Home from New York Trip: A Short Report of Visits to Three Zen Centers in Three Days

The first part was rough. My flight was five hours late in arriving at LaGuardia (as we floated in Buddhist purgatory circling western New York sandwiched between a vast blue sky above and mountains of pure white clouds below, waiting for the airport to reopen after a thunderstorm) and so I arrived almost 30 minutes late for my own talk. Still, Barry Magid’s Ordinary Mind group seemed to take it as quite ordinary and were a delight to speak with and meet.

I especially liked going out for dinner and conversation afterwards – at 9pm. Zen people in the Midwest tend to go to bed at 9pm or earlier.

Saturday morning I allowed two-and-a-half hours to travel what I was advised would take about one hour and arrived with just enough time to suit up before the program began. The opportunity to get lost on the New York subway system was just to much to miss and so I seized the opportunity with wholeheartedness. But for a kid from the swamps of Minnesota, I felt good having navigated my way through at all.

The Brooklyn Zen Center had a strikingly large proportion of young people, perhaps more than I’ve seen in any Center since about 1985. The group is connected to SFZC and an old friend Teah Stozer (who I haven’t seen since about 1989). Katagiri Roshi cut his chops as a teacher at SFZC so I felt like a lineage cousin and took some liberties in really saying what I thought. It must not have offended them too much though because they were a delight to hang out with after the talk and generously paid for a car to take me to Grand Central and get out of town.

Sunday I gave another talk at Susan Jion Postal’s Empty Hand Zen Center in suburban New Rochelle, loosely based on Keep Me In Your Heart Awhile and then lead an afternoon workshop on Dogen’s Zazenshin, one of my all-time favorite rock’nroll tunes. It seemed like all of the three dozen or so people there for the day had read my book and so they could remind me what was in it – very handy. It was great fun for me to work with them.

In brief, the dharma seems to be doing well in New York.

And by the way, I’m interested in getting out and visiting other Centers to talk about Keep Me In Your Heart Awhile: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri and would enjoy offering a workshop while I’m at it on Dogen’s teaching. If you’re interested in a visit, please get in touch.