aspirations in the midst of daily life and the truth that this very bind can be a dharma gate. We practice enlightenment through daily zazen, dharma study, and engagement in the world. Supported by a small online community of like-minded practitioners and in consultation with Dosho, the player/coach, the Vine is edgy, innovative, and fun.

Guidelines for Practicing the Way is a primer on Zen practice that focuses on intention, practice-enlightenment, body practice, and receiving and actualizing the fundamental. This course includes a text of comparative translations of Dogen’s work, supplementary readings, audio and reflection work that is shared with Dosho, forums for cohort dharma conversations, and three thirty-minute practice meetings with Dosho via Google Hangouts.

Guidelines requires a commitment to ongoing awakening, carrying out daily practice on one’s own. The study portion of the course will take 60-90 minutes each week. Click here for some thoughts about the role of study in Zen practice. Click here for some thoughts about Dogen’s Guidelines.

If you are interested in the Guidelines course, please contact Dosho at vineofobstacleszen@gmail.com or click here for an application.

Fee: $185

About the teacher
Dosho Port is a successor of Dainin Katagiri Roshi and has completed koan introspection with James Myoun Ford and Melissa Myozen Blacker of Boundless Way Zen. Dosho started training in 1977 and has been actively teaching since the early 1990’s. His current in-the-flesh teaching project is Great Tides Zen in Portland, ME.