Mountains and Waters Alliance: Coming events September 6 and 7, and a blessing

Mountains And Waters Alliance February 4, 2025 – Metamorphosis.

This morning I remembered the butterfly story.

Before becoming a butterfly, a being lives as a caterpillar for a few weeks,

then as a pupa for weeks or months, during which period it completely dissolves.

This is called metamorphosis.

It comes out completely new, and it can fly.

We could, very carefully, use this as an analogy.

Before, the caterpillar’s life is to eat, to consume, to grow itself. Our capitalist system has been doing that, to a point of threatening the natural world.

During the chrysalis stage, it self-destructs completely, as a result of things innate in the being from the start. In a nation built on imperialism, colonialism, racism, and capitalism, facing the inherent human nature as connected, loving, and creative, naturally the conflict would appear. (We have been taught to think of human nature as selfish and bad, but there are thousands of years of evidence showing otherwise.)

We’re watching the destruction of what we had thought was us, but was just a stage.

Don’t think I am casting Trump and Musk as intentional carriers of a new age. For the purposes of this story, they are the last gasp of the old way. We carry the new, and we must embody it as well as we can.

This thought is just a few hours old in me. It’s too new to elaborate, to give details, to defend itself. I share it as a question. What if this disaster, this coup, might be a natural process? This idea doesn’t mean the lives of those deported, killed, or exploited are any less valuable or that the pain is any less. It does call for us to be ready to give up everything so something can be born. And it requires us to drop all our expectations of how that new way manifests. Except that it be more kind.

Personally

I took a 10-day media fast after the US Inauguration, finally ended with regret because things need to be done. There was an idea that as a Zen teacher I should be a source of calm for others. I didn’t notice I was frozen. But last Saturday, listening to a song, the tears burst loose. Then for two days I read too much news, posted madly on Facebook, and began referring to February 1 as “the coup” because that’s when Musk’s people took over the U.S. Treasury. I won’t continue the story here; it keeps moving, and there is some resistance.

It would be great to have so little attachment to my life that I could just stay calm. But I’m in the middle of it, looking for ways to be useful and calm.I find the new story helpful.

Please continue your life.

Get sleep, go outdoors, exercise, eat sensibly, avoid intoxicants. See the people you love, continue spiritual practices, play, be kind, enjoy the children and youth, appreciate the joys in life as much as you can. The reality of our lives is the core of the solution.

Watch less news, and avoid hysterical analyses.

Know whether you, your family, or your loved ones are likely at risk, and take appropriate steps. National Center for Immigrant Rights has practical information for safety.  Or this Youtube: There are many, many organizations doing the same for various groups.

If you are not at immediate risk, consider how to resist the attempt at dictatorship. I’m choosing not to make a list here, but feel free to ask me. This is a time of showing what we will accept – and not. And the slaughter continues in the Middle East; we are in crisis but it’s not only us.

Sanity Resources

I am getting ready to make two supportive offerings, one online and one local, and will post here when they’re ready. Online, I imagine offering guided visualizations offering grounding and support in the natural world, including our ancestors and our own bodies, followed by brief discussion. In Northfield, it would be an in-person support/discussion group with some of the same resourcing plus more discussion time. I’m seeking co-leaders.

At home, life continues with the earth and sky. Soon we’ll tap maple trees, start the garden, sit in meditation, and appeal to the trees, waters, and stars for support through this transition.

Another resource is an hour online Monday evenings, by Patrice Koelsch, a Buddhist and a psychotherapist. She writes,

“The format is 15 minutes of a lightly guided mindfulness meditation so that we can all arrive and settle in. Then I make some remarks related to integrating Lovingkindess and the other Brahma Viharas of Compassion, Appreciative Joy, and Equanimity and invite responses. We finish with a formal Lovingkindness practice. And it is always perfectly fine to join the Zoom room whenever you arrive during the hour. If someone wants to practice generosity, I encourage them to donate to a cause that is in alignment with their highest aspiration.”

6 pm Central Time, 12 Mondays into April, passcode metta.

Practical

We have a new mailing address, particularly for donations but everything else too. We’ll check mail at least once a week.

Mountains and Waters Alliance, 204 7th St. West, PMB 147, Northfield, MN 55057.

I’ll be updating events regularly, for a preview see this page. A few changes: informal retreat/land work time; February 23. June 13-16 community retreat is now open. Online dharma talks are not yet posted, but the first is March 1.

Closing Thoughts

These words from Ram Dass, Nov 23, 2024:

“Whether this is the first day of the Apocalypse or the first day of the Golden Age,

the work remains the same… love each other and ease as much suffering as possible.”

With love,

Shodo

MWA – Return of the Light

Writing just after winter solstice, I’m aware of the winter light slowly growing – and I call to the light on every level. There’s an image of a crust breaking open as the life inside grows and grows. May it be so with each of us, and with all of us.

Zen teaching and practice:

I begin by offering two gifts.

First is a new talk introducing the practice of zazen, also known as sitting meditation. This talk begins with my understanding of what zazen is, in connection with my understanding of the Buddhist teaching of the way we belong to the earth. The first six or seven minutes are about this, and then the talk moves into practical matters of posture, breath, and mental awareness.

Second, I’m asking what Buddha offers to us in a difficult time. This talk begins with some current thoughts, includes readings from the Sutta Nipata, and concludes with an amazing discussion with the people online. They have given permission to include them in this post. (The talk begins a few minutes in, lasts about half an hour, and is followed by discussion.)

Upcoming study opportunities

Our Wednesday evening online study group will be focusing on the sixteen Zen precepts during the next few months. If you would like to join us, please do. More information is at the link, and you will want to email me to make sure you have all details. You can also make an appointment to talk, and I can share useful recordings from the past.

I will be offering the precepts to a few people after our basic study is complete. If you have interest in this, you can talk with me about it. (If you don’t know what this phrase means, wait until you’re more familiar with Zen.)

Calendar:

Here is a link to the 2025 calendar. It offers a general sense of what we do here, plus some specific dates. Things always evolve.

Consulting the Oracle:

This is a personal note. A year ago I threw all my energy into a fundraising campaign, and you responded beyond my wildest dreams. For the first time I received a stipend from MWA, and I began to dream of doing this work full time. Then shoulder surgery took more out of me than I could have imagined. I cancelled events to focus on recovery, and wondered what I was doing. I kept the basics going. And I finished editing the manuscript of The Shape of Reality Is Open: Walking Together Through the Polycrisis. It’s now at several publishers, and early responses have been encouraging. Meanwhile, I’ve been living what you might call a “normal” life. I’m starting to recover from the medical exhaustion, getting in touch with my meditation practice, exercising, and relaxing a bit.

I’ve come to look at these last few months as consulting an oracle. I wrote a thoughtful fundraising letter and sent it to as many people as I could, but didn’t start a GoFundMe or vigorously pursue possible donors as I did last year. It felt like putting a question out to the universe, and seeing what answer came back. The answer was “Don’t quit your day job.” I’ve accepted new therapy clients, and let go of my wish to retire, to go on long retreats, and so forth.

Sending the book to publishers is like that too: I make my offering, of six years’ work and struggle, and wait for the response. Will it be welcome? Of course, the answer to that will come in stages: first, finding a publisher, second, book sales, third, whether it becomes a vehicle for my teaching.

Last, I’m allowing my health (kidney issues) to rely on my own knowledge rather than doctors, even alternative ones. I can change course if needed, based on lab tests; intuition says I’ll be fine.

So here we are, going into a new year with a great many unknowns, some of them frightening. That’s why I gave the talk above, about the Buddha and difficult times. I’m watching too much news but mostly calm. This is a time for steady practice – including meditation, exercise, good social relationships, and remembering that we are in the care of the universe at all times.

Love and blessings,

Shodo

This day called Thanskgiving

Dear Friends,

This is a harvest festival. Around the world, societies celebrate a year of enough food and safety and well-being.

Here in the United States, since Abraham Lincoln set the date, it’s been a Thursday in late November. Most of our stories remember 1621, when settlers from Europe celebrated the gifts of the earth, after a winter in which half of them survived, and that only because of the kindness of the Wampanoag people. Meanwhile, some Native people, especially in New England, call it a National Day of Mourning, because it symbolizes how settlers drove them out of their homes and killed them. They remind us of the Thanksgiving declared in 1637 by Governor John Winthrop, in thanks for their successful massacre of the Pequot people. In those days settlers often called such days for harvest and for victory in war – however immoral the war.

So it’s with sobriety that I will gather with family for this day.

Prayer

Usually I share the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving address.  It helps us to come into right relationship with the earth. Yet today it feels lazy, like stealing, and I take responsibility for offering my own words.

In thanks for living upon this earth,

gratitude for the four directions and the center, for earth, air, fire, water, and spirit,

gladly receiving the gifts of community and family, of youth and age and the middle, of generative well-being and wondering beginning and quieting age,

finding our place among every living thing on, above, and within the earth, the grasses, the soils, trees, waters, sky, sun and moon and stars, every animal that has its own being and its own life, every plant and every microbe, every cell in this body

and among the humans, two-leggeds, wise or foolish, blessing or harming, joyful or suffering,

with enormous gratitude for those who have sacrificed so that we can live, with humility for receiving what has been stolen too often,

I take my place, we take our places, no more or less than any others a part of the whole,

and give thanks for being here, thanks for not being all-powerful or the lords of creating, thanks for being small and light as a feather,

carried through every day and every season by the great working of the universe.

And I offer my own bit of life for the sustenance of every other, in the great chorus of all being.

Blessings to you.

Shodo

Committed – Mountains and Waters Alliance Nov 2, 2024

Beloveds,

The United States has an election in just a few days, and we don’t know what will happen. Predictions are everywhere, but it is impossible to know. People are afraid.

We cling to the hope that our way of life will continue.

If you’re Buddhist, you may know that clinging is part of the causal chain that leads to suffering. If not, pay close attention and you can see it working.

Everything changes.

We do not know the future. Our actions have results, yet we can’t guarantee what those will be. This means that both despair and hubris are foolish wastes of energy. The future is unknown, and thus we can move into it with full hearts.

As I write today, November 2, 2024, the new moon has just passed and grows again. The turning known as Halloween, Samhain, All Souls’ Day, Day of the Dead, and other names throughout the world, honors the entry into dark and cold, fallow time, a rest for minds as well as farms. This year, storms and floods ravage places people thought were safe, climate change is undeniable, autumn finally turns cold. War rages, genocide expands, hate and fear flourish in the public realm. Night is like that, sometimes.

People have lived through such times before. Sometimes they return and thrive, sometimes they go forward reduced. As gently as I can, let me mention that our future must consume less than our present, yet every year we increase. (The alternative energy produced is simply being added to the supply demanded by our ravenous society for AI, internet, advertising, self-driving cars and other absurdities.) I encourage you to live in such a way that your well-being does not require increasing mining, child slaves, endless war, and the extermination of the wild. Please be ready to thrive without the gadgets. People have done so, everywhere before modern industrial society with its billionaires and without its soul.

There’s a political edge to all of this.

I’ve been reading and now listening to Timothy Snyder, who has studied authoritarian regimes for years, who wrote On Tyranny and now On Freedom. He’s both more worried and more hopeful than one might imagine. I recommend listening to this short talk now, before voting if you haven’t.

He says

“I lived in eastern Europe when memories of communism were fresh…. I have spent decades reading testimonies of people who lived under Nazi or Stalinist rule.  I have seen death pits, some old, some freshly dug. And I have friends who have lived under authoritarian regimes, including political prisoners and survivors of torture. Some of the people I trusted most have been assassinated.”

There are many voices of encouragement, and of sanity. I can’t post them all.

Please vote.

Remember to research issues and local candidates, before you find yourself without a local library, or with a school that censors original thinking. If you can find time to volunteer for someone who speaks your mind, please do it.

I’ll be working the polls on election day, and gathering with others for calm and support afterward. If there is violence after the election, know that there are people preparing for a strong and nonviolent action afterward, and if that’s needed, I’ll pass along what I know for those who want to help.

A few more things:

In the face of the Uncommitted Movement, which refused to vote for genocide and now seems to risk of electing a dictator – I propose a Committed Movement. These folks would promise to show up on Inauguration Day to pressure the new President Harris to stop funding genocide. Walking a fine line: (and it’s illegal for me to recommend a candidate anyway.) The whole thing doesn’t end with the election, it begins here. We can’t disappear.  Guess I’d better plan for a trip in January.

Sweet friends, please spend as much time in love and beauty as you possibly can. Join group prayer and meditation. Pray to whoever you like, or ground

yourself in the deep peace that sustains us all, or join me in asking for help from all our relatives whether forests or eagles, prairies or mice, even thunderstorms. There is an awakening happening. Don’t miss it by feeding the monster with fear or anger.

I’ll write again mid-November,

and that will include news, events and such. Right now I’ll just mention: Zen-style meditation on election day, online: November 15-17, work weekend here; December 1-8; December 21.  All the local events are described here. And there’s space for two residents, long-term or short-term.

Love and commitment,

Shodo

Mountains and Waters Alliance – October 2024 – Facing today’s world

I’m thinking about how we prepare spiritually for the U.S. election (if we’re involved) and all the rest of what’s happening – which changes every day, and has been painful even to watch.

Thoughts:

The election is just over two weeks away. I promised to work the polls, and have not yet done the training, but I will.

Unlike many people, I don’t know the answers about the election. I’m afraid of what Trump or Vance would do – and it breaks my heart to seem to approve the genocide in Gaza, Lebanon, and wherever else. I’ve made a decision for myself: I’m voting for the most workable opponent, and then doing the real work, all year, every year.  Still, elections have effects. Please consider all the races – Congress, state offices, judges, school boards, library boards, county soil & water – all of them. So many races that are officially nonpartisan have been filled with people who have strong partisan agendas, and if we don’t pay attention we may lose things we’ve taken for granted for entire lifetimes. Please pay attention and vote.

There’s a thing called hope, which is in short supply these days, and is criticized for misleading people into complacency. I want to talk about what hope means for me.

Hope means the future is not known. Hope means there is a chance, however tiny, that we may survive, may come to our senses collectively, listen to the warnings of hurricanes and floods, abandon our commitment to profit for the wealthy, turn toward providing clean air, water, food, shelter and safety for our children and grandchildren – and for the children of Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine, Syria, Western Sahara – I would have to name every country in the world to be complete. This aching wound that is the world right now!

The story of chrysalis comes into my mind. Caterpillars go into chrysalis and completely dissolve before becoming butterfly. I cringe a little. When my family and I are safe and well, and others are dying, I have no right to put on rose-colored glasses.  I have no idea what will be born from those who are going through the fire right now, those who survive fire and flood and genocide. But this, here, in this country called United States, this needs to disintegrate o rebirth can happen. And that needs us to be willing to fall apart, to be hungry, and to lend a hand just as we’re hearing from western North Carolina right now – and watching in Gaza and Lebanon – the commitment to all of us – even if that hand is just offered to a neighbor in a snowstorm, or a child with a hurt.

I found this poem. Adrienne Rich, 1978

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.

-Adrienne Rich

Nearly fifty years ago, it looked like this. More is lost now than I ever imagined then, and still the power of life arises in us. This afternoon I helped my neighbors plant three hundred willow trees, to hold the bank by the creek, and felt the power of community. We continue to act. Please, whatever you expect, whether you think hope is real or a delusion, cast your lot with those who reconstitute the world.

I’m sending a separate post with fall events and our news.

Mountains and Waters Alliance Blog: Practicing with the News

Practicing with the News

As the disasters roll on, moderated by occasional happy surprises, I’ve wondered what to say here. Finally I saw it.

How do we do spiritual practice with the things that are happening too fast and too frightening? Including, how do we avoid blaming others?

A short list of this week’s news that unsettled my practice.

Tuesday, August 8

Maui: A huge fire destroys traditional native center Lahaina, kills over a hundred people and displaces hundreds.

• Backstory: The Polynesians arrived around 700 C.E.; whalers and missionaries arrived in 1820, sugar plantation people about 1860, and tourism in the 1960’s. The plantations took land from native people, filled in lakes and swamps, imported a  flammable desert grass, and took control of water. The fires that destroyed Lahaina are the result of both global warming and decades of mismanagement.  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/17/hawaii-fires-maui-water-rights-disaster-capitalism?CMP=twt_gu#Echobox=1692314080
• Now: Indigenous water rights are suspended, while a moratorium is placed on land sales to stop harassment by outside speculators. Luxury developments receive priority for water. This is called Disaster Capitalism: when a disaster happens, vulture capitalists swoop in to take advantage of the situation. Often they win.
• The number of fires and evacuations elsewhere just continues. Yellowknife, for one, but so many more, and impossible heat in other places.

Thursday, August 10: Florida requires school history teachers to include “benefits” to slaves.

Friday, August 11:  The Marion County Record, small town newspaper in Kansas, has its offices and the owners’ home searched and computers seized; warrant appears to be petty and nonsensical. The co-owner, 98 years old and a retired journalist, died the next day, possibly due to stress. Fear of losing a free press rises.  Lawsuits are flying in all directions.

Monday, August 14:  A Montana youth group won their lawsuit for climate protection, based on a clause in the Montana constitution: “The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.” (Six other states and 150 countries have similar constitutional provisions.) Both ridicule and celebration abound. A Federal case started in 2015 is based on the Fifth Amendment “nor shall any person…. be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” They’re still struggling for the right to appear in court. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliana_v._United_States

Tuesday, August 15: 

• Georgia grand jury charges Donald Trump and 18 co-conspirators with racketeering charges for interference with the 2020 election. Someone publishes the addresses of jury members online, and there are threats against some officials involved in the case. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fbi-investigates-threats-to-fulton-county-officials-days-after-trump-indictment/ar-AA1fpKOL.
• ProPublica reveals more corruption involving Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas.
• Fifth Circuit Court placed severe restrictions on the abortion drug mifepristone, after 23 years of safe use.

Wednesday, August 16:  Multiple wildfires in Canada’s Northwest Territories lead to evacuation of Yellowknife.

Always: around the world wars, refugee disasters, corruption revelations, deaths, climate disasters, poverty, hunger, discrimination, and so forth. And this Facebook meme: To feed everyone in the world would cost $34 billion a year. The United States military spends over $71 billion a month.

What does spiritual practice look like here?

Going tentatively here, thoughts as they arise and then what follows:

• Be careful with news. Don’t jump to conclusions or choose your favorite villains and heroes. Try to read multiple sources, including historical background if relevant.
• Notice your feelings. In response to the five specific items from this past week (and the ones I read but did not include), I felt fear, anger, sadness, discouragement, hope, and more. We have ways of practicing with emotion, including simply noting, investigating through somatic awareness, curiosity about thought patterns involved, kindness toward the parts of ourselves involved in emotional response, noticing personal history that might make us over-react – and, always, equanimity.
• Add to the noticing, asking for help and support, from friends and family or from all sentient beings – such as a favorite tree, a flower, a creek, a meadow.
• Right action and right speech.
• Considerations for speech include:
  • Is it true? Is it helpful? Does it promote harmony and reduce tensions? Is it timely?
  • Speech based on deep listening is truly beneficial communication, nourishing relationship.
  • In these times, we often hear or read combative words, and anger may prompt us to jump in and either argue or agree.
  • Wisdom suggests listening, and perhaps using the Four Immeasurables to moderate our response: Compassion, Loving-kindness, Sympathetic Joy, Equanimity.
  • Thanks to the writers here: https://www.learnreligions.com/right-speech-450072.
• Action is normally guided by the precepts,
  • particularly the first five, which are stated negatively: not killing, not taking what is not given, not misusing sexuality, not lying, and not selling intoxicants.
  • Zen adds five more about relationships within community, such as not causing division. These help us examine each action we take.
  • Thich Nhat Hanh added a positive side to each of these, to think in terms of what we might do rather than just what we avoid. For instance, as a white American, benefiting from multiple forms of privilege and from the exploitation of other people, what might be appropriate response to the way my comfort is based on exploitation and even killing? And what is appropriate response to any one of the news items above?
• As a Zen practitioner, I live with the Four Vows: Beings are numberless; I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them. Dharma gates are numberless, I vow to enter them. Buddha’s way is unsurpassable, I vow to realize it.
  • I say “live with” rather than “keep” because it’s impossible to keep them in a literal way. Rather, they shape our relationship with the world around us.

Can we have a conversation based on all of this?

Which are the most useful in your particular life? Is it the practice of compassion, for instance, or the specifics of the precepts?

• For a long time I found “not stealing” to include all the precepts: not stealing someone’s life, or their self-esteem, or their labor by under-paying; not stealing from plants or animals (eating became a little difficult there, but I never became a fruitarian, who literally accepts only what is given).
• Now, it is vow that guides me. The concept of freeing all beings – even though all beings are not separate from myself – gives me a way to relate to everyone.
  • I can think of [someone I dislike] and consider the suffering they are having, or creating for themselves even if they are not aware of it, and I can offer loving-kindness, wishing them well.
  • Probably first I must forgive myself for the rush of anger and judgment that arises without invitation, and settle down, calm my mind and remember that this too is a sentient being entitled to happiness.
  • Remember that wishing harm to someone is a form of killing, and the energy turns on me as well as them.

I will not start a list of tangible activities that seem to me like “right action;” that list would go on forever. But I will invite you to notice such actions in your own life.

• Acknowledge your own beneficial actions, and also the ones that call to you that you’re not ready to do yet.
• Notice the actions of people around you, and consider that you are surrounded by appropriate, compassionate, kind and fearless acts – alongside the anger, violence, and everything sad and frightening.
• As Mister Rogers said, “look for the helpers.”

Miscellaneous

a request on behalf of a friend:  Cory Clemetson is a long-time friend of Mountains and Waters Alliance and a serious dharma practitioner. He’s a member of Common Ground Meditation Center, and has given time and energy to justice movements both at home. Cory is recovering from surgery for an infection in his spine, and will be unable to work for several months. There is a GoFundMe with more information, here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/cory-as-he-recovers-from-spinal-surgery.

upcoming study group:  This is a repeat of my mention from last newsletter: We’re studying Ayo Yetunde’s Casting Indra’s Net, Wednesday evenings starting September 6, and registrations are required (free).

farm news:

• We have an outhouse now, built by Perry and friends. Near the gardens.
• Monday mornings 9-1 will be work time at the farm, with a focused project each time. Email to say you’re coming or to ask what the project is. (Volunteers are welcome other times, but this will be pretty regular.) Sometime a chance to learn a lot, other times just hands in dirt or peaceful time in country. When we can, we’ll do some trail building and outdoor sacred space making.
• Things feel good here. And people are starting to come again.

Free fundraising:  We’re listed on iGive, which uses your online shopping to support us at no cost to you. Right now they have a special deal: Sign up by September 30, make any purchase within a month, and we get an extra $5 in addition to the percentage. (It’s easy to use.) If a dozen people signed up and used iGive just for air travel, we would really notice the addition.

Love to all. Please be in touch.

Shodo

for Mountains and Waters Alliance

Mountains and Waters Alliance – July 1, 2023

Greetings from the land of summer!

This newsletter includes a short event listing, plus some reflections on learnings from recent retreats and travels.

Events:

• July 2, online Dharma talk at Hokyoji Zen Practice Center. https://www.hokyoji.org/sunday-talks/. The talk and discussion are 9:30-10:30 am Central Time; please join for zazen beginning 8:30. The link gets you to the Hokyoji page with a zoom link plus explanations.
• July 5, 19, and first and third Wednesdays at 6:30 pm, drop in for Q&A about Zen, spiritual practice, or related matters. We’ve been talking about real Zen community and how it works. I’m there at 6:30 pm Central Time, and stay until 8 or end earlier if the energy is done. https://us06web.zoom.us/j/91552957428 Passcode Zen.
• September 6 and the first three Wednesdays each month: study group with Casting Indra’s Net by Pamela Ayo Yetunde. I had promised a read-and-discuss format, but on working with the book I think a lecture-and-discuss format will work better. The August newsletter will have a registration link. The Zoom link is above.
• Monday mornings: zazen continues weekly, but here is this detail: if you would like to join online, please email Shodo by Sunday evening. Otherwise, we can sit together without electronics, each in our own locations. I will be sitting 6-7 am Central Time.

There will be later events and talks, including

• November 5, Sunday morning Dharma talk at Northfield Buddhist Meditation Center
• November or December, TBD: “Awakening to love this world / insight and kinship with all life”. A day-long retreat with me and Insight teacher Rosamaria Seguro, sponsored by Insight LA. I’ll share more information when the date is finalized.
• December 1-8, Rohatsu sesshin, in person at the farm.
  A note: I’m still working on the book, and taking care of my job, my health, and the farm; few formal events are scheduled until the book is ready.

The Farm:

We have space now for two more residents. Perry is now leading on farm and outdoor work, and there’s plenty of room for both labor and creativity from new residents, long-term guests, and short-term helpers. Just contact Shodo. We’re not scheduling work days, but welcoming you at times that work for all of us.

Reflections:

The past few months I’ve been in learning mode. I’d like to share a little.

First, in March I took a week for a writing retreat, then a week in a cabin up north (very cold). I thought I would sit zazen and walk outdoors, but mostly I slept a lot and recovered from exhaustion. I gave a dharma talk at Bluestone Zen Community in Duluth, and went for a walk on slippery rocks above Lake Superior.

Second, Kincentric Leadership Training, a week in Colorado at Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center, with a group of people who share a love and respect for beyond-human beings.

Third, a family vacation in the Carribean.

Fourth, an inipi (sweat lodge) ceremony.

Then it was time to settle down and ground myself in ordinary life before any more adventures.

Studying patterns:

• First, alone with the North, walking on the ice, reading, sitting zazen, and admitting human frailty as I slept, got sick, and all of that.
• Second, surrounded with people who share something about our relationship with the natural world, and then a solitary day on a high rock, facing the Continental Divide, sitting with sun, clouds, thunder, hail, rain, and sun again. Much of that time I was in an altered state, talking and shouting and listening with a whole range of beings – not much to say about that. I asked for help with the healing and protection of the world. …. At first I thought it was the mountains who called me there. But I came back with a sense of reconnecting with the Thunder Beings, beings of my personal spiritual journey and more known to the Lakota people. These words came for me to share: “The Thunder Beings have promised to help.” Now I’m studying how to ask, especially to clarify shared ceremony. First I need to do some personal ritual, and deepen myself with more zazen. I’ll write more later. If you wonder about the group, here is their website, and it’s possible to register for their training retreats at Findhorn, Scotland (September 9-16), and at Auroville, India (later).
• Third, the family vacation with warmth, sun, and sky, in luxury, connecting with people very different from myself: it was calming and restful, and I was glad to be warm. I gave zazen instruction twice, on request. And this happened: During a day on a boat, when they stopped for snorkeling and play, I saw a cave and was called there. Dark, wet, deep; the opposite of mountains and sky. And coming back from it was hard, paddling against the waves and finally towed back to the boat. The challenge of the journey, and human helpers, there too. I don’t have words yet, just a shift in my body.
• Fourth, inipi (sweat lodge) an hour away in Wisconsin. I’d recently reconnected with an old friend, was invited, and went. Hot, dark, steamy. It feels private, and still mysterious to me. But somehow I’m breathing easier.
• Here is another thing: My Zen teacher, Shohaku Okumura, retired. People came from all around the world for the ceremonies, and I went too. It was just a weekend, but a time out of ordinary life, connecting with my Zen roots as well as old friends.
• Maybe we could say the fifth was returning to ordinary life, going to work and seeing clients, catching up on long-ignored tasks putting one foot in front of another in ordinary life. We’ll see what manifests. Right now, I don’t need more adventures, these are still digesting.

The Thunder Beings have promised to help:

What I can see now is how easy it could be to do the original vision of Mountains and Waters Alliance, in which groups of people get together and do ceremony connecting with their local plants, waters, soils, animals, everything beyond human, asking for help with this incredible task about climate and environment – including healing the way humans are harming each other and the natural world. If doing this calls to you, let me know; it will encourage me to move forward sooner.

I’ll say farewell for now, and be back in about a month. Be sure to write if you want to connect. And if someone shared this with you, you can subscribe at the website, bottom of front page.

Love,

Shodo

for Mountains and Waters Alliance

Mountains and Waters Alliance: a blessing at the Celtic new year

I just want to send you a blessing, as the Celtic year shifts toward winter, and as we move toward the elections and other unknowns. This poem is from John O’Donohue. At the end, you can listen to him reading it.

Beannacht

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

Blessings.

Mountains and Waters – April announcements and notes

Events

On April 10, 2022, I’m pleased to invite you to a dharma talk online at Hokyoji Zen Monastery. Hokyoji is dear to my heart from early practice and also a year of individual retreat in the early days. They are now a thriving community, and because of internet they’re able to invite speakers. I’ll be talking about the well-known lines from the Genjo Koan: “To study the Buddha Way is to study the self.”

Here is information and a link: https://mountainsandwatersalliance.org/event/dharma-talk-sunday-april-10-2022-hokyoji/

There are some other schedule changes, mostly shown on the website.

Changes and uncertainties are for two reasons: I’m nearing the end of writing the book, and the house is under construction.

• May will have some opportunities to come to the farm and practice with the land, including the land care retreat May 20-22. Things are a little flexible because of the construction. Watch for further information, and if interested be sure to email me.
• In June, instead of a 5-day sesshin here at the farm, I will be leading sesshin at Sanshin Zen Community, my home temple, June 1-5. Information is here: https://www.sanshinji.org/sesshin.html. You can join online (no fee, donations welcome); in-person spots are limited due to covid cautions.
• There will probably be an event at the farm June 18-19. With luck, we might be celebrating both book and the new look of the place.
• Monday, August 1, is a one-day retreat at Midtown Atlanta Zen. Zazen, talk, private interviews, outdoor walking meditation – this is not on the website yet.
• The next 5-day sesshin here at the farm will be September 22-27, and then December 1-8, Rohatsu sesshin. May and November I will be at teaching retreats with my teacher, Shohaku Okumura.
• Email me for Wednesday online Zen group, Sunday online “Gift of Fearlessness” group, occasional local potlucks, and general volunteering – including gardening and heavy labor!

Notes

The war between Russia and Ukraine is still going on. The stories are heartbreaking, People around the world are mobilizing in amazing ways. A few people are pointing out that most of us have been complacent about tragedies in other places in the world – perpetrated by the U.S. or our allies, or against Black and brown people. It’s overwhelming. As is the change in the weather, the likelihood of widespread hunger in the coming year or soon after, the level of polarization within the U.S., and a lot more. My personal Facebook page tracks a lot of these things, and hopeful responses, if you care to follow. Here, I try to avoid distractions and encourage wholehearted engagement in each one’s life.

And last night, after a week of rain, I stepped out the door to a clear night sky with a last-quarter moon shining brilliantly above. Just a breath.

With love,

Shodo Spring

for Mountains and Waters Alliance

Dharma talk January 23: Thich Nhat Hanh and teachings on self.

I had promised to talk about the Buddhist understanding of Self. But the great Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has just died. I’ll still talk about self, through his teachings. You can find information and access the talk at https://www.hokyoji.org/sunday-talks/ The talk begins at 9:30 am; sitting meditation is offered at 8:30 and 9:00.

Some words from me:

On Friday the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh entered parinirvana, at 95 years of age. He wrote:

Instructions for the Continuation

“Please do not build a stupa for me. Please do not put my ashes in a vase, lock me inside, and limit who I am. I know this will be difficult for some of you. If you must build a stupa though, please make sure that you put a sign on it that says, ‘I am not in here.’ In addition, you can also put another sign that says, ‘I am not out there either,’ and a third sign that says, ‘If I am anywhere, it is in your mindful breathing and in your peaceful steps.’”

We think we have selves, and that they last, that they are more important than our bodies. This is a mistake. There is a self for each of us at every moment. It arises in the moment, given birth by our own karma from past actions, and by everything around us – everything in the world. Each self is instantaneous; they seem to last because the karma is similar and some of the surroundings are similar too. But a self is momentary.

The thought of speaking about self was triggered by reading this from Ivan Illich:

In oral cultures, one may retain an image of what has been …but the person exists only in the doing or the telling, as the suffix comes to life only when it modifies a verb. Like a candle, the “I” lights up only in the activity and is extinguished at other times. But not dead. With the retelling of the story, the candle comes to glow again. No pilot light gives continuity to the first person singular between one story and the next. The “I” can exist only in the act of speaking out loud – or to oneself.

The idea of a self that continues to glimmer in thought or memory, occasionally retrieved and examined in the light of day, cannot exist without the text. Where there is no alphabet, there can neither be a memory conceived as a storehouse nor the “I” as its appointed watchman.

We now live in a time and place that idolizes the self. A look at advertising will tell you that. We can’t imagine meeting each other except as selves. We worry about losing ourselves – and our protective actions create a suit of armor – heavy, exhausting, and inaccessible to the outside – inaccessible to life. We’re ready to fight to protect this self. Even if we know better, we imagine a lasting self.

Other things also seem to have selves: a family, a neighborhood, a group, a nation, a world. Imagining that they are permanent and thinking they can be annihilated, we arm ourselves and defend them. The idea of a lasting self causes suffering. Yet there is a self that arises and ceases, moment by moment, fresh and new. Here is an image of the way it goes with self, from writer Sharon Blackie:

We think that we imagine the land, but perhaps the land imagines us, and in its imaginings it shapes us. The exterior landscape interacts with our interior landscape, and in the resulting entanglements, we become something more than we otherwise could ever hope to be.

And my own story – I didn’t become a Buddhist, or receive the precepts or shave my head and become a priest. I didn’t walk for three months through the Great Plains. Something moved in the wholeness of things, and pushed this little personal self one way or the other, and I found myself in places I had never imagined. Doing things I can’t possibly do as a self.

Thich Nhat Hanh wrote this about losing his mother:

The day my mother died I wrote in my journal, “A serious misfortune of my life has arrived.” I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died. When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.

I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up. Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet… wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. Those feet that I saw as “my” feet were actually “our” feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.

From that moment on, the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time.

These are very personal experiences, described by a great teacher who was once that young man whose mother died. So he gives us the same thought now: don’t think that I’m in the stupa, or outside of the stupa, but maybe think that I’m in your own mindful breathing and peaceful steps.

Don’t think that he is gone. He’s just moved on. Don’t think that you or I exist or can be destroyed. Think of yourself as lightly as a feather, a leaf on the wind, moved by something larger, carried by all beings, created every moment by Life itself.

This body is not me.

I am not limited by this body.

I am life without boundaries.

I have never been born,

and I shall never die.

Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars,

manifestations from my wondrous true mind.

Since before time, I have been free.

Birth and death are only doors through which we pass,

sacred thresholds on our journey.

Birth and death are a game of hide-and-seek.

So laugh with me,

hold my hand,

let us say good-bye,

say good-bye, to meet again soon.

We meet today.

We will meet again tomorrow.

We will meet at the source every moment.

We meet each other in all forms of life.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

They remind us of the Buddha’s teaching on death:

One day the Buddha asked the monks to leave and find other places to stay during the monsoon….After the monks had left, Ananda could see that his master was ill. The Blessed One, in great pain, found comfort only in deep meditation. But with the strength of will, he overcame his illness.

Ananda was relieved but shaken. When I saw the Blessed One’s sickness my own body became weak, he said. Everything became dim to me, and my senses failed. Yet I still had some comfort in the thought that the Blessed One would not come to his final passing away until he had given some last instructions to his monks.

The Lord Buddha responded, What more does the community of monks expect from me, Ananda? I have taught the dharma openly and completely. I have held nothing back, and have nothing more to add to the teachings. A person who thought the sangha depended on him for leadership might have something to say. But, Ananda, the Tathagata has no such idea, that the sangha depends on him. So what instructions should he give?

Now I am frail, Ananda, old, aged, far gone in years. This is my eightieth year, and my life is spent. My body is like an old cart, barely held together.

Therefore, Ananda, be islands unto yourselves, refuges unto yourselves, seeking no other refuge; with the Dharma as your island, the Dharma as your refuge, seeking no other refuge.

At Kushinagara, where he died:

Then the Blessed One said to Ananda, Enough, Ananda! Do not grieve! Have I not taught from the very beginning that with all that is dear and beloved there must be change and separation? All that is born, comes into being, is compounded, and is subject to decay. How can one say: “May it not come to dissolution”? This cannot be.

He said a few more things, then:

All compounded things are subject to decay. Strive with diligence. Then, serenely, he passed into Parinirvana.

Thich Nhat Hanh had retired after his stroke, and gone to live quietly in his home of Vietnam, surrounded by students who loved him. The Buddha continued teaching to the last, and even gave teaching from his deathbed, to one last beginner. Both let their lives go lightly and peacefully.

We have this teaching from Thich Nhat Hanh.

There is no birth, there is no death;

there is no coming, there is no going;

there is no same, there is no different;

there is no permanent self, there is no annihilation.

We only think there is.

May we receive this teaching. May we allow our lives to be lived. May we recognize that myriad things come forth and experience the self.

Mountains and Waters – December 31, 2021

Let’s be quiet now, for a little bit – a few hours, or a few days or months or maybe a whole year. Anyway, just now, a little while.

One of the gifts of Buddhism is an understanding that discomfort, inconvenience, and even pain are part of life – and that it’s possible to be at peace anyway.

The last few years of our shared life have seemed like one crisis after another, with little personal moments of sweetness mixed in. Here’s one of mine: In the first months of the pandemic, my youngest grandchild would get together with her best friend and spend the day playing together in a park a long walk away. Like my own childhood summers. The way childhood should be, in my mind.

I won’t list the hard things that have happened; we all know. We’re in the Age of Consequences. Things are falling apart. Even understanding they need to change, it’s uncomfortable to the luckiest of us, painful to most, deadly to some. We don’t know what’s next. Renewal, a way of being together full of life, harmony and spirituality and blessing? Dictators? Slow death by climate change? Don’t ask to know, just work toward the well-being of all life.

Inner peace does not come by positive thinking or by hope, though they may help us mobilize. We are called both to complete acceptance and to wholehearted engagement. (Meditation and prayer are forms of engagement, as are farming, civil disobedience, and so much more.)

With Ram Dass:

We’re all just walking each other home.

Looking Back, 2021:

This year’s work has been focused mainly on writing the book. The subject was climate change and consciousness, but it grew to include everything. How did we become the people who insist on consuming the earth, at the expense of animals and plants, indigenous people, and our own grandchildren? That was in aid of the real question: “How do we become the kind of people who bless the earth instead of destroying it? That is not an individual inquiry; if the Kochs and Bezoses, the Enbridges and Peabody Coals and Nestles and Lithium Americas of the world continue to devour the earth, our personal actions will be like a teaspoon of salt in the ocean. Political/cultural/economic/spiritual change is needed. I’d like to think the book will help that movement.

I have a working title rather than a final one: Alliance: becoming the people who can bless the earth.  The book is with the editor right now, then revisions, then finding a publisher.

There have been three long silent retreats, with two or three people each, as well as a land care retreat outdoors, a few workdays, and the online groups. The Zen group started early 2020 has settled into a steady community and my home base. The Gift of Fearlessness group is a creative space and also community; we’ll open it up after a bit of clarification. Monday morning zazen moves steadily along with two or three of us each week.

This has been the year of action for water protection/pipeline resistance at Line 3 in northern Minnesota. I’ve felt my absence keenly. In early spring I offered quarantine space to a group that had been doing active resistance and then needed a place to go. In summer Sawyer and I went to the Treaty People Gathering as part of Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light, and of course there was support with letters, calls, donations, and the like – but I wished I could go up to the action, and I couldn’t.

Looking forward, 2022:

We’ll have four long silent retreats – March, June, September, December – and some kind of retreat or offering on the third weekend of the other months: land care retreats, Introduction to Zen, solo retreats. The online offerings will continue.

Visiting remains an option, and I’m still open to discussions about residence here. There’s also a possibility of Zen training periods here (3-6 months) in the future, coordinated with my teacher’s temple.

Construction is planned to renovate the house to create community living space, early spring this year.

We made a Covid policy for the farm, beginning January, linked here. It will change as needed. The main point is that people can feel safe coming here, so it’s a conservative policy.

Personal notes:

Working on the book, I spent much time at the computer and not as much outside as I would like, but the richness of reading and research and the challenge of making words has been a joy. I’ve had medical difficulties, and am seeing a doctor and an acupuncturist in addition to my homeopath. Trying to upgrade a lifestyle I’d always thought was healthy. In 2022 I look forward to more time outdoors, more sitting meditation and formal Zen study, less news, less facebook, more social time, slowing down. From time to time I talk with someone who might move here and start community with me.

My children and their spouses are delightful adults, my grandchildren moving through their teens with grace.

This life is so precious and beautiful. I can’t believe my good fortune, to live where I can see the stars and listen to the birds, greet violets in spring and milkweed in summer, blazing colors in fall – and to have safe food and water and enough of them, warmth, shelter, physical safety, a body and mind that work well, and love. And a calling, a path, a work to do. That last would serve, if I lost the rest.

With love,

Shodo

MWA March 27, 2021 – Sorrow, shock, new life

As we weary of the pandemic and look forward to spring – forgive my rambling. And note the recording and the events at the bottom of the page.

A gunman has shot and killed ten people in a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado. Less than a week earlier a gunman shot and killed eight people in massage parlors in Atlanta. Now, the state of Georgia has passed a draconian voter suppression law, and yesterday arrested a Black legislator for knocking on a door so she could witness the governor’s photo op. In Washington DC The US Senate cannot organize itself to stop minority rule (the filibuster). The Voting Rights Act is moving strictly on partisan lines, because Republicans admit they can’t win an election honestly.

The State of Minnesota has seated a jury for the trial of Derek Chauvin, who was filmed killing George Floyd, which started enormous protests, some violence, and became the occasion for more violence by police against protesters and journalists. The State has invested enormous sums in policing, fencing.

Official violence continues against people resisting Line 3 in northern Minnesota; sheriff departments are raking in the cash as Enbridge makes the mandated payments for pipeline “protection.” Line 3 is in court again and there’s some hope of legal victory. At Thacker Pass, the protest against lithium mining enters its third month of calling environmentalists to account along with mining companies.

Geneen Marie Haugen writes “I am stunned each time another hideous event exposes human depravity or psychosis or indifference for the lives of others. Every time, I (perhaps foolishly) anticipate some kind of collective awakening. …My belly aches with longing to mend what has gone awry, if only I could identify it. I want to be able to say, ‘Here is a way.’

Me too.

I’m reading a book called They Thought They Were Free: the Germans, 1933-45. The stories of ordinary individuals who joined the Nazi party are chilling; the way they manipulate truth and memory is uncomfortably familiar. But here is a comment from the author’s academic friend about his own choices. On taking the loyalty oath, “That day the world was lost, and it was I who lost it.” Although it had enabled him to hide fugitives and save lives, he said “If I had refused to take the oath in 1935, it would have meant that thousands and thousands like me, all over Germany, were refusing to take it. Their refusal would have heartened millions. Thus the regime would have been overthrown.” He speaks about not being ready, not having enough faith that he might make a difference, and so he took the easier path.

We know people who took the harder path. Daniel Ellsberg escaped life in prison (unlike Reality Winner, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, and even Edward Snowden in exile). Others have paid a different kind of price: Peter Norman, Australian runner supporting Carlos and Smith’s 1968 Olympic protest, lost his career and more – depression, alcoholism, and painkiller addiction after an injury. In 2000 he had no regret for standing up. Hugh Thompson, after stopping his soldiers from participating in the My Lai massacre, “was denounced as a traitor, and spent much of his life suffering from depression, PTSD, and nightmares.” And young Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans were executed by the Nazis. “Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go.”

What is appropriate action? What does each of us do, in a time when things are so ? And then how do we become the people who can take the risk? When I walked along the KXL route in 2013, there was no way to predict what the results would be – and it is still not possible to say what we contributed to the eventual protection of the land. But doing it made me alive. It was hard. Afterward it was hard to go back to ordinary life. Mountains and Waters Alliance, here on the farm and writing online, feels more mundane. But if I abandoned it, I would no longer feel alive.

Spring is in the air; amid the ruins of authorized violence and voter suppression, life renews. Line 3 protests with sacred ceremony mixed with arrests and legal battles. Buddhist Justice Reporter  looks deeply at the Derrick Chauvin trial. Protect Thacker Pass asks hard questions and confronts the self-deception of the environmental movement. Part of the great upswelling on behalf of the earth and our humanity, Mountains and Waters Alliance asks us to become allies with forests, mountains, and rivers instead of trying to be gods.

It’s a frightening time. So always is labor and birth. Be alive.

Announcements:

Here’s a recording of a dharma talk called “Refuge,” given at Red Clay Sangha in Atlanta. Here’s a link for a talk Sunday morning, March 28, also called “Refuge.”

Partial re- opening:

The months of April through June will be a work-practice period at MWA; come for what time you can, join us in zazen and in work. Covid safety continues as a priority,including quarantining in place, limited numbers, etc. In May we do construction, the first step toward solarizing the house. Meditation retreats and work retreats follow through the year; online groups, classes, and zazen continue.

Take heart. Something is rising. We are part of it, we are alive.

With love,

Shodo-

Refuge

In this time of fear, when so many people are literally refugees and when any one of us might join them. How do we find refuge, and how do we offer refuge?

Refuge means shelter from danger. It comes from “to flee,” “back,” and “a place for.” The danger is unspecified, just fleeing back to a place.

We will start by recognizing that we are all refugees in some way.

There are people who have been burned out of their homes, flooded out of their communities, or who are running from war, starvation, gang violence, and the rest and are turned away at borders of all kinds, or imprisoned, raped, separated from their children… the things done in the name of “protecting our own people” are cruel beyond imagining. The average American, in the richest large country in the world, is one paycheck or one medical disaster away from financial catastrophe, which I mean homelessness and hunger.

But we also seek refuge from trouble in our minds; fear and anger, confusion, not knowing what to do next, looking for someone to trust. Dealing with external danger goes better when we address our internal troubles.

You can’t take refuge in denial, but that’s what people try to do. Buddhism has been mistaken for a means of escape, and is often misunderstood as: “Calm down and you will be all right.” Or “Nothing is real, it’s all created by your mind.” Neither of those is Buddhism, even though calming down is always a good idea and thought has a powerful influence. Refuge is not escape.

Traditionally Buddhists take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.

“Buddha” is shorthand for “being awake.” People think we take refuge in a person who is awake, but that’s just symbolism for being awake ourselves. That’s more than the politically-correct “woke” but they have a connection. “Dharma” has three meanings: the teaching, truth, and phenomena. It’s translated into Japanese as Ho, meaning law – the natural law of how things work. You can take refuge in things being as they are: simple enough, difficult enough. And “Sangha” means group, means community, generally referring to the community of beings who are on this path of awakening. Not the people we like, but the ones who will support each other when the need comes. Just as in a blizzard people all go and shovel out stuck cars, in a flood those with boats go rescue those without, in a power outage we gather in places that still have heat – sangha every day means commitment to help each other take refuge from our own mental illusions, from selfishness and anger and everything that ruins life. Like pebbles in a rock tumbler, we

are not necessarily comfortable in sangha, but it’s what we need.

I was sitting zazen this morning, and thoughts were wandering. Then I noticed, and looked at the thought of the moment. Looked at it with kindness. I didn’t try to fix it, I admitted it was there, a self-criticism, and I just sat with it for a while.

You can take refuge in the way things are. Take refuge in kindness. Take refuge in knowing you’re not alone.

That’s a start.

Next weekend I’m offering a one-day retreat on Refuge on Saturday, and a talk on Refuge Sunday morning. You can find both here: https://redclaysangha.org/. “Sunday morning service” takes you to the link for the talk. register for the retreat ($20) lower on the page “Retreat with Shodo Spring.”

The campground picture was a physical place of refuge during the Compassionate Earth Walk in 2013 – refuge from heat and thirst. We now have some photos and blog posts from that walk, here. The large picture is Eagle Springs Lodge, northern Nebraska, which offered walkers a much-needed refuge later.

The Unist’ot’en Camp picture shows the first building that hosted indigenous people defending the land to which they belong. http://unistoten.camp/

If you’re not already subscribed to the blog, know that we’ve fixed the glitch and you can sign up to receive posts through email.

Events will be posted on the website soon.

Blessings

Shodo

“Not-knowing is most intimate”

The year called 2020 will probably be remembered for a long time for its hardship. May our descendants know it also as a key point in the Great Turning. We don’t know yet.

We may recognize the feelings of William Butler Yeats when he wrote in 1919 after The Great War (WWI) ended, while his Ireland home was still in turmoil, while the future was unknown:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

It seems now, as 2021 begins, that the center is holding; yet there is still no certainty. I expect Biden and Harris to be sworn in and a new administration to begin the task of re-establishing a level of stability. But we can’t be sure about all those Americans who are waving guns, threatening or shooting people in the name of liberty, calling themselves militia – or sometimes police. We don’t know what’s happened to the mood of the country. And we don’t yet know whether the Senate will change hands, and whether the change of power will be peaceful. Not knowing.

We have both a vaccine and a new strain of the virus. Tired as we are of lockdowns and deaths, it’s not over. We don’t know when. Nor when another might arise, because industrial civilization continues to create the situations that give rise to these dangerous beings. Not knowing.

Meanwhile, racism is in the open. The insistence on destroying the planet for profit is revealed. And years of resistance costing lives and dollars begin to be rewarded in court, and by banks and investors dropping fossil fuel projects, and by mainstream news and the general public learning to say the words. It was hard but necessary. Much more not-knowing ahead.

Of course it’s hard. I’d like to be as naive as when I was a child, but the world is not secure. It never was, except in the minds of privileged people who didn’t know their lives were based on enslavement and death of others.

So my hope for a return from near-anarchy is balanced by certainty that the old “normal” is not good enough; that old ways of thinking will take us back to inequality, death, and climate change. That the Industrial Growth Society (Joanna Macy 2009) must end. Whatever it takes.

To those who lost loved ones, or health, or jobs, or small businesses, or their homes – I apologize for what may sound uncaring. We don’t know what comes next, or who will yet lose what. Our actions create the world. If we are willing to throw away a single life, those actions will lead back to what we are hoping to escape.

Mountains and Waters Alliance

Everything has changed. An “Introduction to Zen” weekend retreat turned into an online class that still meets weekly. The “Gift of Fearlessness” group, originally a response to the pandemic, continues to meet, supporting each other as we face what we cannot know. We’ve had online zazen (now only Mondays) and two in-person retreats in this spacious place – “land care” and Zen sesshin. People are donating, and some volunteers have come in spite of the pandemic. Today we have several inches of snow, glittering in the sunlight. It’s been a good time for quiet, and for working on the book.

Plans for this coming year are necessarily uncertain. But here is a rough outline. It includes some things happening elsewhere, that I recommend and plan to attend.

Online, single events

Thursday, January 7, “The New Ecosattva Path” talk by David Loy. 5:30-7:30 Central Time, at Zen Center North Shore in Massachusetts:  The link is on that page, and they request registration and donation.
January 10: online talk at Sanshin Zen Community, topic “Embrace and sustain all beings”. Zazen 8:10, talk 9:10 Central Time. Look here for the link.
February 20: one-day retreat with Red Clay Sangha in Atlanta – topic “Refuge.” Register here.
February 21: dharma talk with Red Clay Sangha in Atlanta. Sitting starts 8 am or after; talk begins 9:30 Central Time. Information and link is here.

Online, ongoing:

Wednesday evenings 6:30-8 “Introduction to Zen” class, about 6-7 participants, studying Okumura’s Living by Vow. We’ll finish the book by spring, and then make a decision. (Ask to be added to the email list.)
Sunday evenings 4:30-5:45 “The Gift of Fearlessness” reading and discussing various offerings, related to current events. (Ask to be added to the email list.)
Third Sunday evening 6:00-8 Heart Sutra, advanced class, taught by Luca Valentino with assistance from Shodo. (by invitation only)

In person, dates uncertain:

Maple sugaring – tapping trees and boiling sap – early spring (February – April, depending on weather)
Construction – late spring/summer – making the building more sustainable. There may be volunteer opportunities connected with this.
Fall work weekend, probably in October – harvest, land care, firewood, or as needed
Sewing retreat – probably in 2021 – for people preparing to receive the Buddhist precepts

In person, planned dates:

April 16-20: land care retreat, or just work time – buckthorn management, part 1 – cutting
April-May (weather dependent): buckthorn management, part 2 – burning, with professional supervision
May 13-23: Shodo away studying – covid-dependent
June 18-22: sesshin (limited to 5 people, or online, covid-dependent)
July 16-20: Shodo will be on private retreat
August 13-16: land care retreat – specifics to be determined
September 17-21: sesshin (limited to 5 people, or online, covid-dependent)
November 11-22: Shodo away studying – covid-dependent
December 1-8: Rohatsu sesshin: Hope we can be indoors and sit together peacefully.

Not-knowing is most intimate. As we make our way through what we hope will be a public health recovery and a return to stable though still corporate governance , we are surfing on unknowable waves. Those of us who are not hungry or being shot at, it is ours to move carefully, with respect for those who are at great risk. Never in my life have I felt less sure of what will come next, except maybe that time when my bicycle went out of control going downhill.

This is what Zen master Dizang was addressing when he said “not-knowing is most intimate.” It’s a way of life, highly recommended. Yet, when forced into it, simply admitting it is so can help us make our way.

With love,

Shodo Spring