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<\/a><\/div>\n I\u2019m back at it here in White Bear after a long weekend trip to Anchorage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I found Anchorage to be a quietly and dramatically beautiful place, very different in feeling tone than the Lower 48 \u2013 white mountains close up to the west and Sleeping Lady off to the east, the Cook Inlet with it\u2019s 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 \u201cthank you\u201d to them. <\/span><\/p>\n Koun Franz has been the resident priest there for the last four years and now that he\u2019s moving back to Japan they\u2019re going through a transition, outcome uncertain, like everything else. There\u2019s been a small group in Anchorage for the last 30 years (Katagiri Roshi was their first itinerant teacher) that\u2019s grown quite a lot under Koun\u2019s guidance.\u00a0<\/p>\n My sense is that they\u2019re 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) \u2013 dropping back is unpalatable and it\u2019s hard to see how to move forward. <\/span><\/p>\n And (to borrow a phrase from an interview with Kuenstler in The Sun<\/i> that I read on the plane) the \u201cpsychology of the last investment\u201d is a difficult thing to move through. However, they are a sincere group and I\u2019m confident that if they pull together, they\u2019ll 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 \u2026 or just limp along. <\/p>\n On Friday night and Saturday I worked through the first portion of Zazenshin<\/i> (aka, The Healing Point of Zazen<\/i>). I\u2019ve been working with this material for about 25 years and this is about the fifth time I\u2019ve taught it. I keep refining what\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n