Why would a person spend hours and hours staring at a white wall? I ask myself this question a lot. On a spring Saturday sixty of us rise at 5am and hustle to the basement for the monthly one-day sit. We hunker down for another big day in the zendo—sitting, slow-walking, sweeping, eating brown rice …
Category: Zen & Dharma
Zen time is gold
I want to say that the reason why I haven’t posted anything in the six weeks since I landed at San Francisco Zen Center is because I haven’t had time to write, but that would be untrue. The fact is there are 24 hours in every single day, with 60 minutes crammed into each hour …
Dreaming of a small world
I dream of a world where people live small. It’s happening. It’s a meme. Small houses, small gardens, small vehicles, small pleasures. Small incomes. Small needs. My path is to live and to model that life. Enrich my networks. Take care of what I have and get rid of what I don’t need. Place myself …
Mountains and molars sesshin
I sat this sesshin with my best buddy, the angry Molar. The Zen retreat was at a small Tibetan Buddhist center at the foot of Black Tusk, in the forest near Squamish. I got a ride up to the retreat with Kaye, an RN specializing in mental health care. She counselled me to take Ibuprofen …
Sangha
Silent in the zendo face to the wall, Sangha surrounds me. Conventional wisdom says that the reason we gather is to support our practice, but I wonder again whether really the practice is just reason for sangha. Stripped down to essence of presence we don’t even pretend to drink coffee or walk or even talk. …