Dear Friends,
I write to let you know that we’ve reached our fundraising goal. Thank you to those who have helped, or shared. It’s still possible to donate; I’m leaving it open into early January, as I finish notes to donors and share them to you.
This is a great shift in the energy of our work. During 2024, MWA will be my primary occupation: four days a week, including caring for relationships, working with other organizations, preparing thoroughly for classes, dharma talks, and retreats, and (finally) I’ll take care of administration, including keeping track of people, preparing an invited grant application, and the rest. I will take time for the rest and restoration essential to both teaching and leading. I’ll gradually wind down my other work to under two days a week, then less if all goes well.
Expect to get a post about 2024 plans, a year-end report, and a discussion of Earth Apprentice Training – in the next few weeks.
Last, here is an offering that I shared with the fundraising donors. It’s the meditation tonglen, used in Tibetan Buddhism for practicing with difficulties.
Find a quiet place where you can be undisturbed for a while. Sit comfortably erect, eyes closed or half-open. Settle into your breathing, allowing the nourishment of breath, body, and your surroundings. Notice your heart, imagining it as a radiant pure light, even though it may be clouded or shielded.
Bring your attention to the suffering, whether general or specific. Imagine it emits a stream of smoke – hot, dark, acid, toxic – and imagine drawing that smoke toward you, courageously breathing it into your heart. It is powerful enough to burn through the shield around your heart. As it enters the brilliant light within, watch it be absorbed by the brilliance until the flame burns even brighter and more pure.
Exhaling, send from your pure heart to the place of suffering. Imagine white smoke, or cool mist, a color of healing, a rainbow. Breathing in, receive pain and fear, breathing out, send calm and love.
Continue as long as you like.
What if we all practiced tonglen for the people in the Middle East conflict, or in Ukraine? What if we all practiced tonglen for the climate, for places of pollution, for dying species, for people caught in pain, fear, or even hate? Who might we become, if we welcome all that suffering into our hearts? I can’t say how this practice might change the literal suffering in those other places, but I am quite certain that when we change, the world changes.
With love,
Shodo
for Mountains and Waters Alliance
Surrounded by the generosity of donors, I find myself wanting to offer gifts., which mostly means teaching, or inspiration. Here I offer two poems and a class announcement. First, I refer you to the beautiful words of my teacher Shohaku Okumura, found on the front page of the website.
And then a sweet thought from modern poet Antonio Machado:
Our first offering this year is an online Zen class studying the “Eihei Koso Hotsuganmon.” This remarkable document sets out the view of Dogen Zenji, founder of Soto Zen, which differed sharply from his contemporaries. “Buddhas and ancestors of old were as we. We in the future shall be Buddhas and ancestors.” We’ll explore the implications of this radical view for our lives and spiritual practice.
The class begins Wednesday, January 3, for 3 weeks. Each month will be a new class, addressing a different writing of Dogen. Here’s a link to the January class, asking you please to register in advance. By donation, as always. https://mountainsandwatersalliance.org/event/january-zen-class-dogens-vow/
You probably know that we’re running a fundraiser, https://www.gofundme.com/f/qfwwbz-mountains-and-waters-alliance. At this point we have enough for more study and retreats, our own Zoom, and a start on freeing up my time for all we might do – like preparation and teaching. The dream is that I could spend most of my time in practice and teaching, rather than focusing on livelihood. If you would like to support MWA, please either donate what you can afford, or share this with people you know who might be interested. And while we’re looking for money, in the background is always the intention to gather more practitioners and members.
Dear Friends,
That’s in a long tradition in which some people do a needed thing and others support them.
In religions with monastic traditions, monastics engage in deep spiritual practice, follow a strict lifestyle supporting that practice, and offer teachings freely to lay people. Lay people have fewer ethical rules, live their lives as householders, and offer material support to nuns and monks, who share spiritual teachings with them.
In modern America and many other places that reject hierarchy, there are few instances of such full-time support. Yet congregations support ministers, Buddhist sanghas support teachers, and donors support many kinds of peaceful activism.
Nothing I do now is as dramatic as that walk was, and even that was less dramatic that the resistance to fossil fuel pipelines (and mining and other environmental causes) in which people use their bodies to block harm. Yet my whole life is given in that way. I loved living on the road, yet when I returned it was clear that there was something else to do, and that something is Mountains and Waters Alliance.
I planted myself in the earth, here in southern Minnesota, in 2014, and since then the direction has gradually revealed itself. A few years later I went back to work, to support the farm and its function as a learning/teaching center and residence. I spent most of the pandemic writing the book – will announce when I have a publisher – and am now ready to move into action. Something is clearly ready to be born. I long to give it my full attention.
If you would like me to do that – please use the GoFundMe to support me in doing so. There are more details there. https://gofund.me/cc0ded9b
If you’d like to do it with me, by all means get in touch.
With love,
Shodo Spring, for Mountains and Waters Alliance
I write to you in peace, during war in the Middle East and an ongoing catastrophe in American government.
Listening to the shouting about the disaster in Israel and Palestine, about atrocities and genocide, I recall that there has never been a country where Jews were safe, and that Muslims have been a target for a long time. Beyond that, I will not bring my opinions here. (You’re welcome to ask me personally, or check my facebook page.)
We have some ways to help us remember that.
The core practice of Zen Buddhism is sitting meditation, zazen, and the practice of taking a long retreat to allow the body and mind to settle down (away from both news and projects) and recover their wholeness, to allow the universe to create us even as we recognize that we also create what is around us in an ever-cycling relationship.
I invite you to join me in Rohatsu sesshin, December 1-7, for whatever part of it you’re able to attend. Register here. I said a few words about it here.
For questions about sesshin or about anything I said, email me to set up a conversation.
While Rohatsu sesshin is usually a gathering of long-time practitioners, I’m inviting newcomers as well – and that means I’m willing to support you by explaining and by answering questions.
With love,
Shodo Spring
for Mountains and Waters Alliance
Now I invite you to join me in learning from the land. We’ll start with three Saturday afternoons, 1-5 pm, here at the farm, and bring meditative awareness to the beings who live here. On the first Saturday, we’ll explore a space between house and creek, mixed garden and wild, and do practices of listening and opening, returning to the human circle, returning to the wild beings, supporting each other in finding the way, and do some small project requested by the land spirits. We’ll listen for where to work next, and on the second and third Saturdays, we’ll do the same. At the end of the third Saturday we’ll consider next steps for those who will continue. Saturdays: October 7-21, 1-5 pm. Details here.
Saturday afternoons (1-5) will be occasions for seasonal work together, including sowing wild rice (September 30), harvesting hazelnuts, walnuts, acorns, grapes, and whatever is ready in garden or woods; possibly processing the same, or indoor work such as food processing. If you want to bring children, we can work it out.
The wild rice came from a rice camp September 8-10, at Honor the Earth’s camp in northern Minnesota. They were a center for resisting the dangerous and unneeded pipeline (Line 3), and now that is lost they are doing cultural work, remembering and teaching traditional ways, welcoming all people to learn. At this camp we were taught (“let the rice be your teacher”) to gather, parch, and winnow wild rice, and to return an offering of rice to the flowage where it was harvested. They gave away rice to some who wanted it, intending that it spread around the state, healing and returning balance to communities of life everywhere. They answered my questions and assured me that it would grow here. Besides, this is Rice County. So this planting is not only my own wish, but in relationship to my teachers, and to the land which longs for its traditional plants.
Monday mornings 9-1 are project time. Perry and I (the current residents) do things that may involve construction, digging, or whatever is most needed. Your labor is welcome, and your skills too. Chain saws and power tools happen here rather than Saturdays. No small children, for safety.
Potlucks and conversations sometimes happen at the end of these events; meditation instruction is always an option on request.
December 1-7, Rohatsu sesshin, here at the farm, in-person only – details here. (arrive evening of November 30; part-time participation welcome)
We’ve gotten some work done in the gardens; I have just a few photos. We did build an outhouse (composting toilet) and it’s functional though not cosmetically finished. Perry did a lot of work on the gardens, and planted things, but we underestimated the critters, so we’ve gotten less food than expected. Before next planting season, we’ll have better protection in place.
We’ve been working with abundance, and putting food by. To date we have canned plum butter, applesauce, apple butter, and frozen a great many food things. The local food shelves are amazing; we never know what they’ll have, but it’s almost certain that if I buy onions at the coop, two days later there will be a load of free onions.
There are lots of ideas about how to engage with the land – growing mushrooms, where to move the raspberry bushes, contouring the land for water collection and so forth – but I won’t start to describe because we intend to move forward in harmony with the land, listening to what it welcomes rather than imposing our convenience and our will. The Earth Apprenticeship program will help with this. It will still be a gradual process.
Mountains and Waters Alliance currently exists by the grace of a few regular donors, and occasional gifts or speaking fees. This is possible because it owns nothing, and has no expenses except the occasional book, training, or conference. The farm is mine personally, though its whole purpose is to serve the work called MWA; MWA rents a bit of space. Covid interrupted the income from retreats, which I trust will return. I went ahead anyway and made improvements to make a better space for community and retreats, and I’m sure that helped attract a housemate – with room now for two more. Some day we’ll look for foundation funding, but there’s work we have to do first.
If you would like me to put more time into practice and teaching, Perry to put more time into plants, sustainability, and caring for the land, and other activities that move this work forward, you could help us by going to the donation page and making a one-time or ongoing donation, or by signing up to iGive with us as the recipient. All the details are on that page.
Otherwise, my paid work is rewarding and I have half my time for the work called MWA, including Zen practice and teaching.
Blessings to you all,
Shodo
For Mountains and Waters Alliance
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?
Tuesday, August 8
Maui: A huge fire destroys traditional native center Lahaina, kills over a hundred people and displaces hundreds.
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:
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.
Going tentatively here, thoughts as they arise and then what follows:
Which are the most useful in your particular life? Is it the practice of compassion, for instance, or the specifics of the precepts?
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.
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:
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
“To start repairing the world, and ourselves” writes Dan Harris about this book by Ayo Yetunde. theologian, spiritual counselor, and activist. In this spirit, we begin a fall study group with Casting Indra’s Net, exploring our lives in relation to Yetunde’s offering. The ongoing study group is welcoming new member at this time. More information is at this link. You can register by email. No fee, but donations are welcome.
Here are a few other upcoming events:
August 12, community day at the farm, from afternoon through evening, concluding with meteor showers and moonrise. Click for information. Registration encouraged.
Every Monday morning, online zazen (sitting meditation), 6 am Central Time. Registration encouraged.
These events are coming, but do not yet have registration access yet.
September 21, in Northfield MN: We’ll be at the International Day of Peace, 5-7 pm, participating in a community event.
October, date TBD, weekend sesshin (meditation retreat) in Duluth, MN.
November 5, dharma talk at Northfield Buddhist Meditation Center – online and in person.
December 1-8, Rohatsu sesshin – 7 days of sitting meditation, at the farm. Partial participation welcome.
Dear Friends,
This post is about the August 12 day/night at the farm, involving afternoon work, potluck, ceremony, and stargazing/meteor shower. Here’s the full description. Starts mid-afternoon, goes into the night, come and go as you like.
This is my first time to offer the actual work of Mountains and Waters Alliance: a ceremony connecting humans with plants, earth, water, sky, all beings – for the well-being of the earth. It’s embedded in a day of things we do often, potluck and land care, and something new, the meteor shower, an opportunity worth sharing.
In a way this is a response to the climate crisis, to the wildfires and heat domes and all of that frightening and uncomfortable news. In another way, it’s just finding a way to live in harmony within our family, all beings.
I hope you can come, if you’re near. Many people have come and gone here. This summer we’ve been quiet – no retreats or workdays, just one party at my birthday. The next few events will be online, and then some retreats this fall and winter.
Soon I’ll post the other things that are coming up. And I hope your summer is being as beautiful as the one we’re having here.
Shodo
Greetings from the land of summer!
This newsletter includes a short event listing, plus some reflections on learnings from recent retreats and travels.
There will be later events and talks, including
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.
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.
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
Hello and welcome. Here’s catching up with a little of everything.
With new resident Perry Post, there’s lots of activity in the garden. Perry is a permaculturist and experienced gardener and landscaper, and he welcomes help.
The best way to get involved is to let me know so we can get in touch when there’s an appropriate opportunity. After conversation so we know what you’re up for.
I’m holding the schedule until after I return from the Kincentric Leadership Training (late May) because I expect to have new ideas. But there will be land care retreats, ceremonies, work days and work retreats, and sesshin.
I’m noticing anniversaries.
This is for the many people who’ve supported Mountains and Waters Alliance through the years; I won’t name them individually for reluctance to miss someone, but we have these groups:
May it continue.
I’ve been invited to participate in the Kincentric Leadership Training, which will begin next week. I know just these things about this:
The book is nearing completion. Working title is Being Earth: Unleashing the power of the natural world.
It’s going like this: donations support the land and facilities. I’ve never been paid, but MWA rents space at the farm, and covers some of my retreat and study travel. Working half time makes that harder but supports the whole thing. In 2022 I borrowed money to upgrade the house to have space for four residents. Four would pay the loan down fast, but there’s one plus me. So I’m working extra, and doing less study and teaching.
Warm and cold, sunny, rainy, blossoms everywhere, spring ephemerals; the fiddleheads have come and gone, the nettles are offering themselves for eating, and when the rain stops we should find morel mushrooms in the woods.
Looking at the violence and polarization all around, I think societal collapse is well along the way. That thought helps me forgive the individuals involved. At the same time I see a thousand – no, a million signs of renewal. Reasons to be Cheerful is a pleasant place to hang out to see encouraging news. One of these days I’ll write about world issues again. Maybe.
What else is there to say? Life is good. Even when it isn’t.
Dear Folks,
Next weekend is the Land Care Retreat: arrive Friday evening, leave Sunday afternoon. About half meditation and discussion, generous time outdoors in the warm weather (predicted 50’s and 60’s, some showers but not steady rain) including garden work Saturday afternoon, expecting a small group. (You might want rubber boots.) I’ll be in touch with people who register.
If the fee is an issue, email me and we’ll work something out. I’d love to have you if possible.
This is the last practice-related event for a couple of months, due to commitments I have elsewhere.
I puzzle over what to say about the news. Sometimes I’m encouraged, sometimes outraged. Today I have more hope about fascism, because of public response to some outrages.
I’m less encouraged about climate change. It’s still true that we have the technology (mostly biological) that we need, and it’s still true that we need to completely change our expectations about “standard of living” and we need fewer people on the planet. The resistance to both is fierce. Still, there are a few hopeful notes:
The UN addresses climate responsibilities
The Vatican repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery, which had been used to excuse genocide and destruction around the globe for centuries. (no link)
by Rabindranath Tagore
Let all the strains of joy mingle in my last song —
the joy that makes the earth flow over in the riotous excess of the grass,
the joy that sets the twin brothers, life and death,
dancing over the wide world,
the joy that sweeps in with the tempest, shaking and waking
all life with laughter,
the joy that sits still with its tears on the open red lotus of pain, and
the joy that throws everything it has upon the dust,
and knows not a word.
Blessed spring. I hope to see you soon.
Love,
Shodo
I greet you from the land of cold and snow, entering the next winter storm, knowing that the erratic weather is from climate change. Imagining Mother Earth shaking us off, freeing herself – and dreaming that we can still make peace, become friends, live in the hands of the gods again, in the hands of all beings.
I asked for a poem for the time, and here is what came.
After writing, I went down to the altar at the creek, and asked for my health to improve. I could feel an answer. Still a mystery.
The river has two names, Dakota and English. Inyan Bosndata (Standing Rock River) and Cannon River (from the French for canoes).
The creeks have no names. People ask their names. But I honor their wildness and their changing, and don’t want to burden them with a fixed name. The state DNR calls them “intermittent streams,” which seems to acknowledge their wildness.
Perhaps some day they will tell me their names; until then I leave them to themselves.
There are now three residents, with space for one more now, probably an additional space this fall. Pleae write if you’re interested in joining us.
One of us will be focusing on the land; we expect more activities, more workdays. Watch here for announcements.
The Facebook page for Mountains and Waters Alliance is now closed, and will be shut down. There are two ways to stay connected. You can subscribe to the blog at the website, and receive emails. Or you can follow my personal Facebook page (Shodo Spring), where the blogs are always posted.
If there are additions, we’ll announce them here.
This is the season of fundraising appeals. I’ve been invisible, underground, working on the book, occasional talks, and leading one study group and one discussion group. With nothing to see, I make no claim to your dollars. Still, if you would like to support this work here is a window. Gifts make it possible to give more time to teaching and writing, and ultimately to center my life on our mission. https://mountainsandwatersalliance.org/donate-support/
Currently I work more than half time as a psychotherapist. It’s good work and also demanding, and helps me repay the loan I took out to expand the house and make space for a beginning community. (There will be three of us here by January, with one space open for an additional resident.)
An online study group will begin Wednesday, January 4, 6:30-8 pm, on Dogen’s writing “Being Time” through Dainin Katagiri’s Each Moment is the Universe. Registration is necessary, preferably by December 15; donations are requested but not required. More information here.
There will be an in-person “Introduction to Zen” on a January Saturday morning, not yet scheduled. If interested, you’re encouraged to contact me; it will help planning.
The general monthly pattern is a retreat on the third weekend, a workday on the second weekend. Retreats are either sesshin, an intensive meditation retreat, up to five days long, or “land care retreat” including meditation, dharma talk and discussion, and mindful work on the land. There’s a flexible fee, registration required, and I love doing these.
Workdays are usually informal and involve whatever is needed, mostly farm and land work. Lunch and snacks are provided, and no money changes hands. Sometimes people stay after for dharma conversation.
Speculative schedule (that’s even less than tentative, and none of these are event listings yes.)
November 27, this Sunday, I’m giving a dharma talk online for Hokyoji Zen Practice Community in southern Minnesota. The talk starts at 9:30am Central Time; zazen begins at 8:30 and you can join at any time.Here’s the link: https://www.hokyoji.org/sunday-talks/
December 10, Saturday, I’ll talk online with Heartland Zen about the text Sansuikyo (Mountains and Waters Sutra) and the book I edited for Okumura Roshi. 11:00 am, meditation 10:30. Link is at https://www.heartlandzen.org/
At the end of this year I will discontinue the Facebook page for Mountains and Waters Alliance. If you have been following there, you might sign up for blog posts (bottom of this page), or switch to my personal page (Shodo Spring) if it’s not too crowded for you. The reason is that organizational pages keep becoming more and more difficult to use, and I don’t think the page is that useful.)
On this day in 1963, an assassination took the life of John F Kennedy, a courageous leader in many ways. It’s 59 years, and the world has changed incalculably. Or perhaps just its appearance has changed, except that now we face climate disaster and open fascism and so much else. We also have great upwellings of humanity, love, and creativity. I imagine a great event at the 60th anniversary, a celebration of life and humanity. My part in that celebration will be to honor the gifts of trees, mountains, rivers, oceans, prairies, meadows, mycelia, all of life – and to ask for their continuing participation.
I’ll follow that with acknowledgment of how it goes in our world today. I’ve given too much attention for too long to external events. December’s post will look outward at it all, hopefully from a calm place.
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.
Blessings.
Voting is an exercise of political power. Self-expression has nothing to do with it. We vote all the time for people we don’t prefer, in order to avoid potential disasters. If you’re worried about possible disasters of any kind, please vote in addition to your other actions.
To make sure you’re still registered correctly: https://www.usa.gov/confirm-voter-registration. It also has information on how to register in each state, and whether you need ID.
Quoting an email from my friend Bob Ciernia:
“In Mein Kampf, Hitler said what he would do if his party came to power. People didn’t believe him. Let’s not make the same mistake …. Despite losing the popular vote by over 7 million votes (and losing the Electoral College vote 306 to 232), a majority of Republicans believe they won the 2020 Presidential election. What does it say about your view of the world if you think the only way you could ever lose an election is if it is rigged? Again, please take them at their word ….
“If you want to do something… there is still time to affect the outcome of the 2022 election. I [Bob] am a member of this group: https://www.fridayaction.org/projects/#current [They identify critical races and send postcards, sometimes increasing voter turnout by 10%. Of course there are many options for action.]
“Please remember the words of Martin Niemöller (1892-1984), a Lutheran minister who spent eight years in prisons and concentration camps between 1937 and 1945.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Remember that local candidates matter, Secretaries of State control voting, and school boards make a difference for our children.
From Edna St. Vincent Millay, over a hundred years ago.
September sesshin had 3 participants, and was a gift. Even though I spent my free time protecting the garden plants from the first frost, as well as building fires to warm the zendo, at the end my heart was lighter and I was able to engage wholeheartedly with daily life having released some kind of burden.
Next summer when the garage gets hot, it will be like our own kiln. (This lumber was milled from our own trees. There’s more of that to come.)
For upcoming events, see last month’s post. Except this update: the Wednesday night Zen group is on hiatus, and will begin January 4 with an organized class on Dogen’s writing “Being Time” using Dainin Katagiri’s Each Moment is the Universe: Zen and the way of being time. We’ll meet at 6:30 pm on the first three Wednesdays of each month January through April. It will be more formal than our past reading/discussion, and a donation is requested at a level that works for you.
And there will be at least one introduction to Zen event – a day or a half-day – probably January 21.
I wrote last month; now I’m keeping it simple. Please email me if you have interest in either a short-term visit or a long-term stay.
The book is nearly done and has a working title: Being Earth: What to Do With the Time that is Given Us. The initial description: “A Buddhist response to the crisis of our times, Being Earth draws on history, anthropology, archaeology, biology, and psychology to invite new perspectives and possibilities.”
because of the construction, inflation, medical expenses, and life in general. I’m working more hours, but also encouraging donations, tax-deductible, either on the website or by mailing a check.
There’s also a free way to support through www.iGive.com. You set things up with them, then automatically a small percentage comes to MWA when you buy online from one of their sellers. Most airlines and many major companies are on it.
If you’re experiencing problems with wildfire, flood, drought, storm, covid, or social crisis, my heart is with you. Ask if you would like us to chant for your well-being.
Warmly,
Shodo Spring
for Mountains and Waters Alliance