Hello Zen friends,

I’m sending this note to a larger-than-normal group. If you don’t get my weekly spam mail, don’t worry, you won’t be getting it in the future. Here is the news:

Five-day Sesshin (Zen Retreat)

Joni and I are planning our first-ever five-day sesshin here at the house. It has the title "A Journey of a Thousand Moths Begins with One Step", an improvisation on a theme from Lao-tzu.

So as to work best with our son Mike’s schedule, we plan to start on a Tuesday night and end on the following Sunday afternoon.

The sesshin will be sometime this fall. We wanted to notify you now, so that you can send us an email if you are interested and have schedule restrictions that you would like us to consider.

OK you people from out-of-town that have said "well, if you would do a five-day sesshin, I would come": here is your chance!

Formal Zen Training

A number of people have asked me "are you going to give Daisan (hold private one-on-one meetings)?" As many of you know, I’ve had mixed feelings about this. Well, I finally came up with something. It is described here on our website: http://home.roadrunner.com/~clothespin/Formal_Zen_Training.html.

Zen Practice Principles

I took a stab at rewriting the "Zen Practice Principles" to be more descriptive of the teaching as it is evolving here. The "Zen Practice Principles" is the verse that we recite at the end of our evening sitting period, the one that (used to) start with "Caught in the self-centered dream…" The rewrite is here on our website: http://home.roadrunner.com/~clothespin/Zen_Practice_Principles.html. This new version is a little longer than the old one, and will only be recited once, as opposed to three times.

Well, we will see how it sounds when we try it out this coming Wednesday! A lot of stuff ends up in the scrap heap, you know.

I’m planning to use this new "Zen Practice Principles" in the morning too, as a replacement for the morning verse. The morning verse, which used to be called "Verse of the Kesa", makes sense in a setting of robes and rakusus, but not at our place, where we have neither.

I hope that this note finds you well, and I hope that our paths cross again soon.

Sam

Sam Gabriel, San Diego, CA
http://home.roadrunner.com/~clothespin
sam_gabriel@yahoo.com