Farm, MWA Newsletter, Zen, -  Nov 22, 2022

Giving, upcoming classes and talks, and communications

Giving:

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.)

Classes

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.

Retreats and Farm events

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.)

• January 14: workday indoors, either sewing or construction of the painting/rehab sort.
• January 21: intro to Zen, which could be followed by a half-day of sitting meditation.
• February 11: workday, tap maple trees
• February 18-19, land care retreat, maple trees and meditation
• March 11: just possibly a workday involving maple syrup
• late March: closed for a personal walking retreat
• April 15-16: something involving fire – burning fields to make prairie, biochar, remove\calm invasive plants.
• May closed: I’ll be at my teacher’s last teaching retreat, then various family occasions.
• June 10: possible workday, gardening
• late June: probably no events due to travel for ceremonies at Sanshinji, my teacher’s temple
• July-December: similar pattern, no details yet. Except that I will sit Rohatsu sesshin, December 1-8, either here or with another sangha. There will be at least one or two sesshins and land care retreats.

Talks

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/

Communications:

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.)

In Memoriam:

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.