A Letter from Low Tide

Dear blog reader,

A few days ago, Tetsugan and I met our friends Melissa and David at the Porthole – a local breakfast hot spot on a wharf in Old Port. Right behind our table was a large painting of a lobster – a large lobster. A lobster that might eat Portland.

Anyway, I noticed that the painter had signed his name “Kenneth T. Murphy, aka, Low Tide.” That gave us all a laugh – Tetsugan and I moved out here to Portland, ME, to start Great Tides Zen, afterall.

But “Low Tide” seems like a such a fitting Zen name in the spirit of a couple of my heros – Hakuin who often used the moniker “Hungry, Cold, and Tired” or Ikkyu who preferred “Crazy Cloud” – that I’d like to appropriate it for myself (with apologies to the artist).

Meanwhile, I’ve started calling Tetsugan “High Tide.”

Ah, but low tide, when the great ocean has rolled the other way and left the beach barren and bereft, littered with refuse, and well, here we are.

Katagiri Roshi didn’t go so far as to make it a moniker but he often said a Zen teacher was a garbage can, so “Low Tide” follows nicely from that too.

That’s a little about what’s happening here. Interested in some more?

I’ve happily retired from my education career and I’m settling into being an old guy doing what I love. I spend my days sitting, hanging out with friends, biking by the ocean, and meeting with Zen students.

It’s a good life. Who knows for how long?

Leonard Cohen, just turned 80, has a new CD, “Popular Solutions,” so what’s there to complain about?

And we’ve been reminded again (“death is old but it’s always new” -LC) about the uncertainty of this life by dear Kyogen Carlson, co-abbot of Dharma Rain Zen Center, who died suddenly last week. Kyogen, by the way, played a big role in American Zen, establishing Dharma Rain along with his partner, Gyokuko, of course, but also in starting the American Zen Teachers Association and the Soto Zen Buddhist Association. He will be missed.

Meanwhile, we’ve got “Wake the Heck Up! Morning Zazen” up and sitting – week days, 5:30-7am and we’ve had between four and eight sitters, usually closer to eight. Twelve folks showed up for our second Sunday Open Zen this past Sunday. So a nice group of practitioners is starting to gather. We’ll have our first all-day sitting (zazenkai) at the Dzogchen Meditation Center on October 18 and our first seven-day sesshin in December at Alcyon.

Meanwhile, thanks to Ethan we have a Great Tides Zen Podcast rolling. Click here for that. You’ll find our new talks (“World of Dew and What to Do” and “Words that Turn the Heart”) and some older ones too, all remastered for you.

And thanks to Paul, you can find more about what we’re doing at Great Tides Zen here.

Please treasure your high and low self,

Low Tide